Essay Question 1: Western researchers and academics like to believe that there is a mostly consistent definition of the roles of mother and father within societies . This provides them with a set of simple benchmarks to draw comparisons when studying different cultures' ways of parenting or when studying different social and cultural effects that they believe may be linked to alternative parenting roles. While it may be an accurate assumption that cultures have a mostly consistent set of roles for mother and father, the degree of consistency of that role across individual parents has weakened in recent decades. In some cases, different cultures have completely different conceptions of these roles and they exist within a cultural framework of the family that is unique to that culture. What are some of those different mother/father roles that exist in Western and non-Western cultures, and what are the reasons for these alternative definitions of these roles? Without going to extreme examples of remote tribal villages where the demand for boys over girls is so great that there are some maternal influences or an Amazonian-type culture that is largely an aberration, this essay will attempt to examine the actual roles alternatives within larger functioning societies. .In “Beyond gender roles?” by MW Warner, RM Al-Hassan, and JG Kydd, the authors identify parental status as a legitimate social and cultural distinction worthy of high status. This is because society values ​​the role of parents functionally, not simply based on gender. Parental status is like age and seniority: there is intrinsic value in people with those roles for the stabilization and productivity of a culture's health and well-being... at the heart of the card... you are overlooking your family. There are many families where both parents or one parent works, but the parents pay more attention to their children than some families where neither parent works. However, it is everyone's personal decision on how to live their life and raise their children and if they believe they can be both a successful working person and a great parent and spouse, then it is their prerogative to do so. Bibliography Hinako. (2013, April 18). What children think about working parents. Retrieved from She Knows Parenting: http://www.sheknows.com/parenting/articles/2838/what-children-think-about-working-parentsHow children behave when both parents work. (2013, November 1). Retrieved from Healthychildren.org: http://www.healthychildren.org/English/family-life/work-play/pages/How-do-the-Kids-Fare-When-Both-Parents-Work.aspx