Society is made up of many institutions that influence interactions between various people all over the world. Family is one of these institutions and is very important to society. It, along with other institutions like language, and culture, is what distinguishes out species from others. Within a family there are specific gender roles that are assumed to be displayed. Males are meant to be the primary breadwinners, while females are mean to be the nurturers (ones who care for the children) and the homer-runner. These roles are implemented from a very young tender age. If you walk into a children’s daycare or preschool classroom, you can observe the influence of these family gender roles: three and four years are already displaying the learned gender roles. The girls are playing with various dolls, pretending to cook with the toy cooking set, or playing “house” that is pretending to be a housewife and taking care of the entire family. On the opposite spectrum, we see young boys playing with cars and performing more physical activities. If you observe a primary school, you observe that the boys are playing sports out in the field and courts while the girls are braiding hair and gossiping. The gender roles are also seen later in life. If you examine the graduating seniors at most universities, you notice that the majority of the STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) majors are men and women are mostly in humanities. This is the social norm that is expected from both genders: males are supposed to work and take care of the finances for the family, while the females are in the home, or at the park, taking care of their troublesome children. Society functions in a certain way and gender roles have become a necessity, especially within a family. However, in the future, relying on gender roles to help society function can completely change. There may be more shared roles between the genders rather than concrete and defined family roles. We can use the small changes that are evident in our past and present to predict what the future will hold. Various organisms, especially mammals, have evolved through natural selection to have two genders (male and females) with their respective biological roles. To create more genetically diverse offspring, males and females mate rather than self-replicating and creating genetically same offspring. However, before this evolution, there were no concepts of genders: there were no females or males. Instead, two of the same organism would exchange DNA with one another. This can be considered as the beginning of the notion of mating. In humans and other mammals, we see two genders whereas other simpler organisms such as earthworms don’t belong to any gender as they have organs that pertain to both the male and female genders. Through observations in biology, the male gender of any species are considered to be stronger. As a result, during the rise of agriculture in 5,000 BC, men naturally became the farmers as they were biologically more capable of working with the
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According to the United States Census, 14,473,000 children were looked after by a single parent in 2012 (Vespa, Lewis, and Kreider 2013). In India, my cousins usually only lived with their mother and grandparents while their father worked in a different state. As a result, the typical family gender roles were split between their mother and grandparents. In addition to this, the community around them, such as the neighbors, were supportive and helped their mother and grandparents. They would come over with their kids to keep my cousins and grandparents company while my cousins’ mother would work in the store that she was running to help with the immediate finances of the family. Within the Indian culture, there is a saying that everyone follows: atithi devo bhava. This phrase is similar to the Golden Rule within the bible and means “to treat everyone as if they were God.” Because of this typical code of conduct in the Indian culture, people were very accepting that my cousins’ mother cared for my cousins as a single parent. According to Sociology: The Essentials, this is an example of collective behavior, and as a result, new social norms can be established through certain situations (Andersen and Taylor 2013:
According to the United States Census, 14,473,000 children were looked after by a single parent in 2012 (Vespa, Lewis, and Kreider 2013). In India, my cousins usually only lived with their mother and grandparents while their father worked in a different state. As a result, the typical family gender roles were split between their mother and grandparents. In addition to this, the community around them, such as the neighbors, were supportive and helped their mother and grandparents. They would come over with their kids to keep my cousins and grandparents company while my cousins’ mother would work in the store that she was running to help with the immediate finances of the family. Within the Indian culture, there is a saying that everyone follows: atithi devo bhava. This phrase is similar to the Golden Rule within the bible and means “to treat everyone as if they were God.” Because of this typical code of conduct in the Indian culture, people were very accepting that my cousins’ mother cared for my cousins as a single parent. According to Sociology: The Essentials, this is an example of collective behavior, and as a result, new social norms can be established through certain situations (Andersen and Taylor 2013: