Question 1

I spoke to both a man and a woman who were forty years older than me and asked them how men and women were supposed to act when they were twenty. The woman said that, when she was my age, women were starting to work, have jobs and go to college more than in earlier generations. They were still expected to one day have a family and take care of their children but they were also allowed to have their own personal ambitions as well. However, it would’ve been considered inappropriate for her to let those ambitions interfere with taking care of her children. The man I spoke to said he was expected to have a family and accept that his wife might work too, but he was also expected to make more and provide for his family. It wasn’t appropriate for him to still be acting irresponsibly at that age or let his wife make more than him. A man and a woman twenty years older than me told me that, when they were twenty, men weren’t really expected to make all the money for their family and it wasn’t negative for him to have a wife who made as much or more money than him. Women were still expected to one day have a family and to take care of their children but men had a more active role in it. It was more acceptable for men to express their feelings than it had been generations before. I am twenty years old and it seems to me, based on what I’ve heard, that gender roles haven’t changed that much in the last twenty years. However, they seem to have changed a great deal from the way they were forty years ago.