Skip to main content

Gender and Family Life

Gender roles are defined by the socio-cultural norms of any society. In most of the societies, the family systems are based on the gender roles and it is the pre-designed gender roles that help members of the family to run the family with bound responsibilities. Any disturbance in the gender role aspect may affect the smooth functioning of the easy-going of any family.
But today, modern life has very much changed the family structure and the gender roles have been diverting from the traditional responsibilities and path of performance. In fact, the gap between different genders has already melted down, creating an all equal society and more equalized families. Today, there are no monarchs in families and no bout-to-obey members in families.
All live together, taking decisions together, expressing opinions openly, criticizing and encouraging mutually and yet being independent and responsible. The society-defined gender roles may crash with the modern roles of family members and many families experience the dilemma of the crashing gender roles.
The origin of gender roles can be dated back to the very establishment of social life. Ever since man started living in societies, they differentiated between the male gender and female gender and implicated specific lifestyle, duties and functional areas for each of these genders. It was quite needed in the then lifestyle of human beings.
Hunting was the only way of finding a living; thus muscular male members took the role of hunters of food suppliers and physically less fit female members took over the role of homemakers and cooks. The masculinity helped male gender to dominate the society and made them authoritative in families.
But the time has grown a lot empowering female gender to an almost equal status of men and today, they dare to live independent of the help of men and at times, to the extent of questioning men in different aspects. The newly gained power makes women get out of the norms and define new gender roles in the family, which may often result in clashes in the family.
The modern social structure sees both men and women as equal partners of the society with equal rights, status, and responsibility. This is a sudden change of concepts of a male-dominated society. In the families, people who have observed authoritarian father and submissive mothers may expect the same when they set up their own families.
The equal status may disturb the husbands as the laid-underneath superiority elements may require a certain amount of time to dissolve themselves and accept the new socio-cultural setup. The aspect of equality will give rise to certain issues too. Who is to direct and who to be directed? Who is the authority in family-related issues? etc., may put the family in trouble. If not accepted well and handled appreciably, the family may become like a vehicle steered to different directions at the same time by many drivers.
A family is not just an institution of many people living together under one roof, but the union of similar minded or mutually loving people bound with certain duties and responsibilities. The gender role structure was deliberately designed by the initial social setups to help the people accept and realize the specific duties each gender-bound to.
But today, both the parents work and earn for the family and both father and mother enjoy the equal social status and financial independence. At this point, the role of homemaker becomes no one's responsibility and both the partners may insist the other one be the homemaker. Adjustments, understanding, and empathy are the advised aspects that may help a smooth running family. Clinging to the century-old concepts and lifestyles may help only to worsen the situation.
The traditional family system had enough time dedicated for the kids as the mother was responsible for the entire process of childcare and development when the father had to bring in the essential food supplies. But modern lifestyle makes both the parents busy working for the family and earning the amount to meet the demands of life. Kids many times are left with caretakers or paid nannies.
Such lifestyles may affect the families badly as children may grow unaffectionate to the parents. It is quite difficult for any parent to balance between the modern lifestyle and parenting or homemaker tasks. Kids need to be trained to cope up with the family roles. This will help them to be more understanding and affectionate to parents.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Impact of Social Class

Diversity is a familiar topic in many college psychology classes. Race, gender, sexual orientation, LGBTQ issues, ethnicity, and disability fall under the heading of diversity. Yet one topic, social class, is often overlooked or even avoided in classroom discussions of diversity. One reason for avoiding discussing social class is likely to be the fact that many American students assume they fall into the ill-defined social category known as “middle class.” In many cases, students are loath to identify themselves as “upper middle class” or “working class.” Being middle class is not risky; you pass as everyman—or everywoman. And many Americans still hold onto the idea that they live in a “classless” society. They—we—don’t. Social class is all around us, but in higher education generally and in the field of psychology specifically, with few exceptions , we—faculty members and students alike-avoid the topic. In the minds of many, social class is defined by income: To wit, higher i...
Post a Comment
Read more

Parallel Parenting After Divorce

Parallel parenting is an arrangement in which divorced parents are able to co-parent by means of disengaging from each other and having limited direct contact, in situations where they have demonstrated that they are unable to communicate with each other in a respectful manner. For intractable high conflict families, parallel parenting provides an opportunity for co-parenting, and although parents remain disengaged from each other they remain fully connected to their children. Within such an arrangement, parents may assume decision-making responsibility in different domains (such as one parent is responsible for medical decisions and the other for education). More often than not, however, they agree on major decisions regarding children’s upbringing but separately decide the logistics of routine, day-to-day parenting. In many cases, with parallel parenting in place, the passage of time allows the dust to settle between parents, to the point where parents achieve cooperative parenti...
Post a Comment
Read more

What is Love?

There is a mythology in our culture that love just happens. As a result, the depressed often sit around passively waiting for someone to love them. But love doesn't work that way. To get love and keep the love you have to go out and be active and learn a variety of specific skills. Most of us get our ideas of love from popular culture. We come to believe that love is something that sweeps us off our feet. But the pop-culture idea of love consists of unrealistic images created for entertainment, which is one reason so many of us are set up to be depressed. It's part of our national vulnerability, like eating junk food, constantly stimulated by images of instant gratification. We think it is love when it's simply distraction and infatuation. Love is a force of nature. However much we may want to, we can not command, demand, or take away love, any more than we can command the moon and the stars and the wind and the rain to come and go according to our whims. We may hav...
Post a Comment
Read more