FAMILIAL HARMONY IN NONTRADITIONAL AND TRADITIONAL FAMILIES
Gender Roles and how this contributes to Familial Harmony
Often, gender roles impact the dynamic of a family's harmony. There are aspects we take a look at regarding what role one person of the household while the other has another role. For example, the first parent of the household may be the one who goes to work while the other parent stays home. This creates harmony, in that there is a balance between roles and the duties each person is providing to the household. Many people believe that these roles are set up where each sex plays a role In how the familial harmony is balanced. In what is called "traditional" families, the husband in turn becomes the "breadwinner," or the provider of the household who goes to work. While the wife is the caretaker, or the one who stays home, takes care of the kids, and cleans the house. There are many problems with this outlook, when we look at nontraditional families. There are many families who may have same sex parents, both of whom are capable of balancing this dynamic out. Society would often say this is not the case, with those who believe there needs to be a man and woman in the household, gender roles come into play. "A woman can't work" or a "man should not be a stay at home parent." This is when gender roles become degrading, emulating that a woman cannot do such labor and is only meant to stay at home. And/or a husband is not supposed to be at home but instead should emulate a "strong" presence as the financial provider.
How Gender Roles and Families/Relationships Come Together
Similar to gender roles, we see that mixed families have contributed to how a relationships develop and how families work together besides a traditional family. The traditional mindset of a stereotypical gender roles; a "successful business man" is an "ideal husband," or a woman who can cook is an "ideal wife." Gender roles are universal and this mindset can be seen almost everywhere. Most of the time, we as humans in this modern day are acting out of our gender roles that we are taught without even knowing.
In the 2018 article, "How Gender Role Stereotypes are Crippling Our Love Lives," author Ken Page gives an ideal example of how gender roles come into play when we are developing relationships with others, specifically romantically. "A classic example is the successful woman leaving her high-powered job to go on a date. Successful women are told to 'leave their fake balls at the office' or risk a failed connection with 'real men.' This sounds very 1950s, but I can't tell you how many successful women I know who are still haunted by that fear — and how often it's validated for them by friends, family, and popular dating advice" (Page, 2018).
As the example furthers, Susan decides to degrade her success in order to allow her date to have the "manly" power she believes others would expect from him. However, the date is unsuccessful.