What Are Gender Roles These Days?
Are my “Ten Things” lists sexist? Yes, they are. How awful is that?
The War Against Boys: What Have They Done to Boys?
There was a romantic comedy that came out in 2006 in movie theaters: Failure to Launch starring Matthew McConaughey and Sarah Jessica Parker.
Gist (the central idea) of the story:
The film focuses on a 35-year-old man living with his parents who shows no interest in leaving the comfortable life that they, especially his mother, have made for him.
If I have done my math right, 2006 was the beginning of Millennial children stepping into young adulthood.
There have been many scathing articles about Millennials living in parents’ basements after college, and while this movie is a comedy, it is when us Boomers should have realized what had happened to their male children.
For me this movie was a wakeup call.
How is it that our generation didn’t prepare our male children for adulthood?
Men Have Been Socialized, to Wear Tights
I am not a fan of tights, as pants, on women.
I am certainly not a fan of tights on men, except at the ballet.
But that’s where I see a lot of Millennial guys landing.
Boys in tights trying to be men, or more accurately, you’ve been feminized according to plan.
We have been so focused on making sure our girls are “empowered”, that they get the same “chances” as boys do, we practically lost a whole generation of boys.
While we may have many “empowered” young women, we have young men, boys really, who are afraid of them.
I read recently where there are now more women completing college than their male counterparts. There are more women being employed ahead of males the same age. Millennial gals are making more money than Millennial guys. Search on any of these topics if you don’t believe me.
While this is great for the girls, where does this leave these boys?
There was a Public Service Announcement (PSA) the other day on the radio about an organization called “fatherhood.gov”. The “.gov” implies a government agency, which means our tax dollars pay for it.
In perusing the site that day, there were a whole lot of nonsensical stuff teaching dads how to feminize their male children even further. “Take time to be a dad today”, “how to play board games”, “build gingerbread houses”, “roasting pumpkin seeds” were articles and “resources” I found on the website.
In researching the history of what I find to be this modern phenomenon, it seems these types of organizations came in to being in the 90’s – about the same time we realized we had gone too far with erasing what boys are perhaps?
I’m not a sociologist, but the timing is about right.
People poke fun about country people, but dads in the country take their boys hunting and fishing, they learn how to operate chainsaws and ATV’s (All Terrain Vehicles), they also learn how to be the “head” of the family.
All of these activities teach a myriad of life skills whether that’s the intent or not.
Not all country people do this, but a good many do and that tradition is handed down from one generation to the next. It’s not chauvinistic or sexist; it’s necessary for survival in the country.
Especially in extreme rural areas.
Now it wasn’t clear just who the intended audience was for the “fatherhood.gov” website as it was steeped in the politically correct, “inclusive” language an administrative government body would put online. But pay attention to this idea, and remember this is your government providing the information.
Let this next bit from the website settle in:
“It’s never too early to begin teaching children how to be caring, confident, self- aware and respectful of those around them. Of course parents are a child’s first teacher in teaching character lessons, but moms and dads should be pleased and confident in knowing many schools across America as well as pre-schools and daycare settings are teaching and reinforcing these efforts as well.”
Who is parenting right now?
Millennials are parenting young families right now.
Dear Millennial: They’ve already indoctrinated you with the character they wanted you to have and they are telling you that they will continue to dispense it.
What are you going to do about it?
It seems the institutions (that would be your government schools) that took over socializing boys now realize they have a whole lot of young men who don’t know how to naturally father or to be men.
Interestingly enough, there isn’t a motherhood.gov.
Whatever Happened to Shop?
Once upon a time, a guy could take classes in high school where he learned how to weld things (use extreme heat to bind two metal surfaces together), how to make things from wood (woodworking), how to do basic electrical wiring, car repair, how to do basic plumbing.
The class was called “Shop” (Workshop classes).
These classes assumed that students who attended them were not necessarily college bound and more than likely would enter the “trades” professions (skilled workers or tradesmen).
What was even more interesting, is that often times the instructors were skilled workers in the field they were teaching, for example the woodworking instructor actually built houses for a living and built fine furniture for fun.
