Week 4

This week our main focus was on gender roles, and importance they play in a family. I really enjoyed this topic because it got me thinking about things I had not necessarily thought to much about before. We read and talked about various differences between males and females. That was very interesting. But the thing that struck me the most was as we addressed the question, "How would my life/family experience be different if I would have been a boy." As I thought about this I though maybe it would not be that different. Because I am second oldest of six children, and the sixth child didn't come for quite a while after me, so most of my life growing up it was just five girls and one boy. Because of this the responsibilities we hard to split between "boy work" and "girl work". I worked outside and did "boy work" and my brother worked inside. I also was encouraged to participate in sports just like my brother. So as I first started thinking about it, I began to think that my experience as a boy would have been pretty much the same. But then I started thinking about it from some different aspects, for example, my relationship with my mother would have been drastically different. I think I felt comfortable confiding in my mother, and talking to her about very personal and sometimes embarrassing things, because she too was a girl and could understand my feelings and what I was going through. There were many things that I experienced that I did not necessarily feel comfortable talking to my dad about, not because he wasn't compassionate and didn't care about me, but because he just wouldn't quite be able to relate or be as responsive or understanding as my mom was in those instances. I think my relationships with my sisters would have been very different too. I think I would have developed many different attributes than I did because I was a girl, and therefore there were different expecations of me because of that.
I also had the chance to talk to my husband about the topic as well. Out of curiosity I asked him one evening if he thought his family experiences would have been different if he would have been a girl. It was very interesting to discuss, and explore the differences in his family, and the different expectations his family had of girls and boys compared to mine. Some were the same, and some were different. It neat to talk about this as it involved into a discussion on why gender is important, and the different roles it plays in a family setting. I loved hearing his ideas and thoughts. This is a conversation we probably would have never had if it weren't for this class. I am so grateful for those things we were able to think about and talk about together.