“
And then we do a much greater disservice to girls, because we raise them to cater to the fragile egos of males. We teach girls to shrink themselves, to make themselves smaller. We say to girls: You can have ambition, but not too much. You should aim to be successful but not too successful, otherwise you will threaten the man. If you are the breadwinner in your relationship with a man, pretend that you are not, especially in public, otherwise you will emasculate him.
”
”
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (We Should All Be Feminists)
“
If women are breadwinners and men bring home the bacon, why do people complain about having no dough? I'm confused. Also hungry.
”
”
Stephen Colbert
“
To become a better you, remember to be grateful to people who have contributed to making you who you are today.
”
”
Israelmore Ayivor (Become a Better You)
“
There was another thing I heartily disbelieved in - work. Work, it seemed to me even at the threshold of life, is an activity reserved for the dullard. It is the very opposite of creation, which is play… The part of me which was given up to work, which enabled my wife and child to live in the manner which they unthinkingly demanded, this part of me which kept the wheel turning - a completely fatuous, ego-centric notion! - was the least part of me. I gave nothing to the world in fulfilling the function of breadwinner; the world exacted its tribute of me, that was all.
”
”
Henry Miller
“
She's trollin' for a breadwinner and uses a short skirt for bait.
”
”
Sharon Gillenwater (Jenna's Cowboy (The Callahans of Texas, #1))
“
it made her angry, and since she could do nothing with her anger, it made her sad.
”
”
Deborah Ellis (The Breadwinner (The Breadwinner, #1))
“
These are unusual times. They call for ordinary people to do unusual things, just to get by.
”
”
Deborah Ellis (The Breadwinner (The Breadwinner, #1))
“
They were talking more distantly than if they were strangers who had just met, for if they had been he would have been interested in her just because of that, and curious, but their common past was a wall of indifference between them. Kitty knew too well that she had done nothing to beget her father's affection, he had never counted in the house and had been taken for granted, the bread-winner who was a little despised because he could provide no more luxuriously for his family; but she had taken for granted that he loved her just because he was her father, and it was a shock to discover that his heart was empty of feeling for her. She had known that they were all bored by him, but it had never occurred to her that he was equally bored by them. He was as ever kind and subdued, but the sad perspicacity which she had learnt in suffering suggested to her that, though he probably never acknowledged it to himself and never would, in his heart he disliked her.
”
”
W. Somerset Maugham (The Painted Veil)
“
A small boy asks his Dad, "Daddy, what is politics?" Dad says, "Well son, let me try to explain it this way: I'm the breadwinner of the family, so let's call me Capitalism. Your mom, she's the administrator of the money, so we'll call her the Government. We're here to take care of your needs, so we'll call you the People. The nanny, we'll consider her the Working Class. And your baby brother, we'll call him the Future. Now, think about that and see if that makes sense." So the little boy goes off to bed thinking about what Dad has said. Later that night, he hears his baby brother crying, so he gets up to check on him. He finds that the baby has severely soiled his diaper. The little boy goes to his parents' room and finds his mother sound asleep. Not wanting to wake her, he goes to the nanny's room. Finding the door locked, he peeks in the keyhole and sees his father having sex with the nanny. He gives up and goes back to bed. The next morning, the little boy says to his father, "Dad, I think I understand the concept of politics now." The father says, "Good, son, tell me in your own words what you think politics is all about." The little boy replies, "Well, while Capitalism is screwing the Working Class, the Government is sound asleep, the People are being ignored and the Future is in Deep Shit." ♦◊♦◊♦◊♦
”
”
Various (101 Dirty Jokes - sexual and adult's jokes)
“
A lazy brain does no one any good.
”
”
Deborah Ellis (Parvana's Journey (The Breadwinner, #2))
“
A reporter once asked me why I think progressive men who earn significantly less than their breadwinning wives still won't quit their jobs to take care of their children. Why do they still hold on to their careers, even if taking care of the children would make more financial sense because the cost of childcare is higher than their net salary?
I think I know the answer to that now, and it sucks. Women are not expected to live a life for themselves. When women dedicate their lives to children, it is deemed a worthy and respectable choice. When women dedicate themselves to a passion outside of the family that doesn't involve worshiping their husbands or taking care of their kids, they're seen as selfish, cold, or unfit mothers. But when a man spends hours grueling over a craft, profession, or project, he's admired and seen as a genius. And when a man finds a woman who worships him, who dedicates her life to serving him, he's lucky. But when a man dedicates himself to taking care of his children it's seen as a last resort. That it must be because he ran out of other options. That it's plan Z. That it's an indicator of his inability to provide for his family. Basically, that he's a fucking loser. I think it's one of the most important falsehoods we need to shatter when talking about women's rights.
”
”
Ali Wong (Dear Girls: Intimate Tales, Untold Secrets, & Advice for Living Your Best Life)
“
For women to overcome this biological inequality, he adds, they would have to become breadwinners like men. And this wouldn’t be a good idea because it might damage young children and the happiness of households. Darwin is telling Kennard that women aren’t just intellectually inferior to men, but they’re better off not aspiring to a life beyond their homes.
”
”
Angela Saini (Inferior: How Science Got Women Wrong—and the New Research That's Rewriting the Story)
“
You know, of course, that the Tasmanians, who never committed adultery, are now extinct.
”
”
W. Somerset Maugham (The Bread-Winner)
“
The path you are on is one you chose for yourself
”
”
Deborah Ellis (My Name Is Parvana (The Breadwinner, #4))
“
Grownups shouldn’t turn their backs on children.
”
”
Deborah Ellis (Parvana's Journey (The Breadwinner, #2))
“
To Kill a Mockingbird,” she said slowly. “What’s a mockingbird?” Asif asked. Parvana didn’t know. “It’s like a...a chicken,” she said. “This book is about killing chickens.
”
”
Deborah Ellis (Parvana’s Journey (Breadwinner Series Book 2))
“
All girls [should read] THE BREADWINNER by Deborah Ellis." ~ Malala Yousafzai
”
”
Deborah Ellis (The Breadwinner (The Breadwinner, #1))
“
And still Wendy hugged Nana. 'That's right,' he shouted. 'Coddle her! Nobody coddles me. Oh dear no! I am only the breadwinner, why should I be coddled, why, why, why!
