Working parent

A working parent is a father or a mother who engages in a work life, aside from their duties as a childcare provider. There are many structures within families including single, working mothers or single, working fathers. There are also married parents who are dual-earners, in which both parents provide income. Within these family structures, there is much concern about gender inequalities. Within the institution of gender, there are expected gender roles that society pins on both mothers and fathers that reflect in the home and at work.

Although women may be easier to employ than men are due to their salary demands, women also face a challenge of defending rights as mothers in a working environment. Men have the potential of earning high regards for being a working father. Hegemonic masculinity plays a role in determining a man’s bonus. If he is white, middle class and has a stable home life with a wife and children, he is viewed as the most appropriately masculine man available to earn a raise. As such, more fathers are also offered paid paternity leave.

The involvement of women in paid work varies and had varied by historical period, geographical region and social class. From the late 19th century to the 1970s, married women in some Western countries were restricted from working outside the home through marriage bars. For instance, in the Netherlands, the marriage bar was removed in 1957, and in Ireland it was removed in 1973. In some European countries, married women could not work without the consent of their husbands until a few decades ago, for example in France until 1965 and in Spain until 1975. After second wave of feminism made it possible for more women to be present in the work place, many mothers took advantage; according to the U.S. Department of Labor, the increase of mothers in the workforce, with children under the age of 18, has risen to 70.6% in 2011. Mothers with younger children are less likely to work than those with older children.

Although mothers have flourished in paid labor environments, they still face gender inequalities that affect their ability to maintain a healthy home-work life. The added pressures of working mothers rests on the stereotypical, gendered assumptions that women are the prime care takers of children, which is a fact that is often reflected in privileges and advantages in the work place between men and women. One disadvantage that the working mothers face is a wage gap, sometimes referred to as a "motherhood penalty". When women are hired, they are assumed to have more home life responsibilities that can interfere with their ability to do well at work. Relating to their male counterparts, if women want to provide more for their family, they are to take on the masculine work ethic. That is, be more aggressive, and put work before your family. An increase in work demands may alleviate the burden of economic decreases; however, this takes away the time needed to raise a family. With 66% of married women in a dual-income family, that percentage illustrates that, although both parents are economic providers for their family, the women take on both work and family responsibilities due to society’s gender roles. Research shows that, consistent with utility maximization theory, women are not merely opting out of the workforce, but rather are accurately assessing the potential opportunity and direct labor market costs of their exit decisions, and are making workforce exit decisions based on measurable costs and benefits.

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