One of the ironies concerning the use of traditional family gender roles and working outside the home is that it can provide unintended consequences. Twenty or thirty years down the road, the husband may wonder why he has stayed in one job so long he has become unhappy and his spouse can only gnash her teeth at missing all that has transpired in the world while she has been home raising the children.

There are men who would have gladly exchanged corporate relocations for the opportunity to spend more time with their children as they were growing up. They would have welcomed the chance to take care of their children throughout the day rather than only at night when they were exhausted from working and a long commute.

The sticking point has been that in many cases the traditional gender roles have been dictated by who brings home more money, the husband or the wife. In a society where women bring home approximately seventy-seven cents to a man’s dollar, the economic scale tips in favor of the male working or both spouses working to make ends meet.

Higher salaries are still connected mostly to employment in the sciences. If girls aren’t encouraged in the sciences in school or do not have families who ensure that their daughters as well as their sons can reach their scholastic potential, men will still be making more money than women even if salary equality is reached.

Another reason for traditional family gender roles to go out the window is the reality that women often are forced or choose to raise their children alone. It has historically been more prevalent than imaginable because of the amount of widows during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries; for example, due to either living in a time when so many medical advances had not been discovered or war combat was solely male territory. In addition, legions of women are abandoned by the fathers of their children.

It is simply not true that women are happier remaining at home to raise children than finding a way to balance career, home and marriage. The sometimes petty minutiae endured from extended family and friends that comprises the day for women who stay at home to raise children is well worth leaving behind. It can benefit the entire family for a wife and mother to exchange her apron for a suit.

Ultimately there is no higher social status reward for women holding themselves back in order to maintain the status quo. There have always been single women who have raised children who have become contributing adults. Pandering to societal expectations can have consequences. The pot of gold at the end of the rainbow is of no use to a dinosaur.