Warning!!!! This is just a paper I did for English class, posted because I feel like it. It is boring crap, and since I know there is a slight chance someone will actually read the shit I post, I figure I might as well give them a warning when I post really mundane crap. Ok, it might not be mundane crap to some... me, for instance, if it gets me a decent grade. My professor, of course, who I hope thinks I can keep an idea flowing from one paragraph to another without driving the reader bonkers enough to give me a passing grade. Oh yeah, my stepdaughter. I emailed her a copy to get her comments. She is after all a grad student with a 4.0 gpa. I of course had nothing to do with that, but I did manage to convince her mother to spend more than a fleeting moment with me. Do those two facts have anything in common? Probably not, but who gives a fuck, I'm not writing for english. Although I should be, there is the final paper that is due next week, which I really should be working on.

Ok, that's enough to convince the most persistent browser that this shit is not worth their time, so here is my paper....

Well, that didn't work. I'm trying to cut and paste, and somehow I got the editing comments in there.....


Old Standards, New Agenda
What makes a man? A boy cuts his finger and starts to cry. He is told, "Stop crying, be a man!" So what does this tell the boy? It tells him it is not ok to cry. It is not ok, that is, if he wants to be considered a man. At the same time he is instructed on how to view others, because the next time he sees another male, society has just provided him with the tools to assess the quality of that person with respect to emotional character.
I grew up during a time when a man?s self worth was measured by his job and ability to provide for his family. "Real" men had a home for the family, with respectable wives and children. For many men this would mean a lifetime of debt, but that was not the issue in American culture at the time. A man had responsibilities, and society dictated a man?s life accordingly. With a woman in the house to maintain the household and raise the kids, he was free to earn a wage that allowed him these provisions. Once these steps were taken, a man could pursue living up to other measures of what being a "man" was all about. Drinking beer with the game on, working on the car or the yard, and let?s not forget "bowling night".
What about when the family split up? It was not a question back then. It happened, but not to the "normal" family. The topic was almost taboo, and anyone that participated in such an adventure was ostracized by society. I grew up in a family of ten, patched together from a broken home and a widower. My stepfather made a decent living, but not enough to support ten children and a wife with anything other than basic needs. He, and by extension the family, was ostracized by society because the cost of living kept us on the edge of poverty, and by his family because his new wife and children were never accepted for reasons I never did learn. Still, he conformed and supported the large family in the same occupation throughout in spite of it all. This is what society dictated, it is how things were done when you were a man.
Society dictates things slightly different now. Until recently I have been a single parent living in a culture that tolerates single parent families more than they used to be tolerated. It is also a society that still defines the basic role of homemaker as belonging to females. It permeates American culture that only a woman can do an adequate job of keeping the household and raising the children, as long as there is a man around to take care of the male responsibilities. This is what society and my stepfather have taught me, but living as a single parent amid such convictions has shown me that these convictions do not correlate to reality, and I have learned a lot comparing my situation to others around me, as well as the situation I grew up in.
For instance, doing just an adequate job of raising a child as a single man is enough to earn admiration and respect from most people in society. As for a woman, doing an adequate job is expected, because that is a "woman?s place" in the eyes of society. I always had the impression that people thought I was making an extra sacrifice raising my son alone. It made no difference that the circumstances were beyond my control. Yet for a woman in the same situation the perception is different. There is no sacrifice because, again, this is her place, a woman is supposed to be taking care of the family. Raising a young person alone is a challenge. Daycare, homework, and making sure the home is acceptable are enough to exact a huge sacrifice from anyone. It is always assumed the man?s sacrifice is a large one, but for a woman, not so much.
So what does this mean for the man and the woman in such situations? When a child lives in a broken home and is left in the care of the father, it is also generally assumed the mother in such a situation is a deadbeat; she must be, for any woman in her right mind would never leave her child in the care of another person. So, the father is praised in society for making the sacrifices, while the mother is regarded in a negative light because she could not handle the sacrifices. On the other hand, a woman alone with a child is in reality making the same sacrifices, yet somehow is seen as being a burden on society. She is seen as a burden because it is assumed she is not self sufficient after the man leaves, taking the primary source of income with him. It is difficult to sway people?s opinions from this paradigm, in order to do so it must be blatantly obvious that a particular woman is capable of administering a family alone, and even then it is either considered an anomaly, or that she is encroaching on a man?s "territory."
So a man is treated much more fairly, because it is much harder for a single mother to be accepted in a society that makes her deal with these assumptions. For a woman to get beyond them takes extra effort. The implication in society is that any part the father played is inconsequential, and is viewed with indifference, because a child belongs with its mother. The mother is usually to blame for her predicament however, because she is seen as too dim to discern flaws in men. Because of these misconceptions there is a stigma that comes with being a single mother that a single father never has to deal with if he is even the least bit capable of raising a child on his own. If she is left with the children and the father is worthless, she is to blame for making the wrong choices. If the father takes care of his responsibilities, she is to blame for being unable to hold on to a good thing. For me being a man helped because I had no problem earning an income sufficient for a family. At work concessions were made for me because I had to endure other responsibilities, while women were generally perceived as trying to take advantage of their situation by using it to extract unwarranted concessions from work. In a way I fulfilled expectations, because it is accepted that a man will do what is necessary to accomplish what he sets out to do. I had the advantage of being viewed as a man taking care of my responsibility even though I needed to step out of my gendered role in order to do so, rather than being looked upon as a burden on society.
There is a new agenda in American culture. Men and women are taught from a very early age that the acceptable way in life is to find a mate and raise a family, with the man as the primary source of economic stability and the woman taking care of the home front. They are also taught that the qualifying factors in life are the intangibles; happiness, moral values, decent family. It is a system in which, as single parents, a man cannot fail and a woman cannot succeed if they stick to the old standard of their gendered roles, because the reality of the new agenda is far from the ideal. In reality, American culture has transformed itself into a place where wealth and status have become the qualifying standards in life, whereas having good personal integrity is a nice addition. In our gendered roles the man is expected to take on the responsibility of acquiring these, therefore is given more access to them. The woman is expected to ensure the integrity of the intangible standards. She has fewer opportunities for stepping into the role of the primary breadwinner if necessary, because it is just not her place. She is locked out of the new agenda by virtue of her gender. She is held to the old standards, but is judged by the new.