”
”
J.M. Barrie (Peter and Wendy)
“
We teach girls to shrink themselves, to make themselves smaller. We say to girls, ‘You can have ambition, but not too much. You should aim to be successful but not too successful, otherwise you will threaten the man. If you are the breadwinner in your relationship with a man, pretend that you are not, especially in
”
”
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (We Should All Be Feminists)
“
Most Americans believe that if you work hard and full-time, you should not be poor. But the truth is that many working families are, and many low-income breadwinners must hold down multiple jobs just to survive.
”
”
Jim Wallis (God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It)
“
Life is dangerous, but we’re all brave, aren’t we?
”
”
Deborah Ellis (My Name Is Parvana (The Breadwinner, #4))
“
Afghans love beautiful things, but we have seen so much ugliness, we sometimes forget how wonderful a thing like a flower is
”
”
Deborah Ellis (The Breadwinner (The Breadwinner, #1))
“
There is a much stronger case to be made that efforts to help blacks have had more pernicious and lasting effects on black attitudes and habits than either slavery or segregation. Social welfare programs that were initiated or greatly expanded during the 1960s resulted in the government effectively displacing black fathers as breadwinners, and made work less attractive. Even before Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty began in earnest, New York and other states had already been expanding their social welfare programs. And despite the best intentions, the results were not encouraging.
”
”
Jason L. Riley (Please Stop Helping Us: How Liberals Make It Harder for Blacks to Succeed)
“
We have to remember this,” Parvana said. “When things get better and we grow up, we have to remember that there was a day when we were kids when we stood in a graveyard and dug up bones to sell so that our families could eat.
”
”
Deborah Ellis (The Breadwinner (The Breadwinner, #1))
“
Men justify the women taking care of the kids and the house and holding down a job because, after all, men are the primary breadwinners in the family. But that’s because we fucking pay women less! Men claiming superiority over women because men make more money than they do is like claiming you’re stronger than a lion that you tranquilized and put in a cage. Sure, you’re in a better spot now—but how ’bout you unchain the beast and see what happens?
”
”
Trae Crowder (The Liberal Redneck Manifesto: Draggin' Dixie Outta the Dark)
“
By limiting their moral concerns to domestic and sexual behavior, many members of the middle class were able to ignore the harsh realities of life for the lower classes or even to blame working people’s problems on their not being sufficiently committed to domesticity and female purity. Yet the establishment of a male breadwinner/female homemaker family in the middle and upper classes often required large sections of the lower class to be unable to do so.
”
”
Stephanie Coontz (Marriage, a History: From Obedience to Intimacy)
“
For within the very structure of family life, in families that do or did embrace the male religions, are the almost invisibly accepted social customs and life patterns that reflect the one-time strict adherence to the biblical scriptures. Attitudes towards double-standard premarital virginity, double-standard marital fidelity, the sexual autonomy of women, illegitimacy, abortion, contraception, rape, childbirth, the importance of marriage and children to women, the responsibilities and role of women in marriage, women as sex objects, the sexual identification of passivity and aggressiveness, the roles of women and men in work or social situations, women who express their ideas, female leadership, the intellectual activities of women, the economic activities and needs of women and the automatic assumption of the male as breadwinner and protector have all become so deeply ingrained that feelings and values concerning these subjects are often regarded, by both women and men, as natural tendencies or even human instinct.
”
”
Merlin Stone (When God Was a Woman)
“
The people who hate us can’t see through the wall.,
”
”
Deborah Ellis (My Name Is Parvana (The Breadwinner, #4))
“
Grownups killing each other,
”
”
Deborah Ellis (Parvana’s Journey (Breadwinner Series Book 2))
“
There is so much more to marriage than who makes the money. Some of the hardest parts don't come with a paycheck.
”
”
Michelle M. Pillow
“
Now you have fulfilled your function as an unfortunately necessary father and breadwinner, you are not needed any longer and you must go.
”
”
August Strindberg (The Father)
“
To me, she was some butch forest goddess, earth mother, and breadwinner all wrapped in one,
”
”
Grace M. Cho (Tastes Like War: A Memoir)
“
It makes my heart ache to see people living such fine lives when I have to sit here like a widow in black, waiting to hear from my fine breadwinner
”
”
Sholom Aleichem (The Letters of Menakhem-Mendl and Sheyne-Sheyndl and Motl, the Cantor's Son)
“
I am almost sure that this giving for nothing is doing them more harm than good—I want them to be breadwinners, not alms takers.
Quote found in "From Meidelach to Matriarchs~ A Journal
”
”
Lizzie Black Kander
“
The cultural consensus that everyone should marry and form a male breadwinner family was like a steamroller that crushed every alternative view. By the end of the 1950s even people who had grown up in completely different family systems had come to believe that universal marriage at a young age into a male breadwinner family was the traditional and permanent form of marriage.
”
”
Stephanie Coontz (Marriage, a History: From Obedience to Intimacy)
“
The big problem is how hard it is to achieve equal relationships in a society whose work policies, school schedules, and social programs were constructed on the assumption that male breadwinner families would always be the norm. Tensions between men and women today stem less from different aspirations than from the difficulties they face translating their ideals into practice.
”
”
Stephanie Coontz (Marriage, a History: From Obedience to Intimacy)
“
Wasn’t I proud of all we accomplished–the prestigious home in the Hudson Valley, the apartment in Manhattan, the eight phone lines, the friends and the picnics and the parties, the weekends spent roaming the aisles of some box-shaped superstore of our choice, buying ever more appliances on credit? I had actively participated in every moment of the creation of this life–so why did I feel like none of it resembled me? Why did I feel so overwhelmed with duty, tired of being the primary breadwinner and the housekeeper, and the social coordinator and the dog walker and the wife and the soon-to-be mother, and — somewhere in my stolen moments–a writer…?
”
”
Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love)
“
I am angry. We should all be angry. Anger has a long history of bringing about positive change. But I am also hopeful, because I believe deeply in the ability of human beings to remake themselves for the better."
"We say to girls 'You can have ambition, but not too much. You should aim to be successful but not too successful, otherwise you will threaten the man. If you are the breadwinner in your relationship with a man, pretend you are not, especially in public, otherwise you will emasculate him.'"
"Because I am female, I am expected to aspire to marriage. I am expected to make my life's choices always keeping in mind that marriage is the most important. Marriage can be a good thing, a source of joy, love and mutual support. But why do we teach girls to aspire to marriage, yet we don't teach boys to do the same?"
