I have often said that the gender roles described in the Proclamation are unnecessary because either they are descriptive (meaning people naturally behave this way, so who cares) or prescriptive (meaning, people should behave this way, but if it’s not natural to them, they won’t anyway and you can’t make them). This perspective neutralizes the power of gender roles whichever way you look at it. But what if gender roles can’t be neutral? What if telling a group of people that their kind behave a certain way actually changes behavior from its natural course? Is this influence ameliorative or detrimental? As a social experiment, what are its fruits?
As it turns out, the more you remind people of the expectations of society, the more you modify their course in life, and these expectations are so strongly ingrained that they begin before a baby is even born! Sociologist Emily Kane surveyed prospective parents:
[G]irls were wanted because of the emotional connection they would provide. Only a daughter would be inclined to emotional intimacy and the remembering of birthdays, was the unspoken assumption. Not yet conceived, and already the sons were off the hook for remembering to call or send birthday flowers.
When babies were born, parents of boys expressed “pride” whereas parents of girls expressed “joy.” The expectation was already clear that male children would enhance social standing in the world while female children would develop stronger family attachments. Even when parents have attempted to raise their children in a gender-neutral environment, society intrudes. Children are especially vulnerable to the natural sorting into gender that reaches its peak between ages 5 and 7 (after this age, children begin to see that there is more fluidity to gender roles than they had thought).
As parents who made the attempt to raise their children in a completely gender-neutral way discovered, the playground will fill in the social expectations they’ve tried so hard to hide:
[O]ur son Jeremy, then age four, . . . decided to wear barrettes (hair slides) to nursery school. Several times that day, another little boy told Jeremy that he, Jeremy, must be a girl because ‘only girls wear barrettes.’ After trying to explain to this child that ‘wearing barrettes doesn’t matter’ and that ‘being a boy means having a penis and testicles,’ Jeremy finally pulled down his pants as a way of making his point more convincingly. The other child was not impressed. He simply said, ‘Everybody has a penis; only girls wear barrettes.’
Although gender sorting can seem like it’s a way to create a comfortable and equal space for both sexes to flourish, parents and society systematically devalue the feminine by limiting boys’ access to it. It’s not just barrettes. While it’s acceptable and admirable for a girl to be a tomboy, there is no acceptable version for boys. “Sissy” is considered negative. “You hit like a girl” is not a compliment.
One of my team members in Asia was a female Indian executive. We would meet for dinner when I came to Bangalore on business. She explained to me that from a young age she was ambitious and wanted to have a business career, so she deliberately dressed like a boy. She didn’t want to be seen as a “mere girl” who could be easily dismissed and not taken seriously by her family. She only wore pants and avoided wearing too much makeup. She wore shirts that were more masculine button down shirts rather than pretty ones. She deliberately lowered her voice so that she wouldn’t sound too feminine. Her tactics are a reaction to something called Stereotype Threat. When girls get the clear message that what boys do is more valuable, they may deliberately try to avoid “girly” things so they are not lumped in with the losing team.
According to Wikipedia:
Stereotype threat is a situational predicament in which people are or feel themselves to be at risk of conforming to stereotypes about their social group. Since its introduction into the academic literature, stereotype threat has become one of the most widely studied topics in the field of social psychology. Stereotype threat has been shown to reduce the performance of individuals who belong to negatively stereotyped groups. If negative stereotypes are present regarding a specific group, group members are likely to become anxious about their performance, which may hinder their ability to perform at their maximum level. For example, stereotype threat can lower the intellectual performance of African Americans taking the SAT test used for college entrance in the United States due to the stereotype that African Americans are less intelligent than other groups. [1] Importantly, the individual does not need to subscribe to the stereotype for it to be activated. It is hypothesized that the mechanism through which anxiety (induced by the activation of the stereotype) decreases performance is by depleting working memory (especially the phonological aspects of the working memory system).
The movie Hidden Figures is based on the true story of three mathematically brilliant African American women who overcome severe stereotype threat as well as very real discrimination to do what they saw as their patriotic duty to contribute to the space program. It’s a fascinating portrait. I was personally very interested because my dad worked on the space program. He was one of those white male engineers, doing those difficult manual calculations in the days before computers. [2] These are the stories told by the movie.
