6 ms·

I'm not much against gender roles, I don't see the problem with them. From a practical perspective, it seems like people will do better if they are familiarized

• microcolonel 9y ago
  > An awful lot of the social construct of girl's lives only works if you "marry well" and if marrying well is the only thing you want out of life. To the extent that this is the expectation on women, it is the expectation on men to be husband material. Straight women in western society are legally and culturally responsible for choosing a husband if they want one (and most do). The majority of women (and men) want to have kids, either ASAP or eventually, and the best way to raise kids is in a stable marriage. When people encourage you to do this, entirely at your option, they are reinforcing very reliable advice. If you want an advanced education, great! Nobody has the right to stop you, and nobody should have the right to force you either. Anyone who feels they have the determination and desire to contribute to science or business, and is so passionate that they are willing to forego or delay their personal development, should feel the full support of society. > I also did not want my sons to grow up and not know how to, for example, feed themselves properly. Cooking food, especially staple meals, is not gender specific. Every man I know can cook local staple meals (pasta and sauce, omelettes, chili, chicken and vegetable soup, [sometimes soy sauce based vegetable soups, depending on social group]), I see no difference in general adherence to common dietary advice except that the guys maybe like red meat more. Mere adherence to a gender role is not a moral good in and of itself; but that shouldn't turn people off of them. They give structure on matters that you don't feel all that passionate about.
  • Mz 9y ago
    You are cherry picking. In social settings where gender roles are pretty strictly enforced, men are actively discouraged from learning to cook. It is "women's work." Also, while I generally agree that a stable, healthy marriage is best for raising kids, one of the problems here is that people are living longer and having fewer children. Even if a woman marries well, after her kids are grown, there are very real problems for her and other people to expect her to remain confined to certain caretaking roles. The fact that people are living longer and child mortality rates are down inherently creates social pressure to handle things differently than in the past. I think you only escape this by erasing a great deal of progress that led to both of these positive outcomes.
    • microcolonel 9y ago
      > You are cherry picking. In social settings where gender roles are pretty strictly enforced, men are actively discouraged from learning to cook. It is "women's work." Fair enough, I would not advocate for nifty fifties or rural Iraq style forcible/near-forcible gender roles. The extent to which force is involved is the extent to which they are wrong. If you take force out of the equation, you get a useful mental model; put force in, and you get a repressive system. > The fact that people are living longer and child mortality rates are down inherently creates social pressure to handle things differently than in the past. This is definitely true, but it seems this question is already answered for us: people continue to want to have kids at nearly the same rate (after the initial decline), but typically trend toward or below the replacement rate in terms of the typical number of children per household.
      • Mz 9y ago
        That does not answer the question of what women will do with their lives. Women who have been socialized their entire life to pick up after others and cook for them and take care of them don't readily have a path forward for how to spend their time constructively. The logical outcome is that many women wind up with paid jobs that mimic the wife and mom role. But paid jobs that involve, for example, cleaning up after others tend to be shit jobs that no one actually aspires to. People do not typically dream of being the maid. I was a homemaker and full time mom. I also was an excellent student. I have found it quite challenging to develop a serious career. I feel strongly that gender expectations are a big factor in that problem. So, it is a thing I think about a lot. I agree that there is nothing inherently wrong with having a useful mental model for "this is how to act." But I think we face substantial challenges in teasing out how to separate masculine and feminine expression from the raft load of problems that cause the trend known as the feminization of poverty.