Saturday, June 14, 2008
Something to Ponder...
Gender roles is certainly not something that I myself have ever had to be concerned about because, personally I love being a girl and all the "girlie" aspects that come along with it, well except for that one that is totally a pain, haha. Growing up I had two older sisters, a mother, two grandmothers, nine aunts, fifteen girl cousins, and the small minority of men that include my dad, uncles, and five boy cousins! I of course was Miss. Priss and dressed up all the time just for the fun of it, painted my nails at five and while my sisters played sports I starred in awe at the cheerleaders not waiting until I could be one...and in middle school through high school I cheered so I spent a lot of my time outside of class with a bunch of girls, and now of course I find myself at JMU which is 60% girls, in the CSD major which is about 99% girls, and have a waitressing job which is also usually occupied by girls. Wow, I just now realized all that and looking back I'm amazed that in the midst of my girl world I found a wonderful man at the age of 18 dated for three years and got married at the age of 21 on our three year anniversary. I have no complaints of where my woman hood has taken me and who it has made me into today and honestly I would be perfectly fine going either way, being the stay at home mom or the modern day working woman...but since I've already put plenty of money into my education I'm going to go ahead with the career my plan for now! I am a Christian so I feel that God has distinctly created men and women to be better at different things and we should cherish each other even more because of it. The chance to have equal opportunities at the roles are key in this day in age because of our busy lives. No matter what path one should choose to take the key is to not judge one another and to not make assumptions about who can do what better and why, because really who is to say when over and over people are breaking the mold.
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3 comments:
Jenny!
I always enjoy personal stories...so thanks for sharing that! I agree, I think that men and women were created so uniquely different, with different strengths and weaknesses. And because of this, I have a hard time even comparing them. I think these differences in genders are what make relationships, and in your case, marriage such a beautiful thing...and yes, sometimes very hard!
The issue of innate differences between men and women (whether bestowed by God or through other forces) is one that seems to keep coming up. I don't disagree with assessments of the "distinct roles" argument, but I don't wholeheartedly embrace it either. I don't want to tell anyone what to do about faith, because that is a very personal aspect of your life. I can, however, encourage you all to think critically about this idea of difference. How much of our conceptions of difference come from what we've been taught in our own culturally specific experiences, and how much of it can you detach and be assured of its "fact"? These are tough questions, and they don't have easy answers. My job is just to encourage you all to ask them. It's true, for instance, that only women are capable of biologically bearing children. Does that mean, however, that women are therefore natural caregivers? If history tells us anything, the answer is no. The very notion of motherhood is something that changes greatly across times and contexts. There are some cultures where biological mothers have very little contact with their own children - instead infants and toddlers are raised by wet nurses or nannies. In Victorian U.S., that was very much the case for women of a certain economic status. For well-to-do women, the status "wife" was MUCH more important because the ability of women to be adequate hostesses and to essentially be the proxy by which the husband was judged in the home was so much more important than being a mother (children were, for the most part, out of sight and out of mind). So, while it seems that I'm on a tangent here - I'm just trying to encourage you all to think about what exactly it is that men and women do better/differently based solely on their gender. You might come up with some things that you think are inviolable truths, and that's fine. You may find, on the other hand, a lot more diversity across women and men than you initially thought there would be.
Indeed my faith, family, and culture is why I do feel that women are simply better fit to be caregivers to their own children. Maybe not all women in this day in age prefer to be caregivers but it seems to me that is because their are other options available to them and like I said us as humans are always breaking molds, and that's ok with me! But if you look at the biology of humans and animals both having women in most cases, haha, I know that the male seahorse has the babies, but other than that I'm pretty sure that all female animals and women are the ones having the babies. And to get to my point, animals don't have any other options that their brains can come up with, like hiring a full time nanny, and the females are the ones taking care of their young, it seems that is nature's way or carrying on. And, of course we are much more complex than animals and that is how we can stray from our natural calling. Just a thought!
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