The stories that aren’t told, the ones that are implied, are the stories of all the African Americans and women who didn’t go into fields dominated by men, who believed from a young age that “math is hard” or “girls aren’t good at math” or that they shouldn’t or couldn’t out-perform a man if they wanted to get married. In other words, gender roles create stereotype threat, and stereotype threat alters performance.
In the book Delusions of Gender, author Cordelia Fine cites many studies that demonstrate the negative effects of stereotype threat. Interestingly, stereotypes are so deeply embedded in our culture that women’s performance was impacted merely by asking them to indicate their sex at the beginning of a math test. Impacts were more significant when participants were told that their sex did worse than the other sex. Studies that avoided negative impacts focused on other qualities of the participants such as beginning with statements that students from their alma mater tended to do well on this test. This type of “priming” was consistently shown to impact results.
When the environment makes gender salient, there is a ripple effect on the mind. We start to think of ourselves in terms of our gender, and stereotypes and social expectations become more prominent in the mind. This can change self-perception, alter interests, debilitate or enhance ability, and trigger unintentional discrimination. In other words, the social context influences who you are, how you think and what you do.
These changes can actually alter our brain development.
The insight that thinking, behaviour, and experiences change the brain, directly, or through changes in genetic activity, seems to strip the word ‘hardwiring’ of much useful meaning. Biology itself is socially influenced and defined; it changes and develops in interaction with and response to our minds and environment, as our behaviors do.
Repeated overt references to men and women being inherently different or suited to different roles is something psychologists call “priming.” It’s bringing those latent attitudes to the surface where they alter behaviors and can even change the course of someone’s life.
“Cultural beliefs about gender act like a weight on the scale that modestly but systematically differentiates the behavior and evaluations of otherwise similar men and women. . . . The small biasing effects accumulate over careers and lifetimes to result in substantially different behavioral paths and social outcomes for men and women who are otherwise similar in social background.” Sociologists Cecilia Ridgeway and Shelley Correll
Which brings us back to the Proclamation. The gender roles in this document are “priming” each gender to believe that their group behaves a certain way. In the case of the Proclamation, it doesn’t say that women aren’t leaders; it only says “men preside” without referencing the leadership skills of women. It doesn’t say “men aren’t nurturing.” It just stakes this out as the purview and responsibility of women. This type of priming can cause several negative traits to emerge.
Among those who feel the gender stereotypes fit them comfortably:
- Perfectionism
- Pride
- Judgmentalism
- Exaggerated conformity (e.g. primary voice for women or dominating behavior for men)
Among those who feel the stereotypes don’t fit them:
- Anxiety
- Exaggerated non-conformity
For those raised in very gender-role focused homes, there is also substantial bias against males who act in “female” ways, being nurturing, exhibiting lower ambition, or helping in domestic tasks. We hear this nervousness when men joke about their ineptitude at domestic tasks or childcare. This joking enables them to distance themselves from the horror of being viewed as female. While there may be bias against women who act in traditional male ways, the bias is generally couched in terms of impacts to men or a woman’s ability to attract a mate. The male traits (ambition, leadership, decisiveness) are still seen as largely positive. So if a woman acts like a woman, she’s fine. If she acts like a man, she’s trading up. If a man acts like a man, he’s fine. If he acts like a woman, whoa. Women are on the losing team in a sexist world.
Proponents of gender stereotypes usually resort to the argument that biological differences are behind the performance gaps, that gender is essential or eternal. Or to put it another way, women are inherently dumber (less logical or rational) and weaker and more passive than men, and men are just somehow innately unskilled at domesticity and parenting. These gender biases are so strong that even if a person believes in equality, it’s difficult to get around them.
But again, scientific studies show that these characteristics are simply not innate. A few examples:
- Babies are said to prefer a woman’s face to a man’s because women are inherently more nurturing. But studies show this is a byproduct of the sex of the baby’s primary caregiver. When males are the primary caregivers, the babies’ view naturally gravitates toward men. Even in infancy, socialization drives the behavior. Guess what–babies are also racist, preferring faces with similar race to their primary caregiver. This isn’t evidence of the mysterious female nurturing gene.
- The ratio of males to females at the high end of performance is something that changes from country to country. If these were innate, based on biological factors, they would not be influenced by social and cultural factors.