"We are all social beings. We internalize ideas from our socialization.
”
”
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (We Should All Be Feminists)
“
Their true wealth is invisible to them because it comes in the form of what they’re missing: that constant hum of anxiety that sucks the energy from the rest of us. If their refrigerator craps out, they can fix it. If they fall down the stairs, their insurance will cover the hospital bill. If the breadwinner loses his job, he’ll have his pick of landing spots. When I daydream about having money, it’s not about jewelry and Jacuzzis and Jet Skis. I dream about having that unseen cushion, that margin of error I can just take for granted.
”
”
Jason Pargin (If This Book Exists, You're in the Wrong Universe (John Dies at the End #4))
“
Penelope embarked on a campaign to lobby Giles for her return ti work, who still insisted she remain at home sit was the natural order of things going back to time immemorial:
me hunter - you homemaker
me breadwinner - you bread-maker
me child maker - you child raiser
”
”
Bernardine Evaristo (Girl, Woman, Other)
“
We all know that drugs, alcohol and tobacco are Bad, but work, we are brought up to believe, is Good. As a result the world is full of families who are angry at being abandoned and breadwinners who are even more angry because their hours of labour are not sufficiently appreciated.
”
”
Stephen Fry (The Fry Chronicles)
“
We have to remember this,” Parvana said. “When things get better and we grow up, we have to remember that there was a day when we were kids when we stood in a graveyard and dug up bones to sell so that our families could eat."
"Will anyone believe us?"
"No. But we will know it happens
”
”
Deborah Ellis (The Breadwinner (The Breadwinner, #1))
“
But by far the worst thing we do to males—by making them feel they have to be hard—is that we leave them with very fragile egos. The harder a man feels compelled to be, the weaker his ego is. And then we do a much greater disservice to girls, because we raise them to cater to the fragile egos of males. We teach girls to shrink themselves, to make themselves smaller. We say to girls: You can have ambition, but not too much. You should aim to be successful but not too successful, otherwise you will threaten the man. If you are the breadwinner in your relationship with a man, pretend that you are not, especially in public, otherwise you will emasculate him. But what if we question the premise itself: Why should a woman’s success be a threat to a man? What if we decide to simply dispose of that word—and I don’t know if there is an English word I dislike more than this—emasculation.
”
”
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (We Should All Be Feminists)
“
We say to girls: You can have ambition, but not too much. You should aim to be successful but not too successful, otherwise you will threaten the man. If you are the breadwinner in your relationship with a man, pretend that you are not, especially in public, otherwise you will emasculate him. But
”
”
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (We Should All Be Feminists)
“
A man must think well before he marries. He must be a tender and considerate husband and realize that there is no other human being to whom he owes so much of love and regard and consideration as he does to the woman who with pain bears and with labor rears the children that are his. No words can paint the scorn and contempt which must be felt by all right-thinking men, not only for the brutal husband, but for the husband who fails to show full loyalty and consideration to his wife. Moreover, he must work, he must do his part in the world. On the other hand, the woman must realize that she has no more right to shirk the business of wifehood and motherhood than the man has to shirk his business as breadwinner for the household. Women should have free access to every field of labor which they care to enter, and when their work is as valuable as that of a man it should be paid as highly. Yet normally for the man and the woman whose welfare is more important than the welfare of any other human beings, the woman must remain the housemother, the homekeeper, and the man must remain the breadwinner, the provider for the wife who bears his children and for the children she brings into the world. No other work is as valuable or as exacting for either man or woman; it must always, in every healthy society, be for both man and woman the prime work, the most important work; normally all other work is of secondary importance, and must come as an addition to, not a substitute for, this primary work. The partnership should be one of equal rights, one of love, of self-respect, and unselfishness, above all a partnership for the performance of the most vitally important of all duties. The performance of duty, and not an indulgence in vapid ease and vapid pleasure, is all that makes life worth while.
”
”
Theodore Roosevelt (Theodore Roosevelt: An Autobiography)
“
Don’t we see that men’s rightful task is to go out to work and wear themselves out trying to accumulate wealth, as though they were our factors or stewards, so that we can remain at home like the lady of the house directing their work and enjoying the profit of their labors? That, if you like, is the reason why men are naturally stronger and more robust than us — they need to be, so they can put up with the hard labor they must endure in our service.
”
”
Moderata Fonte
“
she realized then that what she’d hitherto thought personal to her was, in fact, applicable to many women, masses of them, women whose husbands forced them to stay at home when they were more than willing to put their intellect to good use in the skilled workforce, women, such as herself, who were going bonkers with boredom and banality Penelope embarked on a campaign to lobby Giles for her return to work, who still insisted she remain at home as it was the natural order of things going back to time immemorial: me hunter – you homemaker me breadwinner – you bread-maker me child maker – you child raiser
”
”
Bernardine Evaristo (Girl, Woman, Other)
“
Here’s an interesting finding from our research: Women who do not believe traditional gender roles are moral imperatives feel more heard and seen in their marriages. In fact, women who act out the typical breadwinner-homemaker dynamic also feel more seen if they see it as a choice and not a God-given role.9
”
”
Sheila Wray Gregoire (The Great Sex Rescue: The Lies You've Been Taught and How to Recover What God Intended)
“
Whereas the Universal Breadwinner model penalizes women for not being like men, the Caregiver Parity model relegates them to an inferior “mommy track.” I conclude, accordingly, that feminists should develop a third model—“Universal Caregiver”—which would induce men to become more like women are now: people who combine employment with responsibilities for primary caregiving. Treating women’s current life patterns as the norm, this model would aim to overcome the separation of breadwinning and carework. Avoiding both the workerism of Universal Breadwinner and the domestic privatism of Caregiver Parity, it aims to provide gender justice and security for all.
”
”
Nancy Fraser (Fortunes of Feminism: From State-Managed Capitalism to Neoliberal Crisis)
“
The part of me that’s me is gone. I’m just part of this line of people. There’s no me left. I’m nothing.
”
”
Deborah Ellis (Parvana’s Journey (Breadwinner Series Book 2))
“
Grandmother was gone. The house was gone. Green Valley was gone.
