What Do You Think Of When You Hear The Word Motherhood?

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What do you think of when you hear the word motherhood? If you are like most people, you associate motherhood with a number of positive characteristics, such as warmth, selflessness, dutifulness, and tolerance. And though most women expect that motherhood will be happy and fulfilling, the reality is that motherhood had been accorded relatively low prestige in our society. When stacked up against money, power, and achievement, motherhood unfortunately doesn't fare too well, and mothers rarely receive the appreciation they warrant. When children don't succeed or develop problems, our society has had a tendency to attribute the lack of success or the development of problems to a single source — mothers. One of psychology's most important lessons is that behavior is multiply determined. So it is with children's development; when development goes awry, mothers are not the single cause of the problems even though our society stereotypes them in this way.
The reality of motherhood in the 1990s is that although fathers have increased their child-rearing responsibilities somewhat, the main responsibility for child-rearing ...
... still falls on the mother's shoulders. Mothers do far more family work than fathers do — two to three times more. A few "exceptional" men do as much family work as their wives; in one study the figure was 10 percent of the men. Not only do women do more family work than men, the family work most women do is unrelenting, repetitive, and routine, often involving cleaning, cooking, child care, shopping, laundry, and straightening up. The family work most men do is infrequent, irregular, and no routine, often involving household repairs, taking out the garbage, and yard work. Women report that they often have to do several tasks at once, which helps to explain why they find domestic work less relaxing and more stressful than men do.
Because family work is intertwined with love and embedded in family relations, it has complex and contradictory meanings. Most women feel that family tasks are mindless but essential. They usually enjoy tending to the needs of their loved ones and keeping the family going, even if they do not find the activities themselves enjoyable and fulfilling. Family work is both positive and negative for women. They are unsupervised and rarely criticized, they plan and control their own work, and they have only their own standards to meet. However, women's family work is often worrisome, tiresome, menial, repetitive, isolating, unfinished, inescapable, and often unappreciated. It is not surprising that more men than women report that they are satisfied with their marriage.
In sum, the role of the mother brings with it benefits as well as limitations. Although motherhood is not enough to fill most women's entire lives, for most mothers, it is one of the most meaningful experiences in their lives.
Father-mother cooperation and mutual respect helps the child to develop positive attitudes toward both males and females. It is much easier for working parents to cope with changing family circumstances and day-care issues when the father and mother equitably share child-rearing responsibilities. Mothers feel less stress and have more positive attitudes toward their husbands when they are supportive partners.