role playing

i have a friend in boston who is a feminist. not a fatigues-wearing, sign-toting, lesbian/activist/feminist, mind you. she's really just your garden variety, but she has strongly held convictions about the equality of men & women, and their roles in society, the workplace, families, etc etc. she may tell you, for example, that there really is no reason a woman should have to take a man's last name at marriage. why not have the man take the woman's name, she may argue; why is one widely accepted and the other not? that's an interesting point, but since the beginning of our friendship (and i love her dearly) something about this approach to equality has nagged at me, and i have never been able to put my finger on it... until tank set me straight.

for one thing, as c.s. lewis points out, there is something in us that points us towards our god-given roles. something that makes most women feminine and most men masculine, regardless of our desires. it's akin to our concience. or the something that is within us which tells us we ought to save a man drowning in a river. we know it's dangerous, and we feel safer on the riverbank, but still something is telling us we ought to. we cannot simply pretend there isn't merely because we don't like it- it really is there.

don't believe me? have you ever heard someone say about another couple, "we know who wears the pants in that family!"? what is meant by that statement is not that the person speaking it thinks that one of the partners is more qualified to be the marital leader than the other is, based on some learned principle. what they mean is that the woman is being disrespectful to her husband in some way, and in doing so has brought some measure of embarrassment to the family as a unit (one flesh?). does this demonstrate that we are naturally inclined to think of males as leaders in some sense?

i think it's to do with our roles, as men & women. it's true that equality is important, and that women have suffered serious injustices throughout history, and the repercussions could be felt right up until my own parents' generation. it's probably even a natural reaction for our generation to respond as we have: thinking it right to try to give women the same roles in society that men have, in hopes of putting them in total equality with men. but i think that in the process, we have left something out.

i watch jen as she spends time with bennett, and i see her undeniable maternal connection to him. it's part of her wiring. she was clearly & literally made for this. her body was engineered for it, and her psyche is suited to it. her curves (the beauty of which i had always assumed were intended for me) were designed for baby carrying internally and externally. and there's more: she is more organized and is inclined to do things like cook (note- here, i am only saying she seems to have a more natural inclination to it; i am NOT saying she has a higher responsibility to it).

she finds herself naturally defaulting to habits that our grandparents would have referred to as women's work, while she leaves more physical jobs to me, without really thinking about it. i know some would say that there is some cultural conditioning that causes this, and that's certainly possible, i wouldn't know. but i think there is more at work there than just conditioning.

i have my own natural inclinations. after tank was born, i immediately became more protective. i feel an urge to work harder. i find myself looking after my new family with greater fervor than i expected i would; making sure jen has remembered to take care of herself (she often neglects to eat in favor of looking after bennett). i call her sometimes three times a day to be sure she's ok.

that's weird because we were both so independent prior to having a baby. i fell automatically into the habit of doing more manual (physical) chores: take out the trash, move stuff to the attic, do the yardwork... i drive safer (though i'm still a public menace), and i'm more thoughtful than i was. i don't do all this because i'm particularly nice or because i have any qualities about me that deserve a pat on teh back... it's all part of my wiring. i'm a guy, and i'm wired to fulfill a particular role in a family. maybe the truth is that these traits (and there are many many more i'm sure you can think of) make men & women inherently different; capable of filling particular needs of our children in unique ways. mom's are not more important than dads, but they fill needs that a male parent just can't. just as dad's do the same.

this isn't to say a single dad can't do a great job raising children if he has to, but he still cannot replace the maternal nature of a woman. in the same way, while there are many single moms in this country raising great kids, a woman cannot replace the masculine influence a child needs to develop those traits.

some might be saying, "duh. who doesn't know these things?" and if so, you're right. to some, i'm probably not really saying anything groundbreaking here. but i see lots of friends missing the point of it in their daily lives. if men are created to be something different from women (and i can see little to make me think otherwise) and women are created to be something very different from men, then why do we insist on being the same thing? is there a reason why a man should not be the spiritual leader in a home, as the bible calls him to be? a reason why women should not be the ones setting the guidelines for disciplining children? when we break the molds of our gender roles, might we not be ruining our chances to be what our spouse needs from us? i bet that would spell out trouble in a family, not to mention a marriage.

one funny thing i have noticed about having a baby is that now, i seem to find my wife most attractive when she's playing out her feminine role as my son's mother. i'm not sexist. i don't mind working for women or think of them as somehow inferior. in fact, i think it's the opposite. if you pay attention to the creation account in genesis, god makes the simplest things first; light, then ground & sea... then he moves on to more complicated things, plants, then fish, birds, & livestock. finally on the sixth day, he creates a man. THEN he makes a woman, his crowning achievement. my guess is that he was moving deliberately in order of sophistication.

so the point: it's awesome to be a guy. i love beer and techno gadgets and i hate malls. i love women, they beautiful in all the feminine ways god made them (not just in appearance). we have established that there are things women (generally speaking) are better at, and things men are better at, so is it ok if men are more capable, physically? it's ok if women are more tender hearted & emotional- no one seems to have questioned that. i'm hoping that maybe we can be equals wthout being the same. in the end, the least among us will be the greatest in the kingdom of heaven anyway, so maybe competition over who's "in charge" is probably a futile waste of time. god commands us to serve each other as husband and wife, seeking first the needs of the other, and loving them for how they complete us by being what we cannot be.

here's what i get out of it: our kids should see their parents loving and serving each other, each putting the other's needs first, each valuing the other for their unique contribution to the family. we should be focusing first on healthy relationships with our spouse, and letting our relationship with our kids fall naturally into it's place as a result. your role as a woman or a man is not in jeopardy because a man can never be all that a woman is, and vice-versa.

peace-out...