”
”
Deborah Ellis (Parvana’s Journey (Breadwinner Series Book 2))
“
I don't want to be married anymore. In daylight hours, I refused that thought, but at night it would consume me. What a catastrophe. How could I be such a criminal jerk as to proceed this deep into a marriage, only to leave it? We'd only just bought this house a year ago. Hadn't I wanted this nice house? Hadn't I loved it? So why was I haunting its halls every night now, howling like Medea? Wasn't I proud of all we'd accumulated—the prestigious home in the Hudson Valley, the apartment in Manhattan, the eight phone lines, the friends and the picnics and the parties, the weekends spent roaming the aisles of some box-shaped superstore of our choice, buying ever some appliances on credit? I had actively participated in every moment of the creation of this life—so why did I feel like none of it resembled me? Why did I feel so overwhelmed with duty, tired of being the primary breadwinner and the housekeeper and the social coordinator and the dog-walker and the wife and the soon-to-be mother, and—somewhere in my stolen moments—a writer...? I don't want to be married anymore.
”
”
Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love)
“
Poor women’s labor was cheap because poor women were considered expendable and because society did not designate them as a family’s breadwinner. Unfortunately, many of them had to be. If a husband, father, or partner left or died, a working-class woman with dependents would find it almost impossible to survive. The structure of society ensured that a woman without a man was superfluous.
”
”
Hallie Rubenhold (The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper)
“
Like it or not, you need to know how to do this. Your future depends on it. You give up on this, you will give up on the next difficult thing, and you are too smart and too strong to start giving up.
”
”
Deborah Ellis (My Name Is Parvana (The Breadwinner, #4))
“
Africans in the Diaspora are parodying Western notions of gender relations that are based on the racist and sexist myth of man as the breadwinner (a central tenet of capitalism) and, by extension, head of the household. When this presumption fails to materialize, the authority that that positionality should have provided the man is contrived by assuming psychological and emotional control, which may result
in abuse and its discontents.
”
”
Michael Barnett (Rastafari in the New Millennium: A Rastafari Reader)
“
Specifically, I argue the following: (1) the male role has long been culturally defined as that of a provider, and based on the economic dependence of mothers on men; (2) this traditional role has been dismantled by the securing of economic independence by women; (3) culture and policy are stuck on an obsolete model of fatherhood, lagging way behind economic reality; and (4) this is resulting in a 'dad deficit,' with men increasingly unable to fulfill the traditional breadwinner role but yet to step up into a new one.
”
”
Richard Reeves (Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male Is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do About It)
“
We have to recognize that we’re nothing, the Pastor says. In the surface world, when they returned from the mine and showered and entered their homes, they were princes, kings, spoiled sons, well-fed fathers, Romeos. They believed their private worlds of home and family spun thanks to their labor, and that as workingmen and breadwinners they had every right to expect their world to revolve around their needs. Now the heart of the mountain has collapsed on top of them, and they are trapped by a block of stone, an object whose newness and perfection suggest, to some, a divine judgment.
”
”
Héctor Tobar (Deep Down Dark: The Untold Stories of 33 Men Buried in a Chilean Mine, and the Miracle That Set Them Free)
“
Before all else, men are expected to be good providers. Our parent's generation expects it of us, the family courts expect it of us, women on first dates often expect it, and in the event of an early death, our life insurance policies pre-suppose it. The simple mechanics of being a good provider excludes men from a number of other spaces, which, not coincidentally, are reserved for women. What more, as they aspire to switch traditional breadwinner roles with men in our evolving economy, even highly successful professional women collapse into the expectation that men are supposed to provide.
”
”
Mark Greene (Remaking Manhood: The Modern Masculinity Movement: Stories From the Front Lines of Change)
“
Women remained in an underprivileged position under social modernity. The ‘male breadwinner model’67 brought with it new inequalities. Since housewives were not employed, they were excluded from many insurance benefits, or minimally covered by these. The care and reproductive work that women performed in the household was neither paid nor integrated into the official order of social modernity. In other words, while social modernity attenuated the conflicts and risks induced by vertical inequalities (between classes), it reproduced new inequalities on the horizontal level—weighing especially on women and migrants.
”
”
Oliver Nachtwey (Germany's Hidden Crisis: Social Decline in the Heart of Europe)
“
According to the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, 60.9 percent of all Black families are headed by a single mother who is the breadwinner for the family. Another 20 percent of Black households rely on a married mother as the breadwinner. In every state in the United States, there are more single than married Black mothers. In every state in the United States there are more married white mothers than single ones. In twenty-four states, the cost of childcare exceeds the cost of rent, and in many states the cost of childcare exceeds the 10 percent income-affordability threshold established by federal agencies.
”
”
Brittney Cooper (Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower)
“
The notion that women belong at home while men went out to work emerged in the nineteenth century, from the beginning it was the key way that elitist distinguished themselves from the working class. A man's ability to support his family signaled his status. Having a stay-at-home mom became something the working class aspired to. In the second half of the twentieth century, the U.S. attained the breadwinner-housewife ideal for two brief generations. By the twenty-first century, a new generation had lost the ability to sustain the ideal they had seen their parents and grandparents achieve. Small wonder many felt bereft.
”
”
Joan C. Williams (White Working Class: Overcoming Class Cluelessness in America)
“
If you can kill it in the bedroom, chances are you can kill it in the kitchen, too—and studies have shown that men who help out more with the chores have more sex with their wives (really!). We know, gender roles run deep, which is why women in hetero relationships still end up doing the vast majority of the domestic work despite being the breadwinners in two-thirds of American homes, leaving them burned out, resentful, and, nope, not really in the mood. But it doesn’t have to be this way—and, in fact, we might want to borrow a page from our LGBTQ sisters and brothers (or those who identify as neither): research shows they split chores, decisions, and finances more evenly
”
”
Jess Bennett (Feminist Fight Club: An Office Survival Manual for a Sexist Workplace)
“
I know he accused Nick of making me dependent on him for everything, which is the pot calling up the kettle to have a long talk about being black. My mom loved Nick, but right or wrong, my parents had spent my life making me think that I couldn’t do anything without them. At twenty-one years old, I was still very much a child. I didn’t know how to write a check, but, somehow, I was paying for everything. I knew that I was making money, but I didn’t think of myself as the family breadwinner. I just thought my money was their money. Honestly, what I knew for sure was that it stopped my family from having as many fights, so I felt lucky that I could be the one to help keep the peace.
