Women’s Family

When women first began to enter traditionally male domains, their numbers were so small that such inquiries could be elucidating. research paper writing services - buy customized research paper prepared from scratch by trusted writers! We learned, for example, that pioneering female managers were often firstborn or only children who identified more with their father's enterprise than with their mother's caretaking. Commonalities were sought and found, and psychology's wont for generalization again was satisfied. As their numbers increased, females pursuing formerly male occupations could no longer be catalogued according to certain family configurations. In addition, a psychological focus on sex role socialization and family demography alone does not suffice as an explanation for adult identity development and motivation. Factors of social context, including political and economic change, must be considered as shaping individual life direction. Moreover, a fuller understanding of human development requires psychologists temporarily to put aside their nomothetic approach for an idiographic one.
In this study women's family backgrounds are examined for insights about the formation of their identities and aspirations. Commonality is neither sought nor found. In fact, what we discover is a diversity of experience and messages in families. For some women, mothers were perceived as most instrumental; for others, fathers; and a few indicated that their families had no influence whatsoever on their career development. Early socialization is but one of several important influences in one's psychological development. Moreover, we have learned that development does not end at age twenty-one. Not only does it continue throughout adulthood, but it can be radically reframed in connection with a shifting social environment.
The families of the women here manifested messages that departed from traditional notions of the course of female development, even as they were living according to those notions themselves. We find, too, that people do not necessarily acknowledge the influence of social movements, even while they are being shaped by them. The women of this study demonstrate both the early influence of family and the later shaping of identity in relation to social change. These women, whose lives deviated from a traditionally female path, attended to the kind of sex role expectations that existed in their families. It is not difficult to Editing essay with the professionalism of trained project editors! Make your essay the best! Many focused on the roots of the independence that later served to distinguish them from other family members and female peers. Presumably, countless aspects of family life might have been topics for these women. Most salient to career, however, were parental expectations and familial perspectives on education, independence, and sex roles.