Modern Husbands and Fathers: Role Juggling in the New Age
Author: Boomeryearbook.com
The
older generation of male baby boomers were hard working, responsible fathers and figures who drew respect from their families, especially their sons. As these sons lived in a modern environment, their values and expectations changed to embrace unorthodox, sometimes fragmented family structures that might include step children and second or even third wives.
Baby boomers representing the elderly part of our community enjoyed a relatively straightforward structure within the family unit. In a family where the mother and father have been together since their twenties, there is a level of financial security achieved in later life; whereas there might be financial hardship caused by multiple alimony payments and child support obligations for modern men with a series of broken relationships behind them.
Escalating costs make it imperative that men earn more in order to pay more. The problem is pandemic in that children are produced from one relationship, which breaks up: more children are produced within subsequent partnerships as the man might move on to link up with a childless woman who expresses a need to have a baby and so on…Men in general have become somewhat prolific when it comes to producing multiple families and the price is financial insecurity.
A career is all important to a man with heavy responsibilities both old and new. As men feel pressured to perform at work, their home life might suffer considerable neglect. Men often spend a great deal of time racing from one obligation to another at breakneck speed to satisfy needs in all areas of their lives. Eventually, stress can take hold and psychological articles clearly outline how the pressures of being professionally and personally successful can lead to feelings of failure; guilt at not achieving; depression and emotional illness. Baby boomers look on as interested spectators in such situations.
Psychological articles note that a man will often feel obliged to have the children of his multiple relationships exist in a friendly, parallel environment: their acceptance of their respective home situations helps their father to feel less guilty and less threatened by feelings of having ‘abandoned’ his children. In fact, children faced with younger half brothers and sisters quite often readily accept their new status but encounter conflicting loyalties as a result of their mother’s resentment of the step children, even going so far as to ‘hide’ their affections for their father’s other children from their mother.
About the Author:
Dr Karen Turner, PhD, is a clinical psychologist with an interest in the baby boomer generation as the most successful and resourceful of all generations. Boomeryearbook.com focuses on connecting the baby boomer generation and providing interaction for boomers everywhere. If you are a baby boomer with an interest in the mysteries of the human brain, Boomeryearbook.com is the social network for you.
Article Source: ArticlesBase.com – Modern Husbands and Fathers: Role Juggling in the New Age
