In the modern world family is a foundation of our society. Moreover, it is very important for individuals’ growth and future success. In addition, there is no denying the fact that most every new family starts with a marriage.
Actually, nowadays people differ greatly towards this issue. Many of them consider marriage as a very important and mandatory step for the couple. Others prefer to stay in the marriage-like arrangement due to the main tendency to individual independence in our society. Nevertheless, both of them face with different problems in their relationship due to the several everyday problems such as household issues or financial ones. In some cases these problems may lead to the divorce.
Therefore, in order to see this point clearly and to understand the most important problems of a married couple relationships let us look deeply into two stories about different families, their problems and the final results of these important and difficult issues.
The First Story
This story is about an interesting couple. John is thirty-five years old, and he is a programmer in a huge international corporation. In addition, he likes to collect old and fancy models of the variety of cars and airplanes. His wife’s name is Lucy. She is an ex-model and now the main Lucy’s job is housekeeping. Nevertheless, Lucy still is fond of expensive clothes, food, and luxury entertainment. In addition, she spends hours and a huge amount of money every month in beauty salons and dreams about huge vacation home near the ocean.
At first, they tried to talk to each other in a calm and peaceful manner and to explain personal point of view on this problem. For instance, Lucy claimed that she had a successful model career and she left it because of her husband. Therefore, from her point of view, he had no right to be angry on her. Moreover, he had to buy this vacation home in order to express the real gratitude to his lovely and beautiful wife.
On the other hand, John tried to explain to his wife that he appreciate her action, however, he also has his own desires and hobbies that take a lot of money. Therefore, if they want to keep their habits and hobbies on the same financial level, they will have to buy a smaller house and probably it will be not near the ocean.
However, this method did not bring the solution for this problem. Furthermore, the couple fought even more often than they did before. Therefore, they decided to try more serious solution and they went to the family therapist.
This step was really helpful for the couple. As a result, Lucy understood the core principles of his husband’s hard work and she also agreed that he deserves to spend the money on his hobbies due to the fact that every person needs to relax after a difficult and stressful working day. In addition, John remembered that his wife is like a tender and beautiful flower, and he cannot lock her in their house and oblige to perform different hard housekeeping job.
But to be frank, the main result of this therapy was the fact that both of them understood that they have to build their future together. Therefore, they had to hide their personal desires and think more about family’s needs.
As a result, after a short period of time they created the clear and useful finance system for their family and both of them became happy in this marriage.
Truth be told, such problems are very common to the many families in our society. In addition, there is no denying the fact that divorce is the worst solution for this problem due to its harmful consequences for the members of the family, and especially children (Anderson & Sabatelli, 2010).
Some people hold an opinion that couples have to solve these issues by themselves only. However, on my opinion, it is better to consult with somebody who knows how to solve the problem quickly and with positive and suitable result for the whole family and its members.
The Second Story
This story is quite different from the previous one. It is about a couple in marriage-like arrangement. Peter is a web-designer and he also works from home. He is calm and intelligent man. Nevertheless, he does not think a lot about household tasks due to his basic understanding of the family concept.
His girlfriend was a beautiful and smart girl. Her name is Olivia and she is an intern in the hospital. Therefore, she spent a lot of time outside their house and she had not time to do all the household tasks by herself only.
Thus, due to the fact that Olivia and Peter had very different working styles and families concepts in their minds, they faced with a lot of issues in this part of their relationship. For instance, Peter did not want to understand the fact that his girlfriend spent a lot of time on her hard work and she was often tired after it. In addition, he was sure that the man do not have to do the household tasks such as cooking or cleaning the house at all. On the other hand, Olivia thought that modern women have the same duties and rights about household tasks as men have. Therefore, she decided that her boyfriend has to be more supportive and to perform most of these duties by himself.
At first, this couple tried to find solution by themselves. However, it was not easy due to the different life positions and understanding the family structure and their duties in it. Therefore, they decided to talk to their friends who faced with the same issue in their early years of marriage. This couple told to Peter and Olivia that the core solution was very simple and useful. Thus, these people afforded to them to spread all the household tasks between both of them. Unfortunately, Peter and Olivia failed with this issue at the beginning.
Both of them could not recognize the fact that people in marriage are partners. They have to share all the good and bad moments and solve all the problems together. However, this couple consisted of two independent individuals that did not want to listen to each other. Therefore, recognizing the fact that this problem has no solution they decided to break up in order to be happy in future with someone else who will have the same point of view on the household tasks and their performing.
In fact, nowadays, many couples differ greatly towards this issue. However, truth be told, this problem is common for many of them. Naturally, in United States, many spouses have different working schedules now and they have to learn to perform household tasks in a new and revolution manner (Presser, 1994). Due to the fact that there are a lot of two-career families in our society, the core principles of the housekeeping as well as women and men responsibilities have to be changed according to the modern principles in the world.
Taking into account both of these stories and recognizing the fact that in the modern world marriage has even more issues that it had before I may reach the conclusion that our society has to put more attention to this problem.
Without a doubt, this issue is much-debated one in our society and it is hard to find one common solution for all couples. Nevertheless, there are several steps that we can do in order to create happier marriages. To my mind, people can explain to their friends and relatives that they can have both great marriage and a successful career. They only have to be more kind and respective to each other.
Moreover, this question must be viewed on the national and international levels by the biggest world organizations in order to bring new and suitable family types to the modern society. In addition, these institutions have to create a manual for the two-career families in order to help them in the early years of their marriage.
References
Anderson, S., & Sabatelli, R. (2010). Family Interaction: A Multigenerational Developmental Perspective.
Presser, H. (1994). Employment Schedules Among Dual-Earner Spouses and the Division of Household Labor by Gender. American Sociological Review, 59(3), 348. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/2095938