What incredible role models to learn from.
All of that is gone now and started to disappear about the same time Home-Ec (Home Economics) (I’ll get to this in a minute) did, in the late 70’s and early 80’s.
Why?
Perhaps it was because these skilled workers could actually do something and were some sort of threat to “teachers”.
Or, perhaps they were members of labor unions and not the teacher’s union (National Education Association) (NEA1).
Or, perhaps because they didn’t have the “teaching credentials” needed for the indoctrination happening in the schools.
You won’t find the real reason, because I spent a bit of time looking for a reason like one these.
These folks generally were practical and self-reliant types.
Not the role models the NEA was looking for.
Your guess is as good as mine as to why these instructors were banished from American schools.
Instead, in 1994, in American high schools, “Shop” (Workshop classes) and “Home Economics” (Home-Ec) was replaced with “Family and Consumer Sciences” (FCS).
Whatever Happened to Home-Ec?
Once upon a time, a girl could take classes in high school where she learned how to cook, sew, garden, and throw a “proper party”, basic first aid. The class was called “Home Economics” (Home-Ec).
These classes assumed that girls would be homemakers.
These classes also assumed a prerequisite in that students were already familiar with some things – taught at home, moms taught daughters the basics back then.
In the 1960’s and into the ‘70’s these classes became more specialized and girls were taught how to make some pretty elaborate food and clothing.
But with the beginnings of the feminist movement, these kinds of classes were thought of as anti-feminist and keeping women stereotyped and many gals avoided Home-Ec.
When I went to high school in the late ‘70’s, I was always pretty impressed with what the Home-Ec gals could do, as a college-prep student however, I learned what they were learning, but on my own time, not school time.
The gals who were in Home-Ec often, ended up marrying their high school sweet hearts (and are still married to them today) and raising a family as the rest of us went off to college in the late ‘70’s and early ‘80’s.
As our generation started having children, Home-Ec began to disappear from the schools, in fact Home-Ec was re-branded “Family and Consumer Sciences” (FCS) in 1994.
In 1994, Family and Consumer Sciences addressed personal finance, healthy relationships and child development.
None of which the public school system should have been teaching in my opinion.
These are topics that should have been taught by parents.
I did in my homeschool.
Nine specific goals, developed in 1994 by the Family and Consumer Sciences Division of the American Vocational Association (now the Association for Career and Technical Education [ACTE]) provide the direction for curriculum:
Strengthen the well-being of individuals and families across the life span.
Become responsible citizens and leaders for family, community, and work settings.
Promote optimal nutrition and wellness across the life span.
Manage resources to meet the material needs of individuals and families.
Balance personal, home, family, and work lives.
Use critical and creative thinking skills to address problems in diverse family, community, and work environments.
Foster successful life management, employment, and career development.
Function as providers and consumers of goods and services for families.
Appreciate human worth and accept responsibility for one's actions and success in family and work life.
These goals guided the development of national family and consumer sciences content standards during the 1990s.
More modern FCS classes cover sustainable eating (whatever that is), composting, community gardening, and hydroponics.
Instead of actually cooking meals, they instead “build confidence to experiment in the kitchen, burned edges can be cut off etc.”.
Coddling (to treat with extreme or excessive care or kindness : pamper) in my book.
And if you want to know when “wokeness” started in your public schools, there it is.
I imagine Millennial high school age guys were encouraged to attend “Family and Consumer Sciences” (FCS) classes just as the girls were.
If this is true, I also imagine there was a fair bit of “wussifying of the male-child” that went on in these classes when the boys did attend, so the girls would feel “empowered”. (How lonely are these “empowered” women now?)
I don’t really know if this is true.
I just know what I see.
I was homeschooling remember?
I made sure my Millennial knew stuff from both Home-Ec and Shop, long before “high school”.
Do you know how to fix a toilette?
Make excellent mac & cheese?
Put oil in your car?
Operate a chainsaw?
Someday you’re going to need to know how to do things for your family, especially as the head of the family.
Below is a list of Ten Things All Guys Should Know.
