Improve Your English: English in Everyday Life

The Role of W
ome
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family. Th
at was the way I think most families did it in 
that, in that time period. We, um . . .
WOMAN:
And then when your mom went back to work, 
[
she only 
]
worked part-time.
MAN:
She only, she only went back part-time, and she did 
that to just have the extra 
spending money
and, uh . . .
WOMAN:
And to feel like she had her own life and 
independence.
MAN:
Right, right, but she didn’t feel comfortable manag-
ing that 
full-time
. Um, nowadays, I really feel like there’s 
a two-income house. You need two incomes to support 
any household with children. Th
at’s sort of the way I feel 
it is. Uh, I’ve often said that if I were ever to have chil-
dren, that I would, uh, I would, at the very, very basic end 
of it, would not do anything less than provide them what 
my parents provided me.
4. CHANGING PERSPECTIVES
Boy, that’s an interesting subject. Um, well, I think there 
was a point in time where somebody said that staying 
home and taking care of your kids was demeaning to a 
woman, and a lot of them bought into that, and now I 
think it’s sort of going the other way. Some women are 
saying, “Well, I’ve been the-the route of, you know, being 
a corporate lawyer,” or whatever, and now they say more 
women are having ailments that were attributed to men 
more because they were out in the workforce and they 
were the high-powered executives. Now the women are, 
and they’re-they’re having to put up with these stresses 
that the men were putting up with. So now they say, 
“Well, you know, maybe staying home and taking care 

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