- Brain scans that purport to show brain activity linked with “empathizing” were replicated in brain scans on a dead salmon, showing that the statistical thresholds used in neuroimaging studies are not adequate.
- Studies that showed sex differences between men and women consistently had much smaller sample sizes and conclusions were often unrelated to the actual materials of the original study upon closer inspection.
- One study showed that female monkeys chose to play with a frying pan more often than male monkeys did. The study failed to mention that the objects were not presented neutrally to the animals (giving them encouragement to take the preferred object) or the fact that monkeys don’t cook, so a frying pan holds no significance to them.
- A study that initially showed that women performed better at empathy tasks quickly equalized performance by paying men $2 for every correct answer they got. Looks like men had the natural skill all along, but were content to let others do the empathy work until they got something for it.
Fine summed it up succinctly when cataloging the gaping holes in the so-called scientific studies cited by gender essentialists:
There is something a little curious . . . . It is a bit like that of the wife who determinedly overlooks the plentiful signs that her husband is shifty, unreliable and worthless, while inflating the significance of occasional dependable behavior.
And the problems with these pseudo-scientific studies is that they are used to limit women’s equal access to power, education, and opportunity:
The findings of Victorian scientists and medical men of the day were ‘a key source of . . . opposition’ to women’s suffrage and equal access to higher education, notes Yale University historian of science Cynthia Russett.
No surprise that the Victorians repressed women, but as it turns out, nothing much has changed.
A recent study by University of Exeter psychologist Thomas Morton and his colleagues asked one group of participants to read the kind of passage that is the bread-and-butter of a certain type of popular gender science book. It presented essentialist theories–that gender difference in thinking and behaviour are biological, stable and immutable–as scientifically established facts. A second group read a similar article, but one in which the claims were presented as being under debate in the scientific community. The ‘fact’ article led people to more strongly endorse biological theories of gender difference, to be more confident that society treat women fairly and to feel less certain that the gender status quo is likely to change. It also left men rather more cavalier about discriminatory practices: compared with men who read the ‘debate’ article, they agreed more with statements like, ‘If I would work in a company where my manager preferred hiring men to women, I would privately support him,’ and ‘If I were a manager in a company myself, I would believe that more often than not, promoting men is a better investment in the future of the company than promoting women.’ They also felt better about themselves–a small consolation indeed to women.
Think about that the next time you hear someone claiming at church that the sexes are different but equal or asserting that women don’t even want opportunities outside the home. (Or as CES claimed not too long ago, that none of their female seminary teachers wanted to work post maternity).
“When a child clings on to a highly desirable toy and claims that his companion ‘doesn’t want to play with it,’ I have found that it is wise to be suspicious.” Cordelia Fine
A belief that gender is essential is not only contradicted by thoughtful scientific study, but it also confirms the biases that inhibit women from achieving. In the movie Hidden Figures, the 3 women featured are exceptional among either sex in terms of their ability. And yet, in every case, they were the first to be let go. The men may be talented engineers, but they are protected by virtue of their great fortune of being male, not by being the smartest, most creative, or most skilled or ambitious person in the room. And in fact, the security and protection they benefit from actually impedes their drive to increase their skills or be more creative. When we suppress female leadership, we get a lot of crappy male leaders (as well as good ones), and we lose a lot of great women leaders whose talents aren’t valued.
Given the existing social pressure in general and the difficulty of encouraging women to be full participants, rather than reinforcing these limiting stereotypes, we should be focusing on every individual’s potential as a daughter or son of God, a spiritual person, an agent capable of acting in faith.
If gender roles in the Proclamation are descriptive of what exists naturally, then we should encourage both women & men to add to those natural skills by showing them examples that don’t conform to stereotypes.
If gender roles in the Proclamation are prescriptive of what should exist, they are unnecessary because they are already pervasive in society. Like Madge says in the Palmolive commercials: “You’re soaking in it.” We don’t need to teach sexism any more than we need to teach materialism.
