The entry of women into the modern workforce did not in itself change our era. What changed was the kind of model they chose. They tended to follow the male model of the past few centuries.
Women have been part of the work force since the beginning of time. Women have worked on farms and in home-based shops for millennia. Regardless of discrimination, they formed an active part of a society’s economic life.
In addition, women did what men could not do but was essential to the survival of the human race. Though men were essential to the act of procreation, they had nothing to do with carrying a child or birthing it. Until the past century or so, the child’s very existence depended on feeding from the mother for its first few months or year of life.
On the other hand, in times past, fathers were less separated from their children in their growing-up years. Even when the men worked, the children were close by for whatever lessons their fathers wanted to give.
Though gender differences were acute, with men having privileged roles, they were at least present while their children grew up.
With the rise of the modern city and its division into city and suburb, women became less a part of economic life, and men became less involved with their children.
In the suburbs, out of the stream of economic activity, some women rebelled against what seemed to them a wasteland, a prison of sorts.
The advent of birth control, safer pregnancies and births, and bottle feeding, meant less attention to the childbearing and rearing role. All women, whether mothers or not, could find purpose beyond traditional roles.
But women still remain essential for continued life, in a way men do not.
Men can more easily leave their role of fatherhood and in some cases never even consider it. Physically, they are not tied to children as the mother is in pregnancy and birthing.
In the sixties, battles were fought over a woman’s worth to society and her right to a place in the job force, equal opportunity in management roles, and breaking the glass ceiling.
The word “house husband” was bandied around. Some men have indeed assumed a larger role in the family.
However, we gave little consideration to the modern separation of jobs and homes. The choice to have children or not to have children is quite proper. But for those who make a responsible decision to have children, the career deck is, more often than not, stacked against them.
Yes, child care can be made more affordable and available. But what about when a child is sick? Has special needs?
Or when a pandemic means the child cannot be in school or child care?
Ultimately, the parents are responsible, career or not.
Perhaps we should question the great separation of the past century or so between work and home.
Some separation is necessary, of course. We don’t wish a family living in a coal mining community to live in a coal mine. Nevertheless, the advent of the office job meant that many jobs were not in dangerous locations. Yet, we emptied families out of our cities for the suburbs and built super highways and faster cars and neglected mass transit.
Perhaps we should consider what happens when cities become childless.
Societies die without children. With children, but without responsible child rearing, societies crumble.
A society cannot function without responsible child rearing. For a vibrant society, children must be taken care of: loved and listened to and provided proper food, health care, schooling, and housing. Society damages itself when it does not invest in the children and the parents who make its continued existence possible.