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An EXCELLENT OP on this topic. This should really be required reading. Last Sunday’s GD class was particularly bad because it was essentially “Why Gender Stereotypes of the 1950s are eternal,” a ludicrous proposition. This article explains why the ideas that were being thrown around in that class (hunter / gatherer comparisons, 4000 years of history, women want children and are more nurturing than men, etc.) are woefully misinformed. http://timesandseasons.org/index.php/2014/01/guest-post-the-anthropology-of-providing-and-nurturing/ Yeah, I liked it when I read it. I also liked this article. As a naturally nurturing father, I particularly liked the following:
Quote:Children with “nurturing” fathers have higher rates of positive intellectual and cognitive development than children with more a emotionally distant father and caregiver mother. In societies that allow fathers to parent, “paternal warmth” or nurturing is recorded at equal levels as “maternal warmth” and has equally important effects on child development.xiii Here’s something that should worry fathers who leave the childcare exclusively to mom: girls whose father’s are physically present in the home but disengaged from their children have the same problems of sexual promiscuity and abusive romantic relationships as girls raised without fathers.xiv
hawkgrrrl wrote:“Why Gender Stereotypes of the 1950s are eternal,”
Ha.
I loved my role in nurturing our infants. After my wife nursed the baby, I would “burp” the baby and change the diaper. I miss those days. I suppose this means I have/had lower testosterone levels :wtf: I don’t understand all that anthropological stuff and I certainly don’t have the answers to perplexing issues regarding gender roles. I can say I still believe what the
proclamation
Quote:Gender is an essential characteristic of individual premortal, mortal, and eternal identity and purpose…
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. In these sacred responsibilities, fathers and mothers are obligated to help one another as equal partners. Disability, death, or other circumstances may necessitate individual adaptation.
It just makes sense to me that I was male in the premortal realm and will be in the next life.Regarding gender roles, the proclamation doesn’t seem too strict. Fathers are “responsible” for providing, but mothers help as “equal partners” and “individual adaptation” can be affected. Mothers are “primarily responsible” for nurturing the kids, but fathers help as “equal partners” and “individual adaptation” can be affected.
Heck, maybe if I nurtured children all day over a long period of time, my testosterone levels would decrease and bonding hormones would increase so much that I would become June Cleaver. I don’t know.
I don’t have a problem with the idea that God created me to be female. I actually enjoy my femaleness, on the whole. I have a *big* problem with God creating women to be inferior (I explained at length how I came to this conclusion in my thread on the temple). I really wish we could stop saying things like “The man is the head of the household; the woman is the heart.” Barf. According to the FP, my husband is supposed to ‘preside’ over our family, yet neither he nor I have a working definition of what that actually *means.* From what I can tell, presiding means that my husband picks who says the prayer at the dinner table. Unless of course he’s not there and then I assign one of the kids to say the prayer. I’m not sure why prayer-choosing is so important that it takes a man to do it (and none of the verses in the D&C list that as a responsibility of the PH). And I, on the other hand, am supposed to ‘nurture’ which is another vaguely defined term. I am a SAHM and am happy to be so. But I’ve pointed out many times that ‘nurturing’ doesn’t mean ‘cleaning toilets.’
Within our marriage, we choose to define the ‘presiding’ and ‘nurturing’ terms pretty broadly. But I am sure there are families in our ward where ‘presiding’ translates to ‘husband makes all the decisions.’ Or where ‘nurturing’ means ‘wearing yourself out trying to be Supermom.’
Another of the old chestnuts we like to throw around is, “No other success can compensate for failure in the home.” I actually agree with the sentiment – our families are eternal, our wards and our jobs are not – but I sure don’t love the way that statement is used as a bludgeon against working women. If it’s true for women, why on earth wouldn’t it be true for men as well? Shouldn’t my husband be seen as a husband and father first and everything else second?
