e gender-role expectations of the mother. The results revealed a clear tendency on the part of the mothers of boys to count the activities as less serious and more normal than the mothers of girls did, i.e. boys could be allowed to behave more “negatively” than girls (Trost 239).Division of labor between the spousesAccording to traditional gender-roles, the mother is the spouse who takes care of, and has the responsibility for, the child or the children, in most respects. In one study the respondents fulfilling four criteria were asked which one of the two parents most often took care of the children in seven respects. The four criteria were: being a woman; being a mother to at least one child younger than 10 years; living together with a man who was gainfully employed; and being herself employed (either part-time or full-time). The result showed that 97 percent of the mothers claimed that the responsibility for the children’s clothes was mostly with the mother; that the mother in 80 percent of the cases had the responsibility for the children’s food; that the mother in 74 percent of the cases mostly stayed at home when the children were sick or went with the children to the physician or dentist; and that the mother in 53 percent of the cases took care of the children at night. The only two instances where the answer “mostly the mother” was less frequent were to the questions, “who consoles the children” and “who plays with the children.” To further emphasize the traditional gender-roles the mothers answered “mostly the father” only in less than 14 percent of the cases, while in the remaining cases the answer was “both parents equally often.”(Trost 241-244).ConclusionIt is undoubtedly clear that the roles of women in society and in the family have changed considerably. As one indicator of these changes, the rate of women in the work force was used...
