Today, the role of a parent carries greater responsibility than ever. Mothers and fathers have to work hard to ensure happy future for their children, since every aspect of life is becoming more expensive. However, their dedication to work comes with a serious disadvantage: parents cannot give children the attention and comfort they need. The necessity for both parents to be employed drastically affects the family values, since the responsibilities of the parents are narrowed down to one main thing – providing financial stability. Children can get all kinds of toys and gadgets; they have prettier rooms and opportunities to enroll in expensive colleges in future, but become cold and distant persons due to the lack of connection with their parents.
Women have the right to devote themselves to careers just as much as men do. All people have dreams and professional goals they want to achieve, so a woman cannot be expected to give up on her aspirations just because of her gender. In addition to the right to follow her dreams, a woman also feels a responsibility to cover a part of the family’s expenses. Over the past three decades, the attitude of people towards their careers has drastically changed. People have to work overtime in order to remain successful and competitive on the unforgiving labor market.
Although most parents have to work for the sake of financial stability, they still feel guilt due to the fact that they cannot devote enough time to their families. Most children today don’t grow up in caring and loving environments; they rarely spend time with both parents. The fact that men and women need to work does not have to affect the family values; it’s their attitude towards the jobs that causes the problems. The competitive working conditions and increased demands of the customers and supervisors cause daily stress that doesn’t go away when the working hours end. The parents bring that burden home and cannot find the energy to spend quality time with their families.
While it was completely natural for a woman to be a full-time mother a decade ago, today’s women don’t want to be identified with the role of motherhood. They want the society to recognize them by career titles, so they are being called doctors, managers, and supervisors. The fact that parents consciously allow themselves to be consumed by job titles has serious consequences over the lives of their children. The only way for them to create a healthy family environment is to learn how to detach themselves from the stress associated to the work as soon as they come home. Although mothers have to rely on nursery and childminders to take care of their children, they can still find enough time to witness the precious moments of family life and make them as memorable as possible.
Both mothers and fathers can make progress in their careers while taking care of their families at the same time. Parents with stressful jobs should learn how to detach themselves from the problems associated to work as soon as they leave the office. Modern families can work if parents stop seeing toys and gadgets as replacement of love.
