Why do people from privileged class backgrounds often misidentify their origins as working class? We address this question by drawing on 175 interviews with tho...
I think it is also interesting which side of the family (father or mother) you self-identify more with. Both in the sense of personal narrative as well as the larger societal scope of “patriarchy” (in the narrow sense). I always found it interesting that (at least compared to strongly patriarchal societies like India), western society seems to have a strong focus on the mother’s side of the family.
We lived across the country from one side, and there were some other factors, but if we speak of the general case…
I think this has a lot to do with how women have historically been expected to manage the social life of the family, but now there are more expectations about “you’re responsible for planning to see your side of the family” even though men perhaps don’t acquire those skills or prioritize that work.
Also I think it varies by culture whether a woman is expected to involve her mother-in-law vs. her own mother a lot when she herself has a child. Child-rearing structures a lot of the internal life of a family, and who gets pulled in to assist matters a lot. My mother always alluded approvingly to the Korean practice of a woman moving back in with her mom around the time of birth where the new grandmother would assume the household work that the new mom couldn’t do Because Birth. On the one hand, it seems ludicrous that the man can’t step up even temporarily for that stuff (and comes to be fed! by the wife’s mother!!), but makes more sense once you realize how much knowledge of how to deal with an infant has to be passed on informally to a new parent.
I think it is also interesting which side of the family (father or mother) you self-identify more with. Both in the sense of personal narrative as well as the larger societal scope of “patriarchy” (in the narrow sense). I always found it interesting that (at least compared to strongly patriarchal societies like India), western society seems to have a strong focus on the mother’s side of the family.
We lived across the country from one side, and there were some other factors, but if we speak of the general case…
I think this has a lot to do with how women have historically been expected to manage the social life of the family, but now there are more expectations about “you’re responsible for planning to see your side of the family” even though men perhaps don’t acquire those skills or prioritize that work.
Also I think it varies by culture whether a woman is expected to involve her mother-in-law vs. her own mother a lot when she herself has a child. Child-rearing structures a lot of the internal life of a family, and who gets pulled in to assist matters a lot. My mother always alluded approvingly to the Korean practice of a woman moving back in with her mom around the time of birth where the new grandmother would assume the household work that the new mom couldn’t do Because Birth. On the one hand, it seems ludicrous that the man can’t step up even temporarily for that stuff (and comes to be fed! by the wife’s mother!!), but makes more sense once you realize how much knowledge of how to deal with an infant has to be passed on informally to a new parent.