Family

One of the most distinctive aspects of modern marriage is its emphasis upon personal compatibility and companionship. This notwithstanding, it is also true that mutual role expectations are of considerable importance since the manner in which such are perceived have a profound effect on family functioning and stability. The changing nature of gender roles makes less clear the environment in which bargaining for a partner takes place. Differences between men and women have narrowed. Women have established strong attributes of their own, such as economic contributions and social status to offer in the exchange. Thus, there is a greater emphasis on egalitarian marriage and a broader concept of labors and responsibilities to be shared.Family forms are shaped by the attitudes toward gender roles in a given society which, in turn, are influenced by the demographic, social, economic, and political realities of the time. The traditional family, idealized during the Victorian era and reestablished in the 1950s, is identified as a unit consisting of a married couple with two or more children where the breadwinning father goes out to work while the mother stays home to keep house and care for the children and her husband. This profile of the family, which reflected and was supported by the prevailing attitudes and realities of a particular period which no longer exists, continues to be lauded, endorsed, and longed for by right wing politicians and religious groups. However, due to the major socio-cultural changes of the past three decades, a variety of family forms has emerged and now the traditional family accounts for "only 5 percent of American households."


Economic Opportunity


In the traditional family, men were socialized to develop instrumental behaviors and women were socialized to develop expressive behaviors. This insured that, while men had direct access to economic opportunity and independence, women were always dependent on their husbands for social and economic rewards.As access to economic opportunity is a source of power and prestige in all societies, it follows that women lacked this power and prestige because of their confinement to the domestic sphere. In order for women to achieve equality of status with men, it was imperative that they participate in paid employment in the public sphere and that they have some degree of economic independence. With this emphasis on changing their role, unprecedented numbers of women have not only joined the labor force since 1960 but have also become highly educated and have won the right to compete with men in all areas of professional, business, and public life. However, even though women have achieved equality of status through education, occupation, and income, a corresponding change in men's roles has been slow to develop. While men have supported the changing role of women, at least in areas in which it benefits them, many have allowed their wives to continue to take full responsibility for the domestic sphere in addition to their sharing in the breadwinning role and have failed to see that "to be effective, change must move in two directions: men must share in domestic and childrearing tasks even as women share in the world of outside work.

Marriage

Traditionally, a man and a woman became involved in a steady dating relationship as a preparation for marriage. Men looked for partners whose physical appearance would enhance their image, and women looked for partners whose achievements, financially and socially, would provide security and social status. These choices reflected the self- identity of both parties: women saw themselves in terms of their physical attributes with their future role revolving around the needs and desires of their husbands; men saw themselves in terms of their accomplishments and career prospects, with an additional future role as breadwinner and head of his family.In the past three decades, all of this has changed as feminist- minded women emphasize their own instrumental as well as expressive qualities, and look for more expressive and intellectual qualities in the men they choose for long-term relationships. Men who are open to more egalitarian gender roles focus less on physical qualities and more on the expressive and intellectual qualities of women. Women's sense of autonomy is also evident in their tendency "to initiate dates and to share date expenses." Feminist-minded women no longer wait to be chosen, they choose for themselves the men they want to be with in exclusive relationships. Marriage is not necessarily the goal of long-term relationships in today's world. "Individuals are expected to be deeply committed to the current serious relationship in an exclusive dating partnership, a living-together arrangement, or a socially recognized marriage." When couples decide to marry, they do so in the belief that it will provide the rewards and satisfactions they seek in terms of both instrumental and expressive exchanges.

Autonomy versus Intimacy

In traditional relationships, men had autonomy and authority while women had neither. Women were expected to be submissive and subservient, without the right to their own opinions, feelings or needs. In modern relationships based on equality of gender roles, female and male autonomy are of equal importance, and intimacy, the mutual sharing of the being of each partner, is of vital importance to the continual development and deepening of mutual trust and love. According to Scarf, each partner not only brings herself or himself to the relationship but also the influences of known and unknown family backgrounds which have a profound bearing on the struggle between autonomy and intimacy in the relationship. Each person in a relationship needs space to be a person in his/her own right, to pursue independent goals which meet his/her independent needs. Each one also has intimacy needs, the need to set aside time for the sharing of oneself in love and closeness with the other. However, despite the modern emphasis on equality of gender roles, both men and women are still influenced by the traditional gender-role conditioning which demanded that women be the love- and caregivers to their highly-sexed, emotionless husbands and that men be the strong, male providers for their fragile, emotional wives. Women feel guilty about having autonomous needs and feel they should be always available to provide the love and the closeness in the relationship, while men feel they should be strong and independent and cannot admit to their need for love and closeness.For both men and women, the struggle is also in the questions: how much they can give of each other to each other in intimacy without losing their autonomy, without being absorbed into the identity of the other; and, how can they "be intimate without exposing yourself to the terrible possibility of rejection and abandonment?"

Today, the struggle between autonomy and intimacy is part and parcel of the deepening and development of mature, loving relationships

Xuan Min