Gender and Parenting - Essay Example

Individuals should perceive families beyond their individual experiences and further than family structure. There are gender differences and relationships that exist in the parent-child setting in every family. In the book, “Families and their social worlds,” Gender roles have been defined to mean the beliefs regarding the manner in which community, familial, individual, and societal roles have been viewed. Historically, gender roles common in conventional families view the male as the sole breadwinner, while the female is associated with housekeeping and childcare.

Further, masculinity is linked with aggressiveness, assertiveness, and independence. On the other hand, femininity is linked to being sensitive, emotional, and nurturing, and therefore females are good at taking care of children than men. The male traits make them more successful at the workplace than females. Women seem to show more empathy compared to men, while men seem to be more assertive. From this point of view, the society expects the man to focus on work while the woman focuses on childbearing (Seccombe 35).

Psychological parents hold major emotional responsibility for safety and upbringing. Patience is a value needed in raising children particularly from the caregiver. Mothers display most traits of patience in children more often. They tend to give more chances to children if such children behave inappropriately. On the other hand, fathers are less patient and may hand out punishments quicker than mothers, who are always compassionate when a baby cries. Traditional parents have brought up most young people.

However, a big percentage of them feel closest to their mothers than to their fathers. Averagely, mothers spent more time, having more heart-to-heart talks with their children. To them, this is the best way to care, while fathers want to be at home and provide, wherever need be. Mothers do not work fulltime, but tend to be overprotective by staying around their children. On the other hand, fathers are more overprotective to their daughters as compared to their sons. There is a drastic change from the stereotypes in history that mothers should stay at home while fathers go to work.

Both fathers and mothers usually express equal attitudes towards parenting. Even though today’s mothers work far away from their homes, a second shift is often felt, where mothers get home from work and engage in domestic tasks. Due to this, children feel more emotional nearness to mothers than fathers who after work will have little with domestic issues. According to Seccombe (58), bringing up children is a complex mix of love and work, where the relationship between the two is extremely significant.

There is a noticeable effect on the children’s attachment to both parents. It is very vital for fathers to have a good relationship with their children. It is clear that parenting by fathers relate to the quality of most relationships with an intimate partner. Further, parenting by fathers help children to perceive themselves as people who can be able to form secure and close relationships. Mothers spend quality time with their children and also multitask a lot, have a more firm timetable, more physical labor, and are more responsible when it comes to issues with kids than fathers.

Such differences in gender especially