Joni wrote:According to the FP, my husband is supposed to ‘preside’ over our family, yet neither he nor I have a working definition of what that actually *means.* From what I can tell, presiding means that my husband picks who says the prayer at the dinner table…
I found some general information:
Quote:A father is the presiding authority in his family. On this earth your initial experience of being a father of a family gives you opportunities to learn to govern with love and patience, and with your wife to teach each of your children correct principles, to prepare them to become proper fathers and mothers…
Fatherhood is leadership, the most important kind of leadership. It has always been so; it always will be so. Father, with the assistance and counsel and encouragement of your eternal companion, you preside in the home. It is not a matter of whether you are most worthy or best qualified, but it is a matter of law and appointment. You preside at the meal table, at family prayer. You preside at family home evening; and as guided by the Spirit of the Lord, you see that your children are taught correct principles. It is your place to give direction relating to all of family life.
You give father’s blessings. You take an active part in establishing family rules and discipline. As a leader in your home you plan and sacrifice to achieve the blessing of a unified and happy family. To do all of this requires that you live a family-centered life…
You prepare your family and each member in the family to serve their fellowman, to build the kingdom of God on earth. You conscientiously provide for their material well-being. In the family you learn to govern righteously. You teach your family generally and each child individually the doctrines of the kingdom…
“I repeat that plea to all fathers. Yours is the basic and inescapable responsibility to stand as head of the family. That does not carry with it any implication of dictatorship or unrighteous dominion. It carries with it a mandate that fathers provide for the needs of their families. Those needs are more than food, clothing, and shelter. Those needs include righteous direction and the teaching, by example as well as precept, of basic principles of honesty, integrity, service, respect for the rights of others, and an understanding that we are accountable for that which we do in this life” (Gordon B. Hinckley, “Bring Up a Child in the Way He Should Go,” Ensign, Nov. 1993, 60).
“In the home it is a partnership with husband and wife equally yoked together, sharing in decisions, always working together. While the husband, the father, has responsibility to provide worthy and inspired leadership, his wife is neither behind him nor ahead of him but at his side” (Boyd K. Packer, “The Relief Society,” Ensign, May 1998, 73).
I don’t think it is supposed to be defined more specifically than that, so you are right about choosing to define it within your marriage. Same thing with nurturing.I think we sometimes forget that there are lots of places in the world where men are pretty much absent in the home – where the concepts of providing, nurturing and even presiding are foreign and counter-cultural. I’ve worked in some of those places even here in the United States, so I get intellectually a call for men to shoulder the responsibilities of parenthood and not be just baby daddies – whether married or not. Having said that, I agree that such a message is more like the Law of Moses than the ideal / Law of Christ.
Quote:the proclamation doesn’t seem too strict
So you view it as prescriptive, telling people what they are required to do. Some view it as descriptive, stating how things are. It seems that the church wants it to be both. The problem with that is that if it is descriptive, then you don’t have to tell people what to do; they already do that. And if it’s not descriptive, you are telling them to be how they are not. As Ray pointed out, we can’t be neglectful (either men or women), but the notion that women are basically dependents and subordinates to men is simply not how egalitarian marriages work these days. And if men can only participate because their tender egos are stroked, that’s also a pretty damning statement toward men.
For me, it’s largely irrelevant. It fails to describe me, my life, or my feelings, all things I couldn’t change if I saw the point, which I don’t. So I (like many women I know) consider myself an exception, able to adapt. If that adaptation is unnecessary for someone because the Proc fits them, then the Proc also fails to benefit them because they are doing that naturally anyway. So it’s dumb. Just my opinion.
hawkgrrrl wrote:Quote:the proclamation doesn’t seem too strict
So you view it as prescriptive, telling people what they are required to do. Some view it as descriptive, stating how things are. It seems that the church wants it to be both.
I see it as prescriptive in that it provides general directions, but I don’t think it gives exact rules. I see it as descriptive in that it describes the view of the church and its leaders regarding families.The parts that fit how I am already living are beneficial to me because they affirm what I am doing and strengthen my resolve to continue on that path. Since the language of the proclamation allows for individual adaptation, there doesn’t have be to an exact fit.
