ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on two attitudes central to women's place in society: (1) the norm supporting the traditional gender-based division of labor in the family, in which women stay at home full time while men support the family financially; and (2) the perception that the extradomestic employment of mothers harms the well-being of their children and family life in general. The choice between staying home and working for pay outside the family defines women's ties to the economy, with implications for their financial independence, sources of life satisfaction, selfconcept, and role within the family. These choices are changing rapidly in Australia and most other industrial nations, with women's labor force participation rising sharply in recent decades. Whether married women choose to work outside the home has major implications not only for a woman herself but also for her family. A working wife increases family income, with all the advantages that brings, but working competes with domestic activities and may consequently harm the emotional well-being of children and other family members. In the gender role ideology dominant in the West during most of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the perception that the absence of mothers from the home for appreciable periods of the day would damage the well-being of their children (especially their young children) was a major reason for people to withhold moral support from the employment of married women.
