The Giving Tree with gender roles

               The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein is a children's book that was published in 1964 by Harper & Row. For those who have not read this book, the book tells a story about a boy who comes and visits his favorite tree that gives him whatever he wants from her leaves to even her branches. The story goes on as the boy grows older and starts to ask for more and more from her. At the end of the story, the tree has given all of what she can offer to the boy who is now an old man. She is nothing but a stump now and which can only offer a sitting place for this old man. This makes him happy as he doesn't need much and wishes just for a nice place to sit and rest. This makes the tree happy to give this last wish to the old man as he sits down on the stump.

                The Giving Tree socializes children in many different ways This blog will be focusing on the aspect family roles and also gender roles throughout this book. At first glance, this book seems like a harmless book to children. On the other hand, it inputs many different social views during this time into their brains. The "tree" in this book is given a gender of a women who is willing to give anything for this little boys happiness. This can be portrayed as a mother giving anything to her son for his happiness even if it breaks her. Shel Silverstein could of had the tree be genderless and made it up to the reader to make a gender for this tree or make it a magical tree. But during this time period, it was known for the women in the family to give everything up and stay home to be a housewife. This means to do anything to make the husband and kids happy. The Giving Tree shows this when the boy started to older and leave the tree alone until he needed something. It is portrayed as the husband leaving for work and leaving the wife home alone and when he returns to have dinner waiting for him to feast on.

               Another way this book socializes children on the way the author portrayed gender roles throughout the book. The way this is portrayed is that if the boy is happy then the girl in the relationship should be happy as well. This can be shown throughout the entire book as the boy is selfish and never asks what the tree wants but is always happy when she makes the boy happy even if it means giving him her whole trunk for a boat. This gives the little girl's the thought that her happiness is only given when she makes a boy's wishes to come true. On the other hand, this thought process gives the boys that his girlfriend or wife will do anything for their happiness and that it is okay to be selfish.

               After really looking through this children's book and reading in-depth into the meaning behind each word, this has changed my whole outlook on this book now. This has created a very sad story for me when I remembered it being so happy and looked reading about it when I was a child. I now see how back then it was acceptable for the women in the family to be a stay at home mom and to just please the men in the house as it was imbedded in their thoughts from young children by books like this one. Children books now would never have anything like this as in today's society.

Unemployment

     For this blog, I will be discussing my opinion and thoughts on the unemployment rates of parents in the following states, Michigan, Minnesota, and Maryland. The data tables I used to display the rates of unemployment were found on the Website, Kids Count Data Center.

     The unemployment rates not just through these three states but throughout the United States as a whole have always been a growing issue. A key concern with these rates are not the rates of the youth but the rates of the unemployed parents.  The question is what causes these unemployment rates to increase and what is the after math of the parents unemployment. The tables below show the rates of  unemployed parents in Michigan, Minnesota, and Maryland between the years 2008 and 2012.

Table 1: Michigan's Parent Unemployment Rate

Table 2: Minnesota's Parent Unemployment Rate

Table 3: Maryland's Parent Unemployment Rate

     As can be seen, between these three states, Michigan has the highest number if unemployed parents within the given time frame.  This could be the result of the crash of the big three automotive companies in which Michigan's economy is centered around. All three automotive companies, Ford, GM, FCA, declared bankruptcy and had to lay off thousands of people which increased these rates during this time. The unemployment in Michigan peaked in 2009 with 198,000 parents out of a job. This could be a single parent or it could be both parents. Another cause of this is just the huge economy crash that happed during this time as well. It can also be seen  that Minnesota and Maryland were affected by this economy crash from 2008 to 2010. With these three states both being affected by the economic crash occurring in 2008, one could assume that the rest of the United States also saw a large negative impact. Within this economy crash, many companies also failed. For example, Chrysler used to be its own company and was a huge competitor with Ford and GM until they went under and were bought out by Fiat. Now they are no longer named Chrysler, it is FCA or Fiat Chrysler Automobiles.  This merging of companies means that some people were probably laid off and new people were brought in from the company who bought the other out.

     With all this going on for the parents, what are the after math effects on being unemployed for their families or social life? With a parent or parents being laid off or unemployed, one can anticipate dramatic lifestyle changes for their families as they will not be able to do the things they were able to do before as they will have less of an income. Another obstacle this brings to the parents being able to find employment along side of  thousands of other unemployed parents competing for the same job. One question ripe for exploration, does this affect family affairs as well? With the stressful times of being unemployed it will be easy for the unemployed parents to take out their stress on their loved ones and or their friends.

   This is just some food for thought and how I feel about this subject as it is still a current growing issue.