I don’t blame you at all for the view you have on this issue. I wish you peace.
Shawn: I appreciate that you aren’t saying we have to fit a square peg into a round hole, but that is of course exactly what the POF does. Christ didn’t give different instructions to men and women. He told everyone to be Christlike. Neither men nor women should neglect their children or let them go without shelter or food or clothing. Both men and women should nurture their children and teach them. Splitting these duties out and assigning on a more granular level than that is silly. Marriages need to figure these things out within the couples, not tell the Susan Smiths of the world they have to be a SAHM or giving men a pass on being nurturing and women a pass on working when the family needs the money. Hawk, with all due respect, generally speaking, “the Church” (meaning many or most leaders and members) might teach what you have said is not the right way (although is has not been an explicit teaching from the top for quite a few years), but the PoF actually says exactly what you say should be said – in practical terms – about spousal roles. Shawn’s interpretation is a perfectly valid interpretation of the wording itself, since “equal partners”, “in these responsibilities”, “individual circumstances” and “adaptation” are explicitly stated in it. I see that section of the proclamation as trying to say two things: 1) At the very least, take care of your children in the traditional manner outlined herein; 2) On a higher level, figure out what works best for your own personal situation by sharing these responsibilities and adapting to your own circumstances. I know most members don’t read it that way, but it’s not mental gymnastics to do so. It’s a very valid reading of the words themselves.
I would argue that God didn’t create the traditional roles, but, instead, it was male-dominated society that did so, but the actual wording really does pose a . . . balance of sorts between the two extremes. I would like to see the wording changed to say society historically has created these traditional roles, and I wouldn’t mind if that section wasn’t part of the PoF for many people, but I also understand that it is restrictive to us ONLY because we already are living with the minimally acceptable level of personal choice and balance. In other words, those for whom it grates the most already have spouses who view themselves as equal partners, who share in “these responsibilities”, who have adapted to their own individual circumstances – but I also have seen SO many situations where not even the minimally acceptable level of providing and nurturing occurs where having such a minimally acceptable level of accepted responsibility would be an major game changer. In that regard, as a proclamation to “the world”, I am fine with the section about spousal roles (even though I would change some wording in it) – even though I know too many members of the Church will gloss over a careful reading and mistakenly assume it is saying the same thing Pres. Benson said so many years ago.
Let me re-emphasize, I agree with you and liked the article when I first read it, but I think we tend to be a little too critical of the wording because we aren’t in situations, generally, with absentee spouses, disinterest in parenting, rampant baby-daddy-ism, serious neglect and abuse, etc. where applying traditional roles, even without the additional wording, would be a MAJOR improvement.
I was doing a reading of Fiddler on the Roof recently and it reminded me of this thread. Quote:because of our traditions,
every one of us knows who he is
and what God expects him to do.
Who, day and night, must scramble for a living
Feed a wife and children
Say his daily prayers?
And who has the right as master of the house
To have the final word at home?
The papa
Who must know the way to make a proper home
A quiet home
A kosher home?
Who must raise a family and run the home
So Papa’s free to read the Holy Book?
The mama
Curtis wrote:Let me re-emphasize, I agree with you and liked the article when I first read it, but I think we tend to be a little too critical of the wording because we aren’t in situations, generally, with absentee spouses, disinterest in parenting, rampant baby-daddy-ism, serious neglect and abuse, etc. where applying traditional roles, even without the additional wording, would be a MAJOR improvement.
I have said before that (IMO) the LDS church does a better job than most at engaging men and YM. For many people in our larger society – religion, church going, and spirituality are feminine pursuits.
I really liked that article. It shows how wrong the idea of women or men being natural at anything specific is wrong. Everyone has to learn to do the things they do, whether it’s hunting/working or being patient with babies. I think the proclamation was written by (male) church leaders to have a response to gay marriage (which was an issue at the time in Hawaii), and nothing more.
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