Gender and Family Life

 This week I wanted to talk about gender as well as family life, mainly the impact gender has on the family life. This is obviously a touchy topic especially with all the many things happening regarding gender in the world today, so because of this, I'll mainly be providing facts this week. 

First let's talk about different male and female tendencies. Commonly we see that females are more detail oriented, they have more nurturing urges, they are more socially oriented as well as relationship oriented, they are better at communication and cooperation, more creative, they have the ability to be aware of multiple things at once, and scientifically they have more white brain matter than males. As for more masculine tendencies, males have more aggression, they are more competitive, they have more spatial awareness, they're typically the providers as well as the protectors, and they have a greater startle response. These tendencies very well play a part in the aspect of a family, even from a young age. These tendencies can and may determine what sort of roles are in a family's system, and it may differ based on the family's opinions and cultures, past and present.

Even from a young age, infancy in fact, children prefer toys by sex long before gender identity is demonstrated. Children as young as 9 months old prefer to play with toys specific to their own gender, this is even without knowing what gender they are because they're babies. This is because girls and boys follow different development trajectories with respect to selection of gender-type toys. So knowing that, how does this impact a family's system and life? Well some may say it impacts the family in a negative way when there are little boys playing with barbies. But if we think about it, do people have as much of a problem with a stereotypical "tom-girl" playing with a monster truck? Some people might, but maybe not as much as a boy playing with more feminine toys. This impacts the family more than you'd think. Parents may get upset with their children for not playing with the "right" toys, they may see a problem with it. Is there a problem with it? Should parents try and stop their chilren from playing with toys that the opposite sex might play with? What do you think?

Let's think about now, what challenges and benefits arise from common male-female differences in establishing and maintaining a healthy family? Like I mentioned before, parents may despise their children playing with a toy that the opposite sex may play with, this can definitely cause problems, and maybe even trauma for the child. I'm not saying that because the child plays with sn "opposite sex toy" that they will turn out to be homosexual, but what if they do? They will think there's something completely wrong with them. This is the reason why parents try to stop it at a young age afterall. But should they? Again, what do you think? As for some benefits of the common differences between male and female, there's lots. Maybe roles and rules. Although certain rules and roles may look different for each family, they will find things for both genders to do that will work for their family's system. This can be exremely beneficial. A healthy family includes a working system, and this helps play a role in that. In your own family, what differences do you see that help maintain and establish a healthy family?

What opinions do you have on this particular topic? What is your current family like pertaining to this subject? What will your future family be like? 

Thank you for reading my blog this week!