The development of society

Sparked off by libellum's post, I thought I'd try to put down my thoughts on the development of society.

Now, generalising a lot and skipping the details, western society has historically been ordered around a family unit, which comprises of: a breadwinner, a homecarer and children. The role of homecarer has traditionally been the woman's. As feanelwa has been pointing out, women are now seen as capable breadwinners, but this leaves a dilemma: who is the homecarer?

My view is that there has been a steady erosion of the value and importance in being a homecarer. (My view may well be biased through my life experience - feel free to discuss *grin*.) So, although a lot of thought and effort has gone in to equal rights for women, I don't feel that anywhere near that amount of thought has gone into what the foundations of western society - the family unit - should look like now the position of breadwinner is arguably seen as more desirable than that of homecarer.

What are the implications for society? I think we've already seen a number of impacts as a result: increase in 'latch-key' kids, increase in the time children spend away from their parents, possibly even the increase in relationship breakdowns and single parent families can be attributed to this fundamental shift in attitudes.

Now, don't get me wrong - I am all for equal rights. But I do think that there is a tremendous impact on families due to this fundamental shift in attitudes - one that has not to date been sufficiently thought about or tackled.

Opinions? Do you see things the same way? If so, do you have any suggestions for fixing it? If you don't, how do you see things?

Geeky information

As you may have noticed, I have a little more time on my hands now that the project is out of the way.

In addition to my earlier post, I have gone through my journal updating my current events tag to contain other posts about society. In order to do this, I wanted to search my journal. I found a couple of sites that claimed to do this, but none were very satisfying. So I visited LJBook and downloaded my entire journal as a PDF - which is searchable.

If anyone is extremely bored or has a lot of time on their hands, do go and browse my current events tag :)

An outing of the three of us!

A hurried post: all three of us are heading out this evening. We're going for a meal first, but we plan to head off to The Restoration at 9pm. Hope to see some of you there! Feel free to call us if you've got our numbers...