I’ll get to Ten Things All Gals Should Know in a minute.
Are my “Ten Things” lists sexist?
Yes, they are.
How awful is that?
Ten Things All Guys Should Know
How to maintain and drive a car. This means how to change a tire, replace a car battery, change the oil, and add windshield washer fluid, change windshield wipers.
How to acquire and read road maps and be able to use a compass. Sometime you might not have GPS.
How to load, care for and safely shoot a gun. This means not holding it sideways like you see all the “gansta’s” doing.
How to hunt and fish and then clean and cook what you caught.
How to groom yourself and how to tie a tie.
How to camp and survive in the woods. This includes starting a fire without matches, finding water and making it safe to drink, be able to build a watertight shelter.
How to use hand and power tools. This includes a hammer, handsaw, wrenches, planer to shape wood and screwdriver; it also includes a drill, jigsaw, circular saw, table saw, miter saw. In addition, you need to know what woods and materials are used for basic building, remodeling and repairs.
How to correctly and safely cut down a tree. This includes operation of chain saw, but also how to split wood for firewood and how to identify hard wood from soft woods. Hint: Evergreens can be dangerous to use as firewood.
How to maintain a yard, including cutting grass, collecting and disposing of yard waste and calculating the mulch you’ll need and how to apply it.
How to prepare ten go-to recipes from memory.
List acquired from my favorite, “well seasoned” man.
Learning these tasks may take you entirely out of your comfort zone, but guess what, you may just evolve.
Fun facts, in 1970, Americans spent twenty-six percent of their food budget on food away from home. That figure increased to forty-three percent in 2012 and in 2014, Americans spent fifty percent of their food budget on food away from home.
Is it because nobody knows how to cook anymore?
I cannot stress the importance of self-reliance.
Ten Things All Gals Should Know
I periodically see lists of things women should know, these lists get into a FemiNazi (this word emerged in the 1990's, was popularized by political commentator Rush Limbaugh, to mean a radical or militant-feminist who is intolerant of opposing views) rants or bedroom goodies, or makeup secrets, that’s all fine and dandy for magazine sales, but cater to a superficial life.
None of these lists are useful to a self-reliant life.
Here’s a list you’ll never see today and I challenge you to try to learn each one because with each one you’re going to acquire some new life skill sets:
How to start a basil plant, transplant it to a garden, grow it to maturity and then use it in a homemade pasta sauce. Ditto with a tomato plant.
How to distract a child from something bad that he wants, towards something you want, using only your words and he has no idea that you just did that; And if you can do it with just a look on your face, even better.
How to fold a fitted sheet so it sits squarely on top of the top sheet and pillowcases.
How to make strawberry jam from fresh strawberries. Or pick your favorite fruit.
How to can fresh tomatoes, green beans and corn.
How to cook an egg ten different ways.
How to sew on a button, patch a hole in jeans, sew a tear in a seam invisibly.
How to bake a loaf of bread without using a bread machine.
How to season a cast iron pan and then make a folded cheese omelet in it without it sticking to the pan.
How to prepare ten go-to recipes from memory.
Just think, if, in a marriage, both parties brought these skills, you’d have 20 go-to meals. That’s almost a month’s worth. Think of the money you’d save.
BOOKS
100 Recipes Every Woman Should Know by Cindi Leive & Editors of Glamour.
How to Sew a Button and Other Nifty Things Your Grandmother Knew by Erin Bried.
How to Build a Fire: And Other Handy Things Your Grandfather Knew by Erin Bried.
Joy of Cooking by Irma S. Rombauer (Author), Marion Rombauer Becker (Author), Ethan Becker (Author)
The Useful Book: 201 Life Skills They Used to Teach in Home Ec and Shop by David Bowers and Sharon Bowers.
I relate to what you are saying. Many people don't seem to know that you can make popcorn without a microwave. There are a couple things on your gal list that I struggle with however, folding a fitted sheet neatly being one of them.
Great lists. I can probably do more on the men’s list than the woman’s list but am sadly lacking in both. I wish they’d never gotten rid of shop class, both my sons could have benefitted.