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Gender Roles in the Family


"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:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XjUFYxSxDk

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.


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