Generational change in paid and unpaid work by Katherine Marshall
The content in the article did not surprise me. This is because significant life events of young adults aged 20 to 29 described in the article are similar to what happens in the contemporary society. This includes how students, men and women participate in the paid and unpaid works. The trends towards divisions of work have been changing from one generation to another. This resulted from women increasing their hours of paid work while men increasing their involvements in the household work.
My experiences are similar to those expressed in the article because I am a generation Y individual. Therefore, I have come across young adults of age 20 to 29 participating in both the paid and unpaid activities and spending longer time in schools compared to our parents. However, more people from generation Y stay with their parents at home compared to the baby boomers. Furthermore, the immigrant population is also increasing, religious affiliation lessening and the roles played by both men and women changing.
The article measure up to my future aspiration because I want to be a responsible parent capable of balancing both the paid and unpaid work. This may entail employing a house help to assist in conducting the unpaid work. This will allow me to have quality time for my family and balance family and work. Arrival of children will affect my work and relationship life because it will increase my responsibilities. As a result, a house help will assist me with the unpaid work while attending to paid work. As well, it will affect my relationship with friends by reducing the total time spend together so that I handle my increased responsibilities.
Since the article discusses changes occurring among generations, my expectation towards employment and family experience are different from our fathers. This is because I would expect married women to do more unpaid work, as men performs the paid work contrary to our fathers who did more housework compared to women. On the contrary, I will expect the work pattern between men and women to change by men spending more time in paid work compared to women. This is because most of the women’ time will be to attend to the unpaid household work.
My career choice is to be a businessperson, and my family contributed towards pursuing this career. This is because the career is extremely flexible and can give me enough income. It implies that I will spend quality time with my family and meet their basic needs at the same time.
