When you think of work what comes to mind? What do you think of when someone says "I'm off to work!"? When you think about family what are the first few things that pop into your head? We need to combine the image of work and family as one, once again.
Oftentimes, people think of the family as one type of work and as going to work a more important type of work. In the history of the world, people first worked on their own lands. In Moses it says, "Adam began to till the earth, and to have dominion over all the beasts of the field, and to eat his bread by the sweat of his brow, as I the Lord had commanded him. And Eve, also, his wife, did labor with him." This shows that Adam and Eve, husband and wife and family, worked together to till the earth in order to provide for themselves what they needed. Work and family went together.
Sometime during the Industrial age, things started to change. Fathers left the home and went to work somewhere else. They no longer worked side by side with their families in order to provide the necessities, but they worked outside the home away from their families for up to twelve hours a day. This accumulates to about 60 hours a week now away from their families.
This created the statement that family and work are two very different things. But these things should not be separated. When fathers went away from the home for work, it created a change in shape and dynamics in the family. The mothers had to then become the head of household and with their children pick up the extra duties that the father no longer did while he was at work. Then when children started being sent off to work, the family shape changed once again. The mothers had to do all the housework herself with no help or support from the fathers or children. Then women also started to work outside the home, too. In Marriage and Family: The Quest for Intimacy, it states: "Industrialization meant that some of the things women did in the home, such s making clothes, would increasingly be done in the factory or shop. Women did continue, of course, to cook and clean and nurture their families. But in the emerging industrial economy, paid labor became a primary source of income and the essence of the meaning of work. What women did in the home was no longer defined as work." So this caused women's work that needed to be done in the home as less important or not important enough to be called real work, so it become known as housework. Many referred to real work where you actually get paid for doing something. Apparently, housework was not hard enough labor to be considered real work. This caused a separation in roles and boundaries of the family.
As more and more people move away from working from the home and working outside (even though it is necessary for most fathers now), it creates a disconnection from the family and work. families need to continue to work on family boundaries and roles to create a unified and strong, working together, family like we used to be in history.
Work is what you do in a family, as a family, together.
Oftentimes, people think of the family as one type of work and as going to work a more important type of work. In the history of the world, people first worked on their own lands. In Moses it says, "Adam began to till the earth, and to have dominion over all the beasts of the field, and to eat his bread by the sweat of his brow, as I the Lord had commanded him. And Eve, also, his wife, did labor with him." This shows that Adam and Eve, husband and wife and family, worked together to till the earth in order to provide for themselves what they needed. Work and family went together.
Sometime during the Industrial age, things started to change. Fathers left the home and went to work somewhere else. They no longer worked side by side with their families in order to provide the necessities, but they worked outside the home away from their families for up to twelve hours a day. This accumulates to about 60 hours a week now away from their families.
This created the statement that family and work are two very different things. But these things should not be separated. When fathers went away from the home for work, it created a change in shape and dynamics in the family. The mothers had to then become the head of household and with their children pick up the extra duties that the father no longer did while he was at work. Then when children started being sent off to work, the family shape changed once again. The mothers had to do all the housework herself with no help or support from the fathers or children. Then women also started to work outside the home, too. In Marriage and Family: The Quest for Intimacy, it states: "Industrialization meant that some of the things women did in the home, such s making clothes, would increasingly be done in the factory or shop. Women did continue, of course, to cook and clean and nurture their families. But in the emerging industrial economy, paid labor became a primary source of income and the essence of the meaning of work. What women did in the home was no longer defined as work." So this caused women's work that needed to be done in the home as less important or not important enough to be called real work, so it become known as housework. Many referred to real work where you actually get paid for doing something. Apparently, housework was not hard enough labor to be considered real work. This caused a separation in roles and boundaries of the family.
As more and more people move away from working from the home and working outside (even though it is necessary for most fathers now), it creates a disconnection from the family and work. families need to continue to work on family boundaries and roles to create a unified and strong, working together, family like we used to be in history.
Work is what you do in a family, as a family, together.
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