A major survey of social attitudes reveals that enthusiasm for equality between men and women is on the slide in Britain.
In the 1990s, around 50 percent of women and 51 percent of men said they thought family life would not suffer if a woman went to work. Now the figures have fallen to 46 percent of women and 42 percent of men.
The decline is even more pronounced in the United States.
“It is conceivable that opinions are shifting as the shine of the ’super-mum’ syndrome wears off, and the idea of women juggling high-powered careers while also baking cookies and reading bedtime stories is increasingly seen to be unrealisable by ordinary mortals,” said the survey’s author, Professor Jacqueline Scott of Cambridge University.
Do you agree?
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6 comments so far
I agree totally that there is no such thing as super-mum. Either the profession will suffer or the family will, you just cant have both cakes and eat them both. The Jack of all trades is truely a master of noone
- Posted by Bloodless DzwairoWhy is a problem that women want to look after their children? Women have equality where it matters, and should stay at home to look after the children. If you choose to have children, you should choose to look after them!
- Posted by Sophie LakesThe idea of ’super-mum’ was underwritten by the thoroughly discredited idea that roles are culturally determined and nothing to do with the sex of individuals [let's also discredit use of the grammatical term 'gender' when we actually mean 'sex']. Women are designed by nature to bring up small children. Certainly those who are wealthy enough can buy a good nanny but, otherwise, young children are worse off if the mother pursues a full-time career. What is unquestionably sick about modern society is that it devalues the role of motherhood. A ‘career’ however grand is like writing on water. In a hundred years, it won’t matter a damn which ‘glittering prizes’ a woman acquired but it will matter enormously that she did the best possible job of raising her family
- Posted by John LambleIt was a period of time when, if the women were involved in their lobs to earn money at any working places,disturbances would have come rarely in the family.At then the women would have dedicated once more involving in the family works coming after the working place.The women would have entertained their duel rolls both professanally and domestically.With the speedy changing scinerio in the world, that concept of duell rolls as performed by the women have been mostly modified their attitude towards the family,by adopting sophisticated measures to motivate the family as well.Present the professional women are the mothers of well equipped chidren who are nt at all disturbing elements to their mothers.The present children are well aware of their mothers attitudes, because they know, “their mothers will never be available further as passionate mothers to be closer with their crying needs”.The present professional super-mums are far away to the childs’ reach.
- Posted by PRANAB HAZRAAren’t we making some big assumptions here? If it is true that parenting should not be juggled with a career (and that may be so), why is it the mother that has to give up her job rather than the father. House husbands can be just as competent as house wives, and any gender differences will not affect the ability of someone to look after kids. To back up my last comment I cite a recent Slate article discussing the common myths about the differences between the genders: http://www.slate.com/id/2194486/entry/21 94487/
- Posted by FoyglThe article starts out saying “A major survey of social attitudes reveals that enthusiasm for equality between men and women is on the slide in Britain.”. I take offence to this assumption. How does public opinion on family quality have any relation to equality?
Is writer is assuming that because more people believe a family is impacted by a mother in the working world, therefore people in general believe women are lesser human beings, and not entitled to equal rights?
- Posted by Lindsay