“If you strip away your preconception, it’s a far more honest way of conveying what people are actually like.”– C.H. James, National Geo Society fellow.
Gender roles are as old as beginnings of time with First Woman and First Man. Roles were extremely, desperately, needed for survival. It goes back to stone bowls and stone axe. Socialization determines and defines roles throughout the ages. From our first breath, we fit into the group into which we were born. Today is no different but the roles have changed over times and civilizations throughout time as well.
From our first breath, we were “normalized” to fit in. Yes, even us, today, are socialized into roles that benefit society. There have always been rules. There have always been expectations. We have internalized these expectations and we have become the role we were conditioned to be, or we rebelled and became something WE wanted to be as women. Neither has been an easy row to hoe. We were either mle or female. To deviate from the set roles of the society we were born into means to go through incredible pressures. Conform! Conform! And embed conditioning so that we barely notice how it happens.
Today, social norms are being relaxed. We can wear what we want, what colors we want. The stereotypes are changing. We are encouraged to be ourselves…but still…there are the embedded norms. We fear nonacceptance. We fear rejection and abandonment of our ‘tribe’. Once it meant life or death. Sometimes, today, it still means “conform or die” in some societies.
At first, we recognized our strengths in gathering and preparing and birthing and raising. We recognized our weaknesses. Once each gender was as important as the other. No more. Listen to the conversations around you. Have men become weak? Have women overridden their physical abilities and become more masculine? Do men, easily, accept being house husbands? Do women easily decide it is okay, in their partnership, to be the breadwinner? Yes, yes, so many have. Problem is, we do not seem to honor gender roles any more. We deride one for what is sensed as the betterment of the other. We seem intolerant of each gender’s strengths and weaknesses. We begin to label the differences. We belittle and attempt to control or manipulate.
When we look back at the generations of our families and their roles, we see the differences. I was raised by a progressive woman. She would not ever say such. But father was the rancher and did the outside stuff and cooked the breakfasts and lunches and, usually, the dinners throughout the week. Mother taught school, brought home a great wage, and raised the children, kept the house, cooked the weekend meals. They each had their own bank accounts and when they needed to buy or do something for the house, they each brought half of the financial cost to buying such. My parents were not my biological parents. How much of my differences from my adoptive mother belongs to my biological parents? Their lifestyles, make up, role-placements, were hugely different, world’s away, from each others’. I was born to one mother, conditioned by another. As well, my adoptive mother was a generation older than most mothers. My adoptive grandmother was a pioneer woman. Their roles and conditioning were a world apart from mine. Yet, here I am, listening to my mother in myself, acting like my mother in so many ways. I do think my differences from my upbringing were biological, but more on that another time.
Some mother-daughter relationships are full of strife. We decide to accept what we see without asking the why. Every single human being has undesirable traits, habits, behaviors in them. We might not even be aware of them. Did her parents, her society, teach her these traits? We all regret our undesirable traits. Yes, even our mothers. The best we can do is consider the WHY, ask about the WHY, and work to become aware of those traits in ourselves. Gender roles are inherent and we cannot escape carrying some along with us through life. My adoptive mother had many awesome traits and if I could be half of her admirable traits, I would be an awesome woman. Did she have some traits I would choose not to have? Of course, and that made me an even better person as I made sure I knew them, knew the why of them, and then made sure I did not carry those forward. Yes, I rebelled against some of even her ‘good’ qualities. It is normal for rebellion to happen when we are teenagers trying to find our own place in the world. I made my mother cry, once, when I was a pre-teen and I never ever did such to hurt her feelings again. It was the first time she cried because of something I directly said. I had blurted out what I saw as a truth. I never felt so ashamed of myself for making her cry.
Some empathy is needed at home as well as out in the global world. Parenting is a frustrating thing, to be honest. Being the mother of pre-teen and teen puberty girls is rough. Our worst traits can really show up then. Consider how the generations of your maternal ancestry dealt with relationships between mothers and daughters. With the world so busy, we sometimes forget that we are all human, we all have flaws, and we all perceive things differently for varied reasons.
Family patterns determine much of our traits and conflicts. By examining family traits, we can discover much about ourselves. Some of them will be totally awesome, some might not be. What in yourself can you change up? What traits of gender roles do you more fully develop? Bless the path we walk as we discover why we act/react the way we do. At this point, I am mirroring my mother’s grandmother-ing. I do not choose to see others by ‘others’’ preconceptions of ‘others’, even my younger self.
I want to be the best of those who came before me and influenced the way I see the world and women and my mother and my own mothering. Sometimes we have to dig deeply.
©Carol Desjarlais 9.24.21
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