Gender Roles and our Differences
All human beings—male and female—are created in the image of God. Each is a beloved spirit son or daughter of heavenly parents, and, as such, each has a divine nature and destiny. Gender is an essential characteristic of individual premortal, mortal, and eternal identity and purpose. (The family a proclamation to the world, 1995)
Studies have shown that males and females were designed differently. Not because one is better than the other, but to show us that our differences could be an advantage in this journey. That we can complement each other.
Gender-based parenting is dangerous and has consequences.
I remember as a newlywed, my husband and I had some discrepancies when we had to choose who was going to do what chore.
He was raised in a all-men house (he has one little brother) and I was raised in a all-women house (I have 2 younger sisters). Consequently, we were used to different things.
I was used to carry all my dirty clothes downstairs so that my mom or dad could wash it. My husband, in the other hand, was used to take off his shirt and just put it in the dirty clothes bag while expecting his mother will take it to the washing machine.
In the beginning, I was mad at him: "How come you can not bring me the dirty-clothes bag here where I am?"
Then, I notice and asked him about the methods that they had back in his country. He explained... everything made sense!
In our houses there were chores that only the women (our mom/grandma) will do; That is how we were raised. But also there were tasks that only the men in our families were in charge.
HUGE MISTAKE!
Teaching your children that gender is all about what we can and can not do is a mistake.
Elder Bednar explained, “[Gender] in large measure defines who we are, why we are here upon the earth, and what we are to do and become. For divine purposes, male and female spirits are different, distinctive, and complementary. … The unique combination of spiritual, physical, mental, and emotional capacities of both males and females were needed to implement the plan of happiness” (“Marriage Is Essential to His Eternal Plan,” Liahona, June 2006, 51; Ensign, June 2006, 83).
Genesis 1:26 says: And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.
Knowing that, who was God referring to when He said "us"?
And hymn written by Eliza R Snow explains:
In the heav'ns are parents single? No, the thought makes reason stare! Truth is reason; truth eternal Tells me I've a mother there.
So, if even in the heavens there is a mother, a female, working as one with our Heavenly Father... how is it possible that being mortal beings we will not take approach of the different characteristics we all have? How is that we sometimes take for granted the enormous and divine women could have?
There is a word in Spanish that is called "Machismo". There is no literal translation to it.
The definition in the Cambridge dictionary states:
Machismo hurts our children before, during, and after we teach it.
Many men and women, all around the world suffer because people don't see their real capacities. They think women were made to stay at home, do all house chores while men work hard go home and sleep. Thoughts that were learned when they were growing up.
"identifying a bias or misconception is difficult because [people] have to be the ones to recognize they are wrong and that they need to change" -Taylor Fred
Children will grow up with really strong stereotypes, which will affect them in all the areas they will live in. For example, in a relationship with their future partner, the child (now a grown-up) will have ideas of what men and women should and shouldn't do in a marriage. The same with her or his boss, co-workers...
We are all to help each other, to build each other, to help each other reach their maximum capacities. There is no gender better than the other, there is no gender worst that the other.
WE ARE ALL ESSENTIAL IN GOD'S PLAN, male and female.
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