Last night at dinner, we got on
the subject of gender roles. My stepson made a comment that women were supposed
to make breakfast, lunch, and dinner for their family. At hearing this—I felt
my cheeks get hot. In my mind, I cursed
him out. In real life I simply said, “well, we are a modern family.”
That comment got me thinking about
a comment that my husband made a month ago. We were talking about P and what
type of values, morals, and traditions we wanted to instill in her. My husband
said, “Don’t you think she will have her gender roles all mixed up from
watching our family?”
Let me explain our family to you.
My husband was divorced, and while he was single he got used to cooking,
cleaning, and laundering for himself and his son. While I was single I did the
same. When we got married, I was more than willing to share in some of the
domestic jobs around the home. Over time—my husband took over most of them. You
should also know that my husband is a little bit of a control freak (love you
honey). He likes things done his way—and can’t see why you would want to do
them any differently. I will also admit that I am a bit lazy—or at least I was
before I had my daughter. It didn’t take me long to notice that when I loaded
the dishwasher—he rearranged it. He complained when I cooked because my dinners
were too expensive. We are on a tight budget. So my mantra became, “if you think
you can do it better, than by all means do it.” Slowly but surely, he took it
all over. He does most of the cooking, he washes most of the clothes, and he
takes out all of the trash. That is how it is. What do I do you ask? I take
care of P and do P’s laundry. That is about it. There was a time before P was
born that I also helped my step son with all of the homework. This was one of
the reasons why my husband took over dinner. One of us cooked and the other did
homework. It was a system that worked well for us. Now since having P—my husband
has taken that over as well. To be fair,
he hasn’t had much homework in the last 6 weeks as school was winding down.
So—call me lazy. I’ll admit that I
have it good.
I did grow up in what I consider
to be a pretty traditional family. My mom did/made all the meals, laundry, and a
lot of the cleaning. My dad did all the landscaping and took out the trash. The
gender roles were in place as they traditionally are. Yet, I do not do these
things.
I think that this is a
misconception about our society today. If you have mixed gender roles in your
family then your children will grow up to have mixed gender roles in their
family. I do not think that this is the case necessarily. I think there are a
number of factors that contribute to family dynamics. It is not all about what
your mother did.
For instance—my husband grew up in
a family with traditional gender roles too, yet he has taken many “female” jobs
in our family. So he is contradiction to the rule as well.
I tend to think that if I raise my
daughter to do laundry from a young age, then she will be more likely to do so
when she gets older. If I raise her to cook with me, and to enjoy cooking, then
she may be more likely to enjoy it later in life. I don’t think it is about
what she does or doesn’t see me doing, but more about what she does or doesn’t
do herself.
Values, beliefs, traditions, and
gender roles do come from our upbringing. But I think they come from the ENTIRE
PICTURE.
So, do I think that my daughter
will have problems later in life because she sees that her father does a lot of
the traditionally female jobs in our family? Not necessarily. I am more
interested in whether or not she will know how to do these things for herself,
then whether she actually does them. I want her to be independent and
self-sufficient, but I do not want her to be the workhorse of the family.
I am new to this whole parenting
thing… and I think a lot about how what we say or do might shape P. I want her
to grow up to be a smart, caring, and strong woman. I want her to be a woman
who knows her worth, and who won’t settle for anything less than what she
deserves. I want her to love fiercely, be compassionate, and kind. I want her
to be a good wife, and good mother to my grandchildren. And I do believe that
she can be all of those things even if she does not make her husband’s
breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
What do you think about gender
roles and how important they are when raising our daughters?
Sounds like Brandi and Jared are very similar in their wanting to be in "control."
ReplyDeleteExactly!
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