In this essay, the males were typically hard laborers working in coal mines and tending their fields in order to provide for their families. .
In the essay, "Why I Want a Wife," Brady says that she is in a line of work that is made up of mostly men. Brady implies that the roles were somewhat reversed. Brady reveals this when she says, "I would like to go back to school so that I can become economically independent, support myself and, if needed support those dependent upon me." (Brady 349).
In the working class families, these traits were more apparent. These men were very hard laborers who worked at physically rigorous jobs. They worked in dirty, dangerous coal mines, where they labored all day and then came home to work on the family farm with the help of their sons. If the men did not work in a mine, they were soldiers who moved from base to base ready to kill if the country needed them to do so. Soldiers dragged their families with them wherever they were transferred, and the family had to accept the fact that their husband or dad could be shipped away for a very long time, or even be killed. While the fathers were at work for the long days, or off to serve their country, the mother was at home. Women's jobs included looking after the children, cooking for them, and protecting them from illness. The wife had to maintain the house and crops so the family did not go broke. Sanders grew up around this type of lifestyle. Sander's father managed to "escape from a red-dirt farm to a tire factory and from the assembly line to the front office." (Sanders 346). Soon, Sanders realized that different classes had different perceptions of what the male and female roles were. Sanders received a scholarship which allowed him to go to private school and be around kids that had more privileges than him. This became most apparent when he was talking to a young girl in his class who accused him and his "sex of having cornered the world's pleasures.