”
”
Jessica Simpson (Open Book)
“
Looks like it,’ she replied. ‘Are you just trying to show me you can manage on your own? This crazy idea is bound to fail.’ Now he was blustering. ‘You’re no businesswoman, Juliette – reading a few novels on vacation doesn’t qualify you to run a bookstore. And don’t expect me to bail you out when it all goes pear-shaped.’ She sensed the fear behind his words. He didn’t want her to succeed; her role had been to admire his achievements. And she did, genuinely. Kevin was hard-working and successful; he’d been the main bread-winner for years and given her a comfortable life, which she’d no doubt taken for granted. ‘I’ve signed an agreement to make sure our joint assets will be protected,’ she said. ‘But maybe we should think about getting a divorce, so we can both move on.’ He hung up without replying. Although the lease on the shop wasn’t due to start till the beginning of June, the landlord had given permission for Juliette to visit the premises with her
”
”
Daisy Wood (The Forgotten Bookshop in Paris)
“
The politics of time was clarified in my women's liberation group in the 1970's when one of us, a mother of small children, found herself single. Parenting and providing seemed irreconcilable. Within a generation it had become the norm. By 2010 single parents comprised 25 per cent of all families and 60 per cent had a paid job. The agenda this implies is obvious: not the trick of work-life balance that assigns responsibility to women but a political economy that has at its heart not a breadwinner who is an unencumbered, cared-for man but a mother.
Women's appeal to men to share parenting has, of course, been answered by millions of men. They attend the birth of their babies, they fall in love with them and then soon, too soon, before they have even got acquainted, they leave the babies and the mother's from morning till night and go back to their paid jobs. Nowhere have men reciprocated women's paid work and unpaid care by initiating mass movements for men's equal parental leave or working time that synchronizes with children and women; nowhere have men en masse shared the costs—in time and money—of childhood.
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Beatrix Campbell (End of Equality (Manifestos for the 21st Century))
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In 1965, when Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan argued that Black communities were caught in a tangle of pathology because our communities had a disproportionate number of female-led households, his conclusions had both affective and social dimensions. His 1965 report, “The Negro Family: The Case for National Action” offered social and political recommendations focused on ways to help Black men become breadwinners again, so they could assume their “rightful” place at the head of Black families. But the affective goal of his infamous Moynihan Report was to shame Black women for the very mundane magic involved in our making a way out of no way. That shame persists well into the twenty-first century, when more than 70 percent of Black households are female-led. Black women have proportionally higher rates of abortion than any other group. There is no shame in having an abortion. I consider the right to choose the conditions under which one becomes a parent to be one of the most important social values. But I believe that decades of discourse about poor Black women and unwed Black mothers being “welfare queens,” who unfairly take more from the system than they put in, has shamed many Black women into not bearing children that they otherwise might consider having. The idea that only middle-class, straight, married women deserve to start families is both racist and patriarchal.
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Brittney Cooper (Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower)
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The only traveler with real soul I've ever met was an office boy who worked in a company where I was at one time employed. This young lad collected brochures on different cities, countries and travel companies; he had maps, some torn out of newspapers, others begged from one place or another; he cut out pictures of landscapes, engravings of exotic costumes, paintings of boats and ships from various journals and magazines. He would visit travel agencies on behalf of some real or hypothetical company, possibly the actual one in which he worked, and ask for brochures on Italy or India, brochures giving details of sailings between Portugal and Australia.
He was not only the greatest traveler I've ever known (because he was truest), he was also one of the happiest people I have had the good fortune to meet. I'm sorry not to know what has become of him, though, to be honest, I'm not really sorry, I only feel that I should be. I'm not really sorry because today, ten or more years on from that brief period in which i knew him, he must be a grown man, stolidly, reliably fulfilling his duties, married perhaps, someone's breadwinner - in other words, one of the living dead. By now he may even have traveled in his body, he who knew so well how to travel in his soul.
A sudden memory assails me: he knew exactly which trains one had to catch to ho from Paris to Bucharest; which trains one took to cross England; and in his garbled pronunciation of the strange names hung the bright certainty of the greatness of his soul. Now he probably lives like a dead man, but perhaps one day, when he's old, he'll remember that to dream of Bordeaux is not only better, but truer, than actually to arrive in Bordeaux
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Fernando Pessoa
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If you're involved in a motorcycle accident, this can result in devastating injuries, permanent disability or perhaps put you on on-going dependency on healthcare care. In that case, it's prudent to make use of Los Angeles motorcycle accident attorneys to assist safeguard your legal rights if you are a victim of a motorcycle accident.
How a san diego car accident attorney Aids
An experienced attorney will help you, if you're an injured motorcycle rider or your family members in case of a fatal motorcycle accident. Hence, a motorcycle accident attorney assists you secure complete and commensurate compensation because of this of accident damages. In the event you go it alone, an insurance coverage company may possibly take benefit and that's why you'll need to have a legal ally by your side till the case is settled to your satisfaction.
If well represented after a motorcycle collision, you may get compensation for:
Present and future lost income: If just after motor cycle injury you cannot perform and earn as just before, you deserve compensation for lost income. This also applies for a loved ones that has a lost a bread-winner following a fatal motorcycle crash.
Existing and future healthcare costs, rehabilitation and therapy: these consist of any health-related fees incurred because of this of the accident.
Loss of capability to take pleasure in life, pain and mental anguish: a motorcycle crash can lessen your good quality of life if you cannot stroll, run, see, hear, drive, or ride any longer. That is why specialists in motor cycle injury law practice will help with correct evaluation of your predicament and exercise a commensurate compensation.
As a result, usually do not hesitate to speak to Los Angeles motorcycle accident attorneys in case you are involved in a motor cycle accident. The professionals will help you file a case within a timely fashion also as expedite evaluation and compensation. This could also work in your favor if all parties involved agree to an out-of-court settlement, in which case you incur fewer costs.
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Securing Legal Assist in a Motorcycle Accident
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What the restless young still lacked in the 1950s was the greatly magnified sense of possibility—of open-ended entitlement—that was to give them greater energy and hope in the 1960s. Instead, they encountered still strong cultural norms that prescribed traditional roles for "growing up": "girls" were to become wives and homemakers, "boys" were to enter the armed services and then become breadwinners. Few young men, Presley included, imagined that they should avoid the draft: half of young men coming of age between 1953 and 1960 ended up in uniform, most for two years or more.
