Men and Women: They Should be Different.

            So, this may be one of those more controversial topics that I mentioned in my Intro post. This week in class we began to talk about gender, and gender roles. Recently, there has been a lot of press about gender, and the ME-TOO movement, and all of these other problems with men. Gender (male and female) has been around since humans have inherited the earth. The two genders, male and female, were ordained from the very beginning (see https://www.lds.org/study/manual/the-family-a-proclamation-to-the-world/the-family-a-proclamation-to-the-world?lang=eng) This is what the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints believes about gender and gender roles. Personally, I think that men should be the provider of the family. They should be the ones going out and earning money for their families. Women should stay at home and take care of the children. Children are better off when they are raised by a mother who stays at home. By no means am I saying that women should not go out and work. My wife worked while we were in school and she only stopped when she was pregnant and couldn’t work anymore. Women should go and get a post-secondary degree. If they aren’t married yet, go and get your degree and start your career. More power to you.

            Unfortunately, today the roles of genders have almost been lost under the tumult of voices that are clamoring for two seconds of attention. Again, I’m not saying that all of the movements are bad. Women should be treated equally and should have the respect they deserve. But to be honest some of the movements against men like the “Free-Bleed” movement are trying to put men down and are saying that they are oppressed. Men and women, male and female are both important. They both have their roles that only they can achieve. A woman isn’t supposed to do some of the things that men do. For example, women probably shouldn’t be in jobs that require raw physical strength, like firefighters. Men are just a better fit. Women can still have positions of power in the workplace and there are still many walls that we have to break down. Men aren’t supposed to take on the traditional roles of women either. If we want to create equality, we need to stick to traditional roles. We don’t teach boys to not be boys. There is nothing inherently wrong with two boys wrestling for fun. We teach boys how to respect women, not to “not rape” them. We teach women that they are valued and that they are important. This teaching goes back to the family. The parents, mom and dad, teach the kids these values that seem to have been lost from humanity. We don’t teach our girls that men are evil and that they have to fend for themselves and that getting married is just a trap. We don’t teach our boys to suppress natural tendencies to run around and play more roughly than girls. We teach them to respect each other and that there are differences between girls and boys. Overall men and women have their own different quirks and ways that sets them apart. Men and women should be different. We should not be trying to suppress boys and force them to play with dolls and to not roughhouse. Boys can play with traditional girl toys and girls with traditional boy toys, but please don’t force it. Let boys go out and run around and pretend to be action heroes Let girls pretend to be princesses. Men and women are both special in their own way and we need those differences to continue as humanity.

Traditions for Families

            I’ll start off by saying that I had a hard time deciding what to write about this week. In class we talked about culture and traditions. There are a lot of traditions that we have in our families. Some of the ones we have in my family is to try to eat dinner together every night, have a big family reunion each year, and get new pajamas every year for Christmas. Having these traditions has been a part of my life, well for my whole life.

            Traditions can help to shape an individual or a family. Some traditions are obviously much better than others. So, talking generally what are some good traditions that encourage families and individuals to be their very best? What are some that might need not be continued?

            Based off my own experiences, I love having a family reunion every year with all of my aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandparents. It is a great way to catch up with everyone as we don’t get to see everyone very often. Being together with family I think is one of the best things that we can do to grow together and learn from each other. I like to talk to my grandpa when we have family reunions and hear his stories, or have him teach me how to catch brook trout out of the river next to where we are camping. Hearing him share his stories, or hearing my uncle share his experiences when he was my age has helped me to grow and those experiences only came from our tradition of having a reunion every year in the summer. So, I would say, have a tradition of getting together with your family every once in a while. This may by harder if you live far away from your family, but we live in a world of technology. Set up a time to call or to visit and use that to grow closer as a family. Families are important. I cannot stress that enough. They help us to grow and to learn as individuals.

            Some traditions however can be and are better left behind. You know what those traditions are. One in my life that is a tradition, well loosely a tradition, is eating dinner at 11:45 at night when I get home from work. Why is this one that should be discarded? It doesn’t help my wife and I as a family. Dinner should be about coming together and talking and catching up after the day. Eating dinner so late doesn’t do that for us. I’m tired after work and my wife is tired from staying up late to wait for me (but I’m really glad that she does stay up for me) and by the time the food is ready, we dish our plates and turn on a show to watch while we eat because we are both tired. Like I said before it is not a bad thing that we eat so late, but it is a “tradition” that could be left behind.

            Overall traditions can be a really good thing. They can help us come together as individuals and as families. Traditions really can make us who we are. They can set the tone for how we connect with our children when we become parents. I can’t wait to pass on the good traditions I have from my family to my children so that they can enjoy them as well.

