New Generation Tosses Out Old Gender Rules

May 5, 2009— -- As soon as their son Jackson was born, Eric and Amy Adams of Canton, Ga., realized that juggling family life and the corporate world was going to be a challenge.

Now they've added baby Cooper to their family. And Eric Adams, 32, worries both that he should be doing more to advance his career at a telecom company and more to take care of his family.

"It's a balancing act. It's very difficult," he said. "I still want to move up and I still want to move on to things that are more challenging, but I don't want that to invade on the time at home either."

Unlike past generations, which adhered to more traditional gender roles, casting fathers as breadwinners and mothers as caregivers, Eric and Amy seem to defy gender roles. Eric is both breadwinner and caregiver. Amy is both caregiver and breadwinner. And household chores get split down the middle.

"It never really crossed my mind that I would stay at home or that Eric would expect me to stay at home after we had Jackson," said 33-year-old Amy Adams, who works in public relations. "I went back to work and it felt like the right thing... Feeling fulfilled in that professional setting is very important to my happiness."

For the new generation of young Americans, known as "millenials," traditional gender roles have all but disappeared. Women are every bit as ambitious as men, and men are worried that their jobs are keeping them from their families.

"There certainly is a very dramatic shift," said Ellen Galinsky, president of the Families and Work Institute. "There is a coming together of the roles that I think was almost unthinkable in the past."

A new study conducted by the Families and Work Institute found that women have become providers as well as nurturers, and men have become nurturers as well as providers. They're also forging more equal partnerships on the home front.

Amy and Eric's 5-year-old son Jackson has grown up with a drastically different picture of gender roles than generations before him. He sees both parents making dinner, both parents doing the dishes and both parents getting him ready for bed each night. And in the morning, both parents go to work.

"Having two parents working outside the household was not something I grew up with," Amy Adams said.