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James T. Patterson (Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945-1974 (Oxford History of the United States Book 10))
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I didn’t create this world,” she said to herself. “I only have to live in it.
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Deborah Ellis (Parvana's Journey (The Breadwinner, #2))
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WHEN UNCLE STAN rose in the morning, he somehow managed to wake the entire household. No one complained, as he was the breadwinner in the family, and in any case he was cheaper and more reliable than an alarm clock.
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Jeffrey Archer (Only Time Will Tell (The Clifton Chronicles series Book 1))
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Parvana found it all very confusing.
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Deborah Ellis (The Breadwinner (The Breadwinner, #1))
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New Deal legislation undoubtedly saved thousands of lives and prevented destitution for millions. New labor laws led to a flourishing of unions and built a strong white middle class. The Social Security Act of 1935 established the principle of cash payments in cases of unemployment, old age, or loss of a family breadwinner, and it did so as a matter of right, not on the basis of individual moral character. But the New Deal also created racial, gender, and class divisions that continue to produce inequities in our society today. Roosevelt’s administration capitulated to white supremacy in ways that still bear bitter fruit. The Civilian Conservation Corps capped Black participation in federally supported work relief at 10 percent of available jobs, though African Americans experienced 80 percent unemployment in northern cities. The National Housing Act of 1934 redoubled the burden on Black neighborhoods by promoting residential segregation and encouraging mortgage redlining. The Wagner Act granted workers the right to organize, but allowed segregated trade unions. Most importantly, in response to threats that southern states would not support the Social Security Act, both agricultural and domestic workers were explicitly excluded from its employment protections. The “southern compromise” left the great majority of African American workers—and a not-insignificant number of poor white tenant farmers, sharecroppers, and domestics—with no minimum wage, unemployment protection, old-age insurance, or right to collective bargaining.
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Virginia Eubanks (Automating Inequality: How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor)
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About 41 percent of mothers are primary breadwinners and earn the majority of their family’s income. Another 23 percent of mothers are co-breadwinners, contributing at least a quarter of the family’s earnings.30 The number of women supporting families on their own is increasing quickly; between 1973 and 2006, the proportion of families headed by a single mother grew from one in ten to one in five.31 These numbers are dramatically higher in Hispanic and African-American families. Twenty-seven percent of Latino children and 51 percent of African-American children are being raised by a single mother.32 Our country lags considerably behind others in efforts to help parents take care of their children and stay in the workforce. Of all the industrialized nations in the world, the United States is the only one without a paid maternity leave policy.33 As Ellen Bravo, director of the Family Values @ Work consortium, observed, most “women are not thinking about ‘having it all,’ they’re worried about losing it all—their jobs, their children’s health, their families’ financial stability—because of the regular conflicts that arise between being a good employee and a responsible parent.”34 For many men, the fundamental assumption is that they can have both a successful professional life and a fulfilling personal life. For many women, the assumption is that trying to do both is difficult at best and impossible at worst. Women are surrounded by headlines and stories warning them that they cannot be committed to both their families and careers. They are told over and over again that they have to choose, because if they try to do too much, they’ll be harried and unhappy. Framing the issue as “work-life balance”—as if the two were diametrically opposed—practically ensures work will lose out. Who would ever choose work over life? The good news is that not only can women have both families and careers, they can thrive while doing so. In 2009, Sharon Meers and Joanna Strober published Getting to 50/50, a comprehensive review of governmental, social science, and original research that led them to conclude that children, parents, and marriages can all flourish when both parents have full careers. The data plainly reveal that sharing financial and child-care responsibilities leads to less guilty moms, more involved dads, and thriving children.35 Professor Rosalind Chait Barnett of Brandeis University did a comprehensive review of studies on work-life balance and found that women who participate in multiple roles actually have lower levels of anxiety and higher levels of mental well-being.36 Employed women reap rewards including greater financial security, more stable marriages, better health, and, in general, increased life satisfaction.37 It may not be as dramatic or funny to make a movie about a woman who loves both her job and her family, but that would be a better reflection of reality. We need more portrayals of women as competent professionals and happy mothers—or even happy professionals and competent mothers. The current negative images may make us laugh, but they also make women unnecessarily fearful by presenting life’s challenges as insurmountable. Our culture remains baffled: I don’t know how she does it. Fear is at the root of so many of the barriers that women face. Fear of not being liked. Fear of making the wrong choice. Fear of drawing negative attention. Fear of overreaching. Fear of being judged. Fear of failure. And the holy trinity of fear: the fear of being a bad mother/wife/daughter.
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Sheryl Sandberg (Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead)
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When pneumonia or typhoid strikes down a breadwinner or when a major surgical operation becomes necessary, poverty may soon knock on the door,” the New York Times opined.
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Brian Alexander (The Hospital: Life, Death, and Dollars in a Small American Town)
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We do a great disservice to boys in how we raise them. We stifle the humanity of boys. We define masculinity in a very narrow way. Masculinity is a hard, small cage, and we put boys inside this cage.
We teach boys to be afraid of fear, of weakness, of vulnerability. We teach them to mask their true selves, because they have to be, in Nigerian-speak, a hard man.
In secondary school, a boy and a girl go out, both of them teenagers with meagre pocket money. Yet the boy is expected to pay the bills, always, to prove his masculinity. (And we wonder why boys are more likely to steal money from their parents.)
What if both boys and girls were raised not to link masculinity and money? What if their attitude was not ‘the boy has to pay’, but rather, ‘whoever has more should pay’? Of course, because of their historical advantage, it is mostly men who will have more today. But if we start raising children differently, then in fifty years, in a hundred years, boys will no longer have the pressure of proving their masculinity by material means.
But by far the worst thing we do to males – by making them feel they have to be hard – is that we leave them with very fragile egos. The harder a man feels compelled to be, the weaker his ego is.
And then we do a much greater disservice to girls, because we raise them to cater to the fragile egos of males.
We teach girls to shrink themselves, to make themselves smaller.
We say to girls, ‘You can have ambition, but not too much. You should aim to be successful but not too successful, otherwise you will threaten the man. If you are the breadwinner in your relationship with a man, pretend that you are not, especially in public, otherwise you will emasculate him.
