Gender tendencies and homosexual misinterpretations

What kinds of gender tendencies do we see in males and females?

Males might include:

Aggressive behavior

Spatial orientation

Competitive

Task oriented

Females might include:

Passive

Cooperative

Detail oriented

Landmark oriented

Nurturing

We recognize each of these behaviors as ones that are generally associated with that gender. From this we can acknowledge that men and women are each blessed with different strengths. The purpose of us having different strengths from one another is so that we can come together, male and female, and be complete.

There are a few things to consider in terms of gender tendencies….. Did those tendencies come as a result of birth or a result of nurture? Studies show over and over again that many of these tendencies are a result from nature. Girls are more naturally inclined to behave more gentle and nurturing while boys are more naturally inclined to be more aggressive and competitive. Because we not only believe in these naturally tendencies but we have seen them proven to be so whether raising our own children or interacting with young children these tendencies do in fact exist. However, there are always children who seem to be, as we would say “different” because do not follow these typical gender tendencies and instead possess many characteristics for the opposite gender. A little girl who likes cars and trucks and rolls around in the dirt is a cute, energetic tom boy but a little boy who plays with dolls, enjoys dressing up and wearing necklaces, and having tea parties is considered wrong and “different”. Why is it okay that girls can take on male typical roles and be fine while boys who take on female typical roles are not accepted at all? Is it really wrong that boys act gentle and like playing with girl intended toys? NO! Of course not! Possessing sensitive and nurturing qualities should never be something to be ashamed of. Do parents really believe that by embracing these characteristics their boys will turn out to be gay? We should never discourage gentleness, kindness, and playing. Every child is different and just because some boys prefer dolls to trucks is no reason to go reading into what that may mean. Some parents have gone over the top to believe that a doll at age 3 accounts to changing the gender orientation of their child. WHAT THE HECK?! Let the boys play with the dolls and the girls play with the trucks but why would we ever want to change the gender identity of a child. We need to stop trying to stop trying to justify behaviors and changing people we need to EMBRACE the gifts and identity that we have been given. Born a boy? Be proud to be a boy. Born a girl? Be proud to be a girl! Am I wrong?!

Family Systems:

Today I want to talk about what systems theory tells us about families. What is systems theory, you might ask? Systems theory is the idea that the family is made up of individual parts that work together as a whole to accomplish something much greater. Each of those pieces that make up the “whole” has a role, rules, and boundaries. Some roles might include mother, father, son, daughter, caregiver, disciplinary, nurturer, fun person, peacemaker, fighter, etc. we take on these roles based on our interactions with our family. Sometimes these roles are chosen and other times they are assigned by others. We can change our roles in the family if we want but it is not easy. When one person’s role in the family changes the rest of the group is affected and has to change to adapt to the change.

Rules that are in a family are often created do to tradition from the parent’s families or habits that have formed within that individual family. Rules are created through families by reinforcement of behavior. When you do something contrary to the family rules you are punished and when you adhere to the rules you are rewarded. Many families have unspoken rules which you learn through the reinforcement of behavior from other family members and eventually those rules just become natural to you and go without saying. An example of this might be the last person to bed turns off the lights….when you are the last person to go to bed and you turn off the lights nothing happens in the morning BUT if you don’t turn off the lights in the morning whoever wakes up first will yell at you for not turning off the lights before you went to bed… this is a reinforcement of behavior and teaches that person that a household rule is to always turn off the lights before going to bed.

Boundaries in a family are generally pretty easy to figure out depending on your relationship with that person. A bad or unstable relationship would be considered to have rigid or unclear boundary (based on the type of conflict of relationship between the two people involved) a good relationship would be considered as having a clear boundary.

Family culture: this is the natural behavior of the family. If we do not have an active plan for determining how to handle certain situations then we will always revert back to the ways that we know for how to deal with things. This would include how our parents handled things while we were growing up or how we handled things in past relationships. Many times people encounter “cycles” that occur in the family- meaning that if we were raised in a verbally abusive family then we will often raise a family in verbal abuse because that is the only way we know how to communicate. We have to break this cycle by actively changing ourselves and determining before we become parents the type of parents that we want to be. It often takes 3-4 generations to break a cycle like this because it’s really hard to change when you grew up in a certain way, you have to adopt a whole new approach to dealing with problems.

In today’s world we are constantly being bombarded with negative messages regarding family life. “It isn’t worth it”, “there’s no point”, “marriage isn’t important”, “you don’t have to be married to have kids”, “non-traditional families are better than traditional families”, “marriage is no longer sacred”, “marriage is no longer between a man and a woman.” These, along with many other messages that are constantly being advertised to people of today’s society are demeaning the sanctity of marriage.

So why are all these negative messages being sent out into society? Why is marriage not very important to today’s generation? Well it isn’t any wonder that the youth of today aren’t excited to get married considering what the media is advertising as “acceptable human behavior”.  It is no surprise when we see couples “hooking up” in one-night stands, moving in together when things get “serious”, having children on accident and either getting married or breaking up because of it, and getting a divorce as soon as things start to get difficult or are no longer “fun” anymore.  Some recent trends in our society that marks a great decline in marriage and relationships include the following: secular beliefs that having more children destroys families, drop in fertility rate, more women entering the workforce- delaying motherhood or reassigning responsibility to other institutes, increase in cohabitating couples and single mothers, decline in marriage rates, etc. To put it bluntly, less people are getting married, and if they are getting married they aren’t getting married until later, and not having many kids when they do. Children deserve more. The world deserves more. We deserve more.