The Family's New Car

            Ok, so this post isn’t really about a new car, but it was a great way to get your attention. What I really want to write about today was family systems which is why I thought about a car. A car is a culmination of many different systems that make it run. It has the electrical system, the ignition system, and the drive train to name a few. Now you may be asking how is a family like a car? Like what are you talking about? The family is most often referred to as a system with each member having a specific role and working together to accomplish a well running machine as it were. If one part is not doing its job, the system as a whole cannot function.

            One reading that we had this past week that I want to pull from to help explain some of these ideas is from the book “Exploring Family Theories” by Suzanne R. Smith, Raeann R. Hamon, Bron B. Ingoldsby & J. Elizabeth Miller. Let’s look at some of what is said in the book and talk about what is said. “The whole is greater than the sum of the parts. A family is much more than a collection of individuals who live together and are related to each other; it has a holistic quality” (Smith, Hamon, Ingoldsby, & Miller, 2008) The family is so much more than just a collection of people who are related living in the same house. Unfortunately, I think that this is the way the world sees that family these days. The family is just people who are related to us that we can maybe come to if we need help, but they provide no real connection (which is a whole other issue). More and more people are living alone recently and don’t have a lot of the family interaction that use to be prominent. I don’t know what I would have done without my family when I needed support when I was miles away in Argentina for almost two years. We need to get back to being holistic and not just a group of people living under the same roof. The family is a system, as mentioned above, and all of the parts have to work together and everyone do their job or the family (system) falls apart.

            Going off of that statement from above that the family members have jobs to perform, in the book, this concept is talked about. “All family members take on roles. Family roles are defined as ‘recurring patterns of behavior developed through interaction that family members use to fulfill family functions’” (Smith, Hamon, Ingoldsby, & Miller, 2008). Each family member has a job or role to play. Think about some roles you have in your own family. Whether you are living with your parents, or if you are newly married, you have roles that you need to do. One of my roles as a husband is to provide for the family. This encompasses having a good job to have money to buy food and things that we need. Another role I will have in a few short weeks is that of a father. That means that I will help to take care of my new son and I’ll probably end up changing most of the diapers. I have to say here that my wife says I also will get to burp him.

            Overall the family system is important and having clearly defined roles helps a family to run the way it was intended. I’m not trying to tell you what to do in your own family, and I know that no family is perfect, but I have seen in my own family the difference it makes when everyone plays their role. The family runs more smoothly.

Bibliography

Smith, S. R., Hamon, R. R., Ingoldsby, B. B., & Miller, J. E. (2008). Exploring Family Theories. Oxford University Press.

Does a Changing World Mean a Changing Family?

 Recently there have been a lot of changes in family trends in the world. Some of these current trends include having either less or no children, delaying having children, living alone, divorce rates, marriage age and rates, and births to single mothers. There are a lot of controversial topics here and I would like to present some information on some and just give some of my personal thoughts.

Divorce. Probably one of the main reasons people don't get married. "Why get married, if I will just divorce later?" This can be a common question among single people. There is a statistic that says that half of all marriages will end in divorce. This is simply not true. Current data shows that the divorce rate in the United States is between 3 and 3.25 divorce per 1000 people. This is significantly lower than 50%. However, this lower divorce rate is also causing other problems. Maybe the rate has dropped because more people are not getting married. It is far more common to just cohabit. People say it’s easier and you can see if you really like or even love the person you are living with. The data shows however that you are more likely to divorce if you get married after cohabiting. So yes overall, lower divorce rates, but at the same time less marriages.

On the topic of marriage, people are waiting longer and longer to get married. The  average age for men is 29.5 and for women it is 27.4 years old. Even amongst young adult members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, where we are encouraged to get married and there is pressure to do so at a younger age, the average age is still around 27 for men and 24 for women. Why is this an issue? Maybe for you it isn’t. For one minute, lets talk about marriage age and having children. Now if you don’t want to have children (which will be discussed a little later) that’s fine, but let’s say that you do. Going off of the ages above you’re 27 or 29 when you get married, on average people tend to wait 3 to 5 years, so now you’re 30 to 34 years old when you have your first child. At that rate you may only have one or two. This just makes me think of something my professor said. He said that some people he has met have always regretted not having more children. I have only been married a year and my wife and I are expecting our first child in June. I know that we are both college students and money may be tight, and you may be thinking that we are crazy, but having children is one thing that we both really wanted and would be the most important thing that we could do in our lives.

Returning to not wanting to have children (I said we would come back to this). I just try to understand why some people who are perfectly capable of having children would not want to. Now I’m not saying that if you don’t that you should, to each his own, but with all respect, do you not want to have someone that you teach how to play baseball or how to fish or how to do any other number of things? Honestly that’s what I am most excited about with my son. It will be such a joy to teach him all the things that I like to do and to see him grow up. I’m sure there will be lots of stress in raising him, but it will be worth it.

So, lots of trends. Honestly though, everyone has to do what’s best for themselves. At the same time, just because the world is changing, that doesn’t mean you have to conform to those changes. The family however is a powerful force to be reckoned with.