Homeless Men and Gender Role Conflict
Homelessness is a situation that takes a heavy toll on anyone, especially men with children or dependents. Traditional gender roles describe men as being the providers. Homeless men are often unemployed thus lack the means to provide the resources that their family needs. This can cause high levels of distress in men. Homeless men may also become the sole caregiver of their children during homelessness. This can lead to high stress levels in men because they are expected to take on the role of both provider and nurturer. The transition can be very overwhelming.
Read more about this topic: Role Conflict
Famous quotes containing the words homeless, men, gender, role and/or conflict:
“Once again, we’ve wasted time and money by dealing with the homeless backward. Too much energy has gone into deciding where we do not want them to be, and making sure that they would not be there.”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)
“Men especially need to communicate. To tell people years after the fact that they were the priority is the coward’s way. If men can muster the courage to fire an employee, tell off a boss, or assume financial risk, they can dig deep and say the three little words their wives and children need to hear.”
—Fred G. Gosman (20th century)
“Anthropologists have found that around the world whatever is considered “men’s work” is almost universally given higher status than “women’s work.” If in one culture it is men who build houses and women who make baskets, then that culture will see house-building as more important. In another culture, perhaps right next door, the reverse may be true, and basket- weaving will have higher social status than house-building.”
—Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen. Excerpted from, Gender Grace: Love, Work, and Parenting in a Changing World (1990)
“The role of the stepmother is the most difficult of all, because you can’t ever just be. You’re constantly being tested—by the children, the neighbors, your husband, the relatives, old friends who knew the children’s parents in their first marriage, and by yourself.”
—Anonymous Stepparent. Making It as a Stepparent, by Claire Berman, introduction (1980, repr. 1986)
“The white man regards the universe as a gigantic machine hurtling through time and space to its final destruction: individuals in it are but tiny organisms with private lives that lead to private deaths: personal power, success and fame are the absolute measures of values, the things to live for. This outlook on life divides the universe into a host of individual little entities which cannot help being in constant conflict thereby hastening the approach of the hour of their final destruction.”
—Policy statement, 1944, of the Youth League of the African National Congress. pt. 2, ch. 4, Fatima Meer, Higher than Hope (1988)