In contemporary times, many aspects of working environments changed. Some of these changes involve: industrialization, globalization, and off-shoring, all of which result in loss of jobs within the United States. Therefore, many people were either laid off from their blue-collar production line jobs as well as higher statue jobs such as accounting and programming in recent times.
Social class is also an important factor determining work and pay status and thus family life. Most people consider themselves as middle-class however, only a considerably narrow range of families are actually classified as middle class families. In recent times rich seemed to become richer, middle class has been struggling and working class is barely surviving. The rich has a higher proportion of earnings and are least affected by the economic downturns. Besides the increase of top earning employees such as CEOs increase at an extremely steep rate whereas the average worker seems to be doing not as well when adjusted for inflation rates and compared to earlier time periods.
Economy affects family life in certain ways. Downturns in economy may force adults to accept positions that demand unusual work hours or arrangements or accept part time positions. It is estimated that 5 out of 10 new jobs within the next 5 years will be low paying jobs, and another 3 will be just a little higher. In addition to low paying or unusual work schedule jobs and part-time arrangements, unemployment rates are at an all time high at the recent years. Unfortunately, the statistics of these rates may be an underestimation; there are many discouraged workers as well as underemployed workers.
Poverty line is approximately 22 thousand dollars a year for a small family, many families are below the poverty line and qualify for government assistance. However earning even a dollar more disqualifies a family from receiving those benefits although they are not making significantly more than a family that earns just a little less. In addition, minimum wage and poverty line is applied to the whole country even though a family in MA has so much more living expenses than a family in AL for example. Women, elderly and children are more likely to be poor.
Homelessness is an extreme result of poverty. Many people lost their homes lately with the economic down turn. However most homelessness is not chronic but temporary, lasting only about 2 years. It also seems that families with children are at greater risk for homelessness.
Another topic covered in this chapter is working women and how they contribute both to the work force and their family. Women may choose to work for variety of reasons including having a good education and aspiration to advance in a career of simply because they need the earnings to support themselves and their families, which is especially true for women whose husbands hold low paying jobs, who are single parents or whose husbands are unemployed. However women face other challenges such as sexual discrimination at work, impossible glass ceilings and traditionally lower earnings than males with similar experiences and qualifications.
In addition to stay-at-home mothers we covered earlier, there are other variations in families; single career-two person families, stay-at-home fathers, two-income families, and two-career families. The latter ones may involve trailing spouses or commuter families. In addition, sometimes women seek for more flexible job arrangements in order to take care of small children. Flex-time and telecommuting arrangements or positions that allow children to be taken care by their parents at work are some of the options. Interestingly though US appears to be the only developed country that does not guarantee parenting benefits such as paid maternity of paternity leaves.
2) New aspects
I don't think there was anything novel in this chapter since anybody who reads newspapers and is able to grasp what is going on in the world should know about most of the issues discussed in this chapter. The only thing I didn't know in detail would be specific statistics dispersed throughout the chapter.
3) Questions
Both my boss and his wife are medical doctors. They have 4 sons and even though she is a board-certified endocrinologist, she does not work and is a stay-at-home mother. Do you think she is wasting all her medical and advanced education beyond medical school or is she doing the right thing since they are extremely secure financially because my boss earns very well by himself? If you were in that situation would you do the same?
Eser Y
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