Gender Roles in Families

This week during thanksgiving break, I was at home looking over my notes for my Family Relationships class and started to think about gender roles in families, particularly my family. Every theory can say a family has to function a certain way, but does it really matter? In my opinion there is no set way of how a family has its gender roles set in their family. My parents are still married, but if you want traditional gender roles in a family where there is only one parent how can that happen? The parent has to fulfill both gender roles because they do not have a partner to help them. Even if you have a partner to help you or not, gender roles do not have to be traditional, they can fluctuate between both partners, like they do in my family. By having the gender roles being able to change between partners it will show children that you do not always have to do the same thing in your family and can help you when you grow up and have your own family
My family has modern views on how daily jobs in the house are split up among the four of us. I would say that the gender roles in our house are expected for the person that you would think is normally responsible, but not all the time do the gender roles stay that way. Our family does not have strict traditional gender roles or strict egalitarian roles either. It is in between the two depending what needs to be done and what all our family is doing on that particular day.
My mother most of the time is responsible for cooking dinner, cleaning the house, washing clothes, and making sure everything in the house is the way it should be. Even though she does most of these chores, my brother and I are still responsible for cleaning the house and washing clothes. My mother does the majority of this work, but we help out with it in some way. My dad on the other hand does most of the work outside of the house for example mowing the lawn, raking leaves and other yard jobs that need to be complete. He helps clean the house also and wash clothes, but his main responsibility is the jobs that require physical labor.
Even though we seem to have traditional gender roles, we do have different roles that we fulfill when we need to. During the holidays I know that the traditional roles are pretty much what we follow, but when it comes to raking leaves in the fall we all go outside and help my dad with that because it is a big job. Or in the spring when we have to spread mulch to plant new flowers traditional gender roles would say that only the man would do it, but we all go outside again and help because it is a long and hard day, especially if it was just one person doing all the work and our yard is not small so it makes it even harder for just one person to do it by themselves.
One other way we split up the roles in our family is fixing dinner. This is the one way that I would say we are strictly traditional in our house. I have grown up with my mom coming home from school and always fixing dinner. My dad has done it occasionally when my mom would be late or could not make it home in time for dinner. This role has been passed down from my grandparents and will probably be passes down to me and maybe my brother. It does not say anywhere that the wife is responsible for fixing a hot dinner every night, but from many years ago when men worked and women stayed home with the children it was always the wife’s job to have a hot meal ready when their husband came home. In today’s world most women are working because of different reasons and so does my mom, but she always finds a way to fix dinner for us. I know that this will probably be passed on to me since I enjoy cooking and I also view this a responsibility of the wife, but it doesn’t mean that I will not allow my husband to fix dinner when I get married. I feel that my brother who lives by himself now and is going to school will fix dinner for his wife and family a lot whenever he gets married since he is responsible for fixing his own dinner now. If he does not fix his own dinner than he will not eat that night since he is not living at home anymore.
Gender roles in my family have been a positive influence on me. Learning how to cook, clean and complete household chores when I was growing up will help me later in life when I am living on my own and have a family. I also know that they have influenced my brother positively also because the way he lives and takes care of himself while he is living by himself in a city far away from home. I know others how have not had to do the chores while we grew up that is going to hurt them when they are living on their own. Knowing how to cook and clean is an important part of living on your own, by showing others that you can take care of yourself and a family when you get ready to have one. Even if your family has egalitarian or traditional gender roles, it is still important for young boys and girls to learn certain traits while growing up to help them later in life. I know that I will use what I have learned from my parents everyday when I have my own family or own house, just as my brother is doing now. Seeing him being successful, and living on his own shows me that I can do it someday also.