Sunday is. The nets will be filled with honors, flowers and speeches about sacrifice and dedication. Many celebrate unconditional love, but few stop to ask to what extent it is also shaped by poorly discussed social expectations. Among mothers who leave the one to dedicate themselves exclusively to the house, there are stories of realization. But there are also stories of regret. The difference between one and the other is often in the awareness of choice.
It helps to shed light on this topic. The authors investigate how social norms, or rather, how we have the perception of what others think, influence our attitudes about the work of mothers with young children.
The research was done with a national sample. Participants read two scenarios. In the first, a mother with a four -year -old child receives a good work offer and has access to a free and free quality day care. In the second, both mother and father are employed, but the day care center doesn’t work well, and one of them needs to reduce the workload. In each case, participants were invited to answer what they would recommend to their mother and what they thought other people like them would recommend.
Half of the sample received, before giving their own response, real data about what similar people had said in previous research. The other half did not have access to information. And there is the central point: most believe that others are more conservative than they really are. That is, even who would support the mother to return to work imagine that the surrounding community would not welcome it. This mismatch between perception and reality, the “perception gap”, directly affects the recommendations.
When they receive real data about what peers think, people change their minds. Discovering that others are less strict than imagined leads participants to more openly support their mother’s decision to work outside. Among men, this effect was even stronger: not only have they changed their opinion but also increased real donations to an NGO that defends.
What the study shows is that social norms are not just by belief, but also for fear of judgment. And this fear is often unfounded. This is not a question of disallowing those who choose a life more centered on home. The problem is when this choice is not made deliberately, but by inertia. When it looks like the. Because it tends to fall on those who gave up something without knowing that there were alternatives and also who in the future can end up being remembered as the reason for a interrupted life.
How many mothers tell their children, even with affection 😕 How many did this with full autonomy and how many only followed what was expected of them, not knowing that they could negotiate, divide or postpone decisions? create fertile ground for resentment. What begins as care can be charged. What should be love becomes emotional debt. So we need to talk about social norms and how the perception of the look of others shapes our choices. Correcting this perception, even with punctual and objective information, may be able to change attitudes.
On this Mother’s Day, rather than celebrating the dedication, it is worth asking. If she wanted to, if she could. It is not about defending a single way, but of ensuring that no mother needs to justify her trajectory as an inevitable sacrifice. True love, after all, only flourishes when it is born of freedom.
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