He was self-employed, and yet, being unable to sell his wares successfully, he could be considered to be unemployed as well. You see, Chris was in a very delicate situation. Since Chris was only an unpaid trainee at the brokering office, he had to keep his single-parent family together with only his savings and sales skills to rely upon. This caused him to be a very unhappy man whose heartbreak in life is clearly seen in the scene where the father and son had to spend the night in a public toilet on the subway. As Gardner struggled to prevent a further slide in their socioeconomic status, he found that he had no other choice but to hit rock bottom first. Having started out as a middle-class family, bad decisions saw their speedy decline into the lower class bracket of society. The behavior of the family is actually affected by their socioeconomic status in life. The child was reared the best way each parent knew how regardless of their gender, race, socio-economic status, or geographic location. Using an assertive/democratic parental style, the boy was raised to be not actually shielded from the financial turmoil of his parents but rather as an involved, helpless individual. Having only one biological offspring did not make their lives any easier, as both parents were concerned about the day-to-day living expenses that needed to be met. But Chris wanted to have a say as well, being the titular head of the household. Being the financial provider, Linda felt that she should have the final say.
Since the primary financial representative of the family was not the father, there was some conflict between the husband and wife as to who had more decision-making controls over the family. After all, she was tasked with most of the housework and child care as well. But she eventually suffered burnout and felt it best to tune out of the family in order to save herself from doing anything wrong to them. As with any family, his wife was tasked to take care of the emotional needs of the family. However, Linda was the one financially supporting the family through her waitressing job because Chris had made a bad business decision earlier by buying more bone scanning machines than he could actually sell. When the movie begins, we are informed that both Gardner and his then-wife Linda were both breadwinners for the family. There is no mention of any extended family members throughout the movie, which leads one to believe that Gardner may have deceased parents and was an only child. He then had to share custody of his son with his wife, forcing him to act as a single parent to his son during most times of the child’s life. However, his family structure evolved to another stage after his wife left him and successfully filed for divorce. In the film, we see that Gardner had a nuclear family at the beginning composed of himself, his wife, and his child.
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