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (We Should All Be Feminists)
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I have always felt I had to try to prove to myself what I can do. It was also exhilarating riding on the tide of the women’s movement because it opened up so many possibilities for us. I remember feeling quite sorry for the guys because we women had a larger menu of choices: we could be full-time mothers and housewives, or a full-time career women, or a combination of both. The men’s choices were far more restricted and, of course, pressure on them to succeed was also greater. Whereas the pressure on women was partly self-generated, for men, it was the social expectations to be the main breadwinner.
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Geh Min
“
Sheryl said that women were built to be nurturers, not breadwinners, so in order for us women to take care of the family and be on top of our career, we have to be very strong.
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Siow Lee Chin
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Historically, on average international wars have lasted only six months. In contrast, the average civil war has been much longer, with estimates ranging from seven to fifteen years. If a family are going to be refugees for over a decade, their priority is not emergency food and shelter. It is to re-establish the threads of normal famiy life, anchored materially by a capacity of whoever is the breadwinner to earn a living. The camps run by UNHCR met the basic material needs of refugees, but they provided few opportunities to earn a living. Consequently, they left families bereft of autonomy.
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Alexander Betts (Refuge: Transforming a Broken Refugee System)
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Black Bottom is a defiant, inventive, modern swagger that has everything to do with being efficient, exact, ambitious, proud—and Black. The efficient and exact part comes from the assembly lines. The inventive part comes from the breadwinners, too. We didn’t get credit for all that we invented in the factories—from processes and tools to paint colors—but we invented in the factories. In Black Bottom, we celebrated what we invented as loud as we celebrated what we built. And we celebrated what we finna do loudest.
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Alice Randall (Black Bottom Saints)
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For example, women’s participation in the labour market has generally risen—but above all as cleaners, cashiers and nursing staff. Competition in the labour market has increased overall in the wake of increased gender and ethnic rights. The traditional sexual division of labour in the home, based on the model of the male breadwinner, has declined in favour of equal participation in the labour market (the dual-income model). However, and we shall return to this, in lower segments of the labour market both partners now earn less, so that total household income has fallen.
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Oliver Nachtwey (Germany's Hidden Crisis: Social Decline in the Heart of Europe)
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Sun is the real star and the breadwinner of the solar family. It is the sun that provides the warmth, light, and everything necessary for sustenance and the progress of life of Earth.
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Ajaz Ahmad Khawaja
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Single mothering is challenging the concept of the `male breadwinner and a provider’ model.
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Shalu Nigam (Single Mothers, Patriarchy and Citizenship in India: Rethinking Lone Motherhood through the Lens of Socio-legal and Policy Framework)
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When the religious tenets preach about the dependence of women on men as fathers, husbands, and sons for protection, single mothers are shattering this orthodox notion by being the wage-earners, breadwinners, and providers for their families, besides also taking up the caring and nurturing role.
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Shalu Nigam (Single Mothers, Patriarchy and Citizenship in India: Rethinking Lone Motherhood through the Lens of Socio-legal and Policy Framework)
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When Shi Qingluo, an agriculture expert, opened her eyes again after dying, she realised she had transmigrated as a farm girl in an ancient era. Her story started from when she was sold by her family, and was currently being forcibly taken away. She subdued evil with greater evil, and violence with greater violence, forcing the troublemakers to cry in defeat and ended up giving in to her.
Then, she married off to another village. She became the wife of Scholar Xiao Hanzheng who was in a coma, and had just been abandoned by his extended family. Qingluo looked at Scholar Xiao’s frail mother, delicate younger sister, and obedient younger brother, and rubbed her chin out of satisfaction. From now on, they were all hers to protect.
Since then, she took on the crucial role as the family’s breadwinner, led the family towards prosperity and accidentally became the nation’s wealthiest individual.
Xiao Hanzheng woke up to find that his brother, who supposedly died from drowning, was alive and kicking. His sister was still at home. And their mother, who was supposedly eaten by wild beasts when she entered the forest in hopes of earning money to buy medicine, was still alive. More importantly, he even gained a capable wife after waking up. All of his immediate family members loved and relied on her. He looked at her and asked, “If you’re the breadwinner, what should I do?” His wife said, “You just have to look pretty, and earn a position in the government so that you can support me.” Xiao Hanzheng’s frozen heart suddenly came alive. “Sure!”
Since then, he has worked hard in his career. He went from being an elementary scholar to a distinguished minister with great influence. He knew that from the moment he woke up, his wife was his saviour.
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Blue White Plaids (After Breaking Off My Marriage, I Became A Powerful Minister's Treasure)
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Aside from church and rare family events, we were always home. I can recall our family going out to dinner once throughout my entire childhood — if you don’t count vacations. For starters, there was the issue of cost. My father was the sole breadwinner. Taking six kids and two adults to even a modestly priced restaurant cost well over $100 in today’s dollars — money my parents simply could not spare. Then there was logistics. In the early 1970s, my father drove a Plymouth Fury III — a Starship-Enterprise-looking thing with faux wood paneling on its sides.
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Tom Purcell (Misadventures of a 1970s Childhood: A Humorous Memoir)
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Relying on the breadwinner ideal of manhood, those in favor of pension reform began to define disability not by a man’s missing limbs or by any other physical incapacity (as the Civil War pension system had done), but rather by his will (or lack thereof) to work. Seen this way, economic dependency—often linked overtly and metaphorically to womanliness—came to be understood as the real handicap that thwarted the full physical recovery of the veteran and the fiscal strength of the nation.
