due today...... 4-5 pages ...... american history

1998-Morin and Rosenfeld, "The Politics of Fatigue" (Washington Post)

To-Do Date: Jun 14 at 10:04pm

NOTE: This source was omitted from the fifth edition of Brown, Going to the Source, but is in the fourth edition. If you're working with the fifth edition, please read this source, and use it in your term paper. See the bottom of the page for the citation you should use in your paper.

With More Equity, More Sweat; Poll Shows Sexes Agree on Pros and Cons of New Roles

Richard Morin and Megan Rosenfeld. The Washington Post; Washington, D.C., 22 Mar 1998: A01.

Men and women have declared a cease-fire in the war that raged between the sexes through much of the last half of this century. In its place, they face common new enemies -- the stress, lack of time and financial pressure of modern life.

A new national survey has found that after nearly a generation of sharing the workplace and renegotiating domestic duties, most men and women agree that increased gender equity has enriched both sexes. But both also believe that the strains of this relatively new world have made building successful marriages, raising children and leading satisfying lives ever more difficult....

Surprisingly, although men and women agreed they should have equal work opportunities, and men said they approved of women working outside the home, large majorities of both said it would be better if women could instead stay home and just take care of the house and children....

Most men in the polls said they were happy to share child care and domestic chores with wives who work outside the home. Yet household duties remain sharply divided along gender lines. Working mothers still do twice as much housework as their husbands, and more than half of all women questioned expressed at least some dissatisfaction with the amount of help their husbands provide around the house....

But rather than emphasizing their differences and blaming many of life's problems on each other, men and women share a sense of conflict and confusion about how to make it all work under today's pressures. To a large extent, the politics of resentment have become the politics of fatigue....

In important ways, the survey suggests that we have yet to find new patterns of living that recognize the real workloads of two-career couples with children, and some resentment, nostalgia and fatigue are reflected in the survey results....

Age, more than sex, shapes attitudes toward the changing roles of men and women, the survey suggests. Younger men and women were far more likely than their elders to say the change in gender roles has made their lives better....

"There's too much pressure on everyone, period, whether they're men or women," said Karen Mapp, a 42-year-old PhD candidate and researcher in Boston.

In response to these pressures, 4 in 10 of those surveyed said, it would be better to return to the gender roles of the 1950s, a dimly remembered world of television's Ozzie and Harriet and their blithe suburban existence.

"I definitely think it would be good to go back," said Rose Pierre-Louis, 40, a social worker in Brooklyn, N.Y., who was among those interviewed in the poll....But just as many Americans say they aren't eager to go back -- particularly young people, who do not bear the burden of their parents' nostalgia...."I think a lot of the problems we hear of now are because we have raised our standards," said Christopher M. Moeller, 22, a radio reporter in Des Moines. "We're more involved in each other's lives. . . . We value equality, we value everybody wanting to have self-esteem, to get everything they want, and I don't see where imposing a limit on more than half of our population accomplishes that."

Morin, Richard and Megan Rosenfeld. "With More Equity, More Sweat; Poll shows Sexes Agree on Pros and Cons of New Roles Series: REALITY CHECK: THE GENDER REVOLUTION Series Number: 1/5: [FINAL Edition]." The Washington Post, Mar 22, 1998.  https://cerritoscoll.idm.oclc.org/login?url=https://search-proquest-com.cerritoscoll.idm.oclc.org/docview/408347567?accountid=45477 (Links to an external site.) .