Response to Kessler-Harris essay

In her essay, "Stratifying by Sex: Understanding the History of Working Women," Alia Kessler-Harris provides the reader with a very thorough and developed presentation of the integration of women into the labor market; she chronicles the departure of women from the ideological "crucial sphere" of domesticity and, more literally, from the very home itself (102). Kessler-Harris cites many reasons for the increased female presence in the workforce outside the home, such as the ideological changes in the "domestic code" and the presumed "proper roles" for women and also the economic changes due to phenomena like the Great Depression, World War II and general developments in technology. However, Kessler-Harris makes no mention of what would seem to be the opposing shift: the integration of men into the household. Granted, it seems that such a change would have happened on a much smaller scale. However, it still seems worth mentioning, even if only to dedicate a couple of sentences to the subject. Kessler-Harris writes about how widowed women straddle the line between running the household and supporting the family but does not even mention the opposing scenario, about how widowed men behave in a similar situation. Kessler-Harris also does not bring up the complete reversal of roles sometimes found in contemporary society, where the wife is found to be in charge of "bringing home the bacon" and the husband in charge of the household.