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Beth Linker (War's Waste: Rehabilitation in World War I America)
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My teen-beat afternoon clarified everything for me. I had to get back to where I was who I was, a son of New Jersey, gunslinger, bar band king, small-town local hero, big fish in a little pond and breadwinner. Right
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Bruce Springsteen (Born to Run (172 POCHE))
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Consequently, the 20th century witnessed the start of significant grassroots movements to protect workers and limit work hours. Still, the term “work-life balance” wasn’t coined until the mid-1980s when more than half of all married women joined the workforce. To paraphrase Ralph E. Gomory’s preface in the 2005 book Being Together, Working Apart: Dual-Career Families and the Work-Life Balance, we went from a family unit with a breadwinner and a homemaker to one with two breadwinners and no homemaker. Anyone with a pulse knows who got stuck with the extra work in the beginning. However, by the ’90s “work-life balance” had quickly become a common watchword for men too. A LexisNexis survey of the top 100 newspapers and magazines around the world shows a dramatic
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Gary Keller (The ONE Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth About Extraordinary Results)
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But by far the worst thing we do to males—by making them feel they have to be hard—is that we leave them with very fragile egos. The harder a man feels compelled to be, the weaker his ego is. And then we do a much greater disservice to girls, because we raise them to cater to the fragile egos of males. We teach girls to shrink themselves, to make themselves smaller. We say to girls: You can have ambition, but not too much. You should aim to be successful but not too successful, otherwise you will threaten the man. If you are the breadwinner in your relationship with a man, pretend that you are not, especially in public, otherwise you will emasculate him. But
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (We Should All Be Feminists)
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You told me some of these things but I guess I just didn’t get it. I didn’t realize they were so real to you.” Hank sighed. “And I admit I protected you from things, too. I mean, you do so much. You take care of this family. I want to be the man you married, the guy I was before I deployed, but I just can’t do it anymore.” The tears started again, and Alex was actually glad to see them. It meant the information was actually having an impact on her. “And men, in general, find it hard to admit to issues like this,” Alex told her softly. “They’ve been raised to be the breadwinners and the protectors. But it takes an especially strong man to admit that he’s having issues. Your husband did the right thing by reaching out to Duncan today.” Alex
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J.M. Madden (Embattled Ever After (Lost and Found #5))
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Or as Esping-Andersen (1996a: 3) put it eloquently already more than 15 years ago: The advanced Western nations’ welfare states were built to cater to an economy dominated by industrial mass production. In the era of the “Keynesian consensus” there was no perceived trade-off between social security and economic growth, between equality and efficiency. This consensus has disappeared because the underlying assumptions no longer obtain. Non-inflationary demand-led growth within one country appears impossible; full employment today must be attained via services, given industrial decline; the conventional male breadwinner family is eroding, fertility is falling, and the life course is increasingly non-standard.
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Kees van Kersbergen (Comparative Welfare State Politics)
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home, what retirement might be like, and whether you’ll both work or whether one will be a breadwinner and the other a homemaker. It is important for you both to be honest with each other. While it might have been nice to have this conversation before you were married, have it now before things get worse.
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Devin D. Thorpe (925 Ideas to Help You Save Money, Get Out of Debt and Retire a Millionaire So You Can Leave Your Mark on the World!)
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There is often much good in the type of boss, especially common in big cities, who fulfills towards the people of his district in rough and ready fashion the position of friend and protector. He uses his influence to get jobs for young men who need them. He goes into court for a wild young fellow who has gotten into trouble. He helps out with cash or credit the widow who is in straits, or the breadwinner who is crippled or for some other cause temporarily out of work. He organizes clambakes and chowder parties and picnics, and is consulted by the local labor leaders when a cut in wages is threatened. For some of his constituents he does proper favors, and for others wholly improper favors; but he preserves human relations with all. He may be a very bad and very corrupt man, a man whose action in blackmailing and protecting vice is of far-reaching damage to his constituents. But these constituents are for the most part men and women who struggle hard against poverty and with whom the problem of living is very real and very close. They would prefer clean and honest government, if this clean and honest government is accompanied by human sympathy, human understanding. But an appeal made to them for virtue in the abstract, an appeal made by good men who do not really understand their needs, will often pass quite unheeded, if on the other side stands the boss, the friend and benefactor, who may have been guilty of much wrong-doing in things that they are hardly aware concern them, but who appeals to them, not only for the sake of favors to come, but in the name of gratitude and loyalty, and above all of understanding and fellow-feeling.
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Theodore Roosevelt (Theodore Roosevelt: An Autobiography)
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It had been quietly understood that I was the primary breadwinner. No one had ever penalized me for not being around. I had been the fun-time parent, coasting in for story time after their bath.
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Rob Armstrong (Daddy 3.0: A Comedy of Errors)
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Your father... doesn't work late for you to pinch his dinner.
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Susan Cooper (Silver on the Tree (The Dark is Rising, #5))
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He must be a grown man, stolid, reliably fulfilling his duties, married perhaps, someone's breadwinner - in other words, one of the living dead.
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Fernando Pessoa
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Man will not live on bread alone but will proceed by a word of God." You cannot eat bread without life and your life is in the hands of God whatever your hands and head are there to achieve. Your life depends on the will and might of God. Bread alone cannot stop you from dying. Bread can do so much.
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David Ssembajjo
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What is marriage anymore, anyway? How is the institution structured? What assumptions do we bring to it? Is it an irreducible economic unit, in which production and labor remain distributed along traditional lines (the model of husband as protector and breadwinner and wife as “angel in the house,” domestic goddess, and nurturer)? Or is it a spiritual, intellectual, artistic, and social partnership—a lifelong collaboration, a project, a constant becoming?
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Carina Chocano (You Play the Girl: On Playboy Bunnies, Stepford Wives, Train Wrecks, & Other Mixed Messages)
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What is marriage anymore, anyway? How is the institution structured? What assumptions do we bring to it? Is it an irreducible economic unit, in which production and labor remain distributed along traditional lines (the model of husband as protector and breadwinner and wife as 'angel in the house,' domestic goddess, and nurturer)? Or is it a spiritual, intellectual, artistic, and social partnership - a lifelong collaboration, a project, a constant becoming? Is it what patriarchal society said it is, or what Hollywood pretended it was? What does it mean to be a modern woman? Where does a woman's 'modern-ness' reside? In what she looks like, how she acts, what she does, wears, or says? Or is it somewhere else entirely outside of her, in a larger system that allows her to be a whole, free person? that represents her as such? that allows her to represent herself? that recognizes her individuality and subjectivity? Is it about things like voting and birth control, the issues that Katharine Hepburn's mother devoted her life to fighting for? Is it about wearing pants, not aiming to please, sleeping around, and not getting married, like Katharine Hepburn did? Is it about smoking Virginia Slims? Is it not perhaps all and none of these things but the fact that we keep having to make a case for our personhood? Is it not the story that needs to be reframed? the heroine who needs to be allowed to create herself, from scratch?
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Carina Chocano (You Play the Girl: On Playboy Bunnies, Stepford Wives, Train Wrecks, & Other Mixed Messages)