Are Gender Roles in Relationships Reversing?
According to Mundy, a “Big Flip” in gender roles is inevitable and the dynamics of male-female relationships will change drastically. Women will have increased power and will no longer see sex as a way to get a man to commit (and when was that the norm, anyway?) Mundy cites that younger women are having sex with more partners and “are becoming the gender that wants sex more than men do.” Financially, the women in my family have either out-earned or made an equal amount of money to their spouses at this point. Women in my family do it all - they have careers, make money, cook meals, run the household, shuttle kids to and from school, balance bank accounts and mortgages, and of course, navigate gracefully through complicated social politics. Sounds like most women today, right? Interestingly enough though, in my family, the “power” has still always been in favor of men, simply because they are the “man of the house.” I wonder if that will still hold true for women of my generation and beyond - will men be expected to act a certain way (i.e. manly), just because they are men?Are Gender Roles in Relationships Reversing?
[Ed Vasicek] True enough, Susan. Yet some people have a hard time “combining,” while others have a hard time keeping their separate identity. Whatever the ideal is (if we could accurately define it in detail), this fact seems evident: there are plenty of people on either side of the ideal.
I think some of the fear of ‘combining’ is that fear of losing one’s own identity, especially when it comes to a wife submitting to her husband, or at least that’s my perception as a wife. Loving and submitting shouldn’t mean that I can’t read the books I like or laugh at jokes I think are funny or pursue an interest that he doesn’t share. It also doesn’t mean being with each other every waking minute, nodding and smiling and never disagreeing.
When we truly value the other person for who they are, being together-yet-separate is FUN. I wonder- when’s the last time we’ve heard a message presenting marriage as a rewarding and joyful experience for both husband and wife? If I had to weigh the negative message and the positive messages, the negative side would be in Antarctica.
On another aspect of this- I’ve read that pthalates, which are in the kinds of plastics that you find in bottled water containers, are hormone disruptors, and can result in early puberty in girls and the feminization of boys. Also, soy is often used to mimic estrogen. With all the plastic containers leaching chemicals into our bodies, and the high content of soy in many foods, I wonder how much gender-reversal has some physiological causes? It’s a thought.
Sadly, there is not much we can do about the reversing gender roles. The reversal took place because of the changing economic structure of this country. Let’s face it. The jobs that once allowed American men to be the breadwinners and providers in their families, have mostly disappeared. Men want to design things, to build things with their hands, to fix things. But these types of jobs have been steadily leaving the country. Now adays, most jobs are retail jobs, or fast food jobs, or office jobs, or jobs in the medical field. But how many men are actually fit to do those jobs, or actually want to do those jobs?
We find ourselves in a land full of men who feel lost, unable to use their hands to produce something of value. A man who cannot produce something and provide for his family feels like he has lost his identity.
We find ourselves in a land full of men who feel lost, unable to use their hands to produce something of value. A man who cannot produce something and provide for his family feels like he has lost his identity.
Discussion