{"id":49105,"date":"2012-07-18T11:30:05","date_gmt":"2012-07-18T16:30:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=49105"},"modified":"2013-11-08T03:46:29","modified_gmt":"2013-11-08T08:46:29","slug":"both-men-and-women-increasingly-value-both-career-and-family","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2012\/07\/18\/both-men-and-women-increasingly-value-both-career-and-family\/","title":{"rendered":"Both Sexes Increasingly Value Both Career and Family"},"content":{"rendered":"

The recent Atlantic<\/em> article<\/a> by Anne-Marie Slaughter revived an ongoing conversation about women’s efforts to balance work and family in their lives. \u00a0Unfortunately, new data from the Pew Research Center<\/a> suggests that striking a happy balance is increasingly out of reach. \u00a0This is because the value women place on both parenting well and<\/em> having a successful career is growing. \u00a0In other words, women’s expectations are rising.<\/p>\n

Interestingly, men’s expectations are rising, too, increasing the degree to which their desires might conflict, but to a somewhat lesser degree.<\/p>\n

Let’s look at the data.<\/p>\n

Young women between 18 and 34 are more likely to say that a successful career is “very” or “one of the most important things” in their life last year, compared to 1997. \u00a0The percentage has gone up 10 percentage points for women, while it went up only one point for men.
\n\"\"<\/a>
\nYoung women are also more likely to say that being a good parent is “one of the most important things.” \u00a0Up a whopping 17 percentage points since 1997. This desire has risen significantly for men, too; 47% of men now say that parenting is very important, compared to 39% in 1997.
\n\"\"<\/a>
\nSince 1997, then, men have revised their expectations for parenting up, while their interest in work has remained more or less steady. \u00a0Women have raised their expectations for both and, generally, report higher life expectations than men. \u00a0That is, men are less likely than women to be interested in either a family or a career.<\/p>\n

It will be interesting to see how public policy responds to these raised expectations, if at all. The U.S. is notoriously stingy when it comes to helping families balance these competing pressures, as this post on paid parental leave illustrates<\/a>. \u00a0The time bind, though, is tightening and something will have to give.<\/p>\nLisa Wade, PhD<\/a> is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of <\/em>American Hookup<\/a>, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender<\/a>; and a forthcoming introductory text: <\/em>Terrible Magnificent Sociology<\/a>.\u00a0You can follow her on Twitter<\/a> and Instagram<\/a>.<\/em><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The recent Atlantic article by Anne-Marie Slaughter revived an ongoing conversation about women’s efforts to balance work and family in their lives. \u00a0Unfortunately, new data from the Pew Research Center suggests that striking a happy balance is increasingly out of reach. \u00a0This is because the value women place on both parenting well and having a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[55,2102,2088,2100,253,272,76],"class_list":["post-49105","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-gender","tag-gender-history","tag-gender-marriagefamily","tag-gender-work","tag-history","tag-marriagefamily","tag-work"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49105","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49105"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49105\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58291,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49105\/revisions\/58291"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}