"In His grand design, when God first created man, He
created duality of the sexes. The ennobling expression of that duality is found
in marriage. One individual is complementary to the other. As Paul stated,
'Neither is the man without the woman, neither the woman without the man, in
the Lord' (1 Corinthians 11:11). There is no other arrangement that meets the
divine purposes of the Almighty. Man and woman are His creations. Their duality
is His design. Their complementary relationships and functions are fundamental
to His purposes. One is incomplete without the other."
- President Gordon B. Hinckley
This week we are talking about gender roles in the
family. As members of The Church of
Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, we know from The Family: A Proclamation to
the World, that marriage between a man and a woman is ordained of God. We know that, “Gender is an essential
characteristic of individual premortal, mortal, and eternal identity and
purpose.” This is critical to our
understanding of families and marriage. We
have been given divine characteristics that help us in our success in these
relationships.
We participated in an activity in class this week that I
found to resonate with The Family Proclamation. In this activity, we came up
with a chart of different characteristics/qualities that are more feminine and some
that were more masculine. Here is what
we came up with:
Feminine Characteristics
|
Masculine Characteristics
|
Cooperative
|
Aggressive
|
Nurturing
|
Greater upper body strength
|
Relationship oriented
|
Competitive
|
Communicative
|
Spatial oriented
|
Landmark oriented
|
|
Sensitive
|
After listing these, we discussed how they related to what
the Family Proclamation said about the roles of fathers and mothers within the
family:
“By divine design, fathers are to preside over their
families in love and righteousness and are responsible to provide the
necessities of life and protection for their families. Mothers are primarily
responsible for the nurture of their children. In these sacred
responsibilities, fathers and mothers are obligated to help one another as
equal partners.”
For women, we talked about how all of the qualities we
listed directly related to being able to fulfill her role to be nurturing in
the family. The same went for men and
their ability to preside, provide, and protect.
I find it humbling that these characteristics have been with us
throughout our whole existence.
We discussed how women’s verbal and emotional centers are
connected with five times the amount of connective tissue than men. This helps them connect everything that they
need to in order to help fulfil her role in the home whereas men have more grey
matter which helps them have more storage.
Speaking of, if you haven’t seen this video about the differences between
men’s and women’s brains, I highly recommend it. You will want to buckle in for this one 😉
I will link it below:
I think it is a big misunderstanding when we try and get rid
of these divine characteristics either as we raise our children or pressure our
peers. We tell girls that they need to be more
aggressive, that they need to compete more, that they need to be dominant and
in charge. This doesn’t help them
develop the characteristics that they need as mothers. We tell our boys to be more sensitive and less
aggressive when in fact this inhibits their roles as providers and
protectors. We need to embrace the divine
characteristics that were given to use, and we need to do our best to develop them. It is the only way for our families to have
the best chance at success. God has a
perfect plan and he designed us the way we are for this specific reason.
Comments
Post a Comment