Gender Roles and Differences

In my Family Relations class this week, we learned about differences in gender and the different gender roles that there are. In preparation for one of our classes this week, I watched a video about some people’s views on how there shouldn’t be differences in gender roles.  Some of the people interviewed in this video said that they thought that society happened to create gender roles, and that they did not think differences in gender roles were important. Studies have shown that even as little children, before they are influenced by society's views, that boys tend to be more rough in their play and girls tend to be more caring and nurturing in their play.  In The Family: A Proclamation to the World, it states specific roles for each gender. The proclamation states that “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.” I love how at the beginning of this quote is says that we were given gender and these roles by divine design; gender roles were not made by mistake. Even though each gender has certain roles, that doesn’t mean one gender is better than the other or that males and females are unequal. Because men and women have different roles and abilities, we are able to complete and complement each other.

This week in my family relations class, we have been discussing culture and class. One of the things that interested me was the many different point of views of classmates on how class in society is determined. Some ways my classmates thought class was determined was by money, their lifestyle, the location people live, education, connections, appearance, and where people work. I came to the conclusion that not just one of these things play a role in deciding someone's class, but all of them play a role in someone's class in society. I also found it interesting how culture and class mix in the views of people. For example, many people have the view that certain cultures are ranked lower in class while other cultures are viewed as upper class.

Another topic discussed this week was if all cultures were equally valid. When I first read this question, I thought that the majority of cultures are equally valid, because all cultures have good values and all cultures have things that could be worked on or fixed. As we discussed this topic in class, I came to realize that no, not all cultures are equally valid. We discussed in class that one of the definitions of the word valid means "to have legal force". We discussed that with legal force there are rules, and that God has set standards for what is right and what is wrong. There are cultures that have more values that follow God's standards than others, thus having me come to the conclusion that not all cultures are equally valid. This week I enjoyed learning the different views on how culture and class, and how these to things play such a large role in each of our lives.