Instead of teaching gender roles, the studies indicate that we would get better results–among both sexes–by encouraging them to broaden beyond sexist stereotypes. We do this through verbal encouragement as well as example setting. The more we encourage men to be nurturing and women to lead, the more both sexes will be nurturing and both will develop leadership skills; one sex because of society’s encouragement, and the other despite society’s discouragement. We should be in the business of boosting the capabilities of all our people across multi-faceted skills, not restricting them. Eternity is a long time; it’s plenty of time to transcend earthly stereotypes in developing our divine potential. And just think of how exceptional our people will be if we can elevate everyone’s potential and broaden their contributions beyond the limited social borders of gender stereotypes.
Discuss.
[1] Clearly, they’ve never met Andrew S, probably one of the top 3 smartest people I know.
[2] In fairness, he did teach me how to manually calculate a square root when I was 12, and he never made me drink out of a separate coffee pot.
Wheat & Tares 
Thank you for posting this.
My brain has been wired “biologically” male and “biologically” female at different times in my life, thanks to my transitioning genders socially and medically. (Which is not what I was expecting out of life, but no one chooses the medical conditions they have.) It’s given me a lot of perspective on what differences actually exist between men and women.
For instance: My very first day on estrogen, I felt all warm and fuzzy and wanted to hug everything. Now that my brain’s been marinated in it for years, I find it a lot easier to cry, and a lot more cathartic. This is something that would have been humiliating before, but it’s socially acceptable for me now, and I’m glad because it helps me process bad feelings. Conversely, while I was taking heavy-duty anti-androgens I felt sluggish and unmotivated all the time.
At the same time, though, I’ve also learned how pliable bodies are, and how the differences between them aren’t as great as we think. “The Surgery,” for instance, just moves around what’s already there. And everyone has some amount of both estrogen and androgens in their systems. It’s not an either/or thing; it’s more like two separate sliding scales, and their range is more varied than most people think.
I know there are those who want to write me and basically all of my friends and family off, with a “well we don’t know” or something. But we DO know. Medical science knows a great deal about transgender and intersex people. Agender, nonbinary, and other nonconforming people know all about their own lives and preferences. We’re not mysteries that will only be solved in the next life. We’re here. And we’re willing to talk if you’re willing to listen.
I didn’t make it through the whole post, so be gentle if I say something that makes it obvious….
“either … people naturally behave this way … or … people should behave this way, but if it’s not natural to them, they won’t anyway and you can’t make them.”
This dichotomy hangs on so many assumptions regarding the meaning of “natural” and “should”.
For example, the scriptures are VERY clear that the natural man is something that we can and ought to throw off.
Jewelfox’s comments reminds me of a quick bit of research on just how powerful hormones like testosterone and estrogen can be. I listened to a podcast of guy that suddenly lost all of his testosterone and he lost all of his motivation to do anything. He said he wasn’t depressed, just absolutely unmotivated to even go across the room. Then a story of a woman getting a huge initial dose of testosterone in preparation for transitioning to being a male. She was amazed at how focused she was on sex – even getting turned on by the office copy machine.
When the family proclamation came out to me it seemed really simple. I now realize there are all kinds of continuum’s: what your chromosomes are, how your chromosomes are expressed, what gender to you feel you are, what gender(s) you are attracted to. What used to be a binary to me now is a multi-dimensional. I find that fascinating and I also recognize those that don’t fit in one of the 2 general points in this multi-dimensional puzzle have it hard and society is just coming around to accept them.
it’s always been interesting to me that the proclamation is so full of loopholes. They may not all be intentional, but I think it tries to soften the prescriptiveness of gender roles. “equal partners”, “individual adaptation”, the possible disconnect between Earthly and Eternal gender.
But yes, to the OP, it does so often get used to restrict rather than expand. If people want it to be, just about anything can be used as a bludgeon to enforce their outlook.
“If gender roles in the Proclamation are prescriptive of what should exist, they are unnecessary because they are already pervasive in society.” I have thought this same thing, that if we truly believe gender roles and attributes are innate, why bother teaching them? I suppose the counter-argument is that “the world” is trying to unteach the rising generation of the duties associated with their genitalia.
I feel like the same population that gets so outraged at gender transitions is largely the same group perpetuating the demand for them by reinforcing the divide between male and female, giving more reason for individuals to wonder if they are on the “wrong” team. I know that’s oversimplifying it, though.
I think our society is learning that gender is more fluid than we ever could have imagined. I know couples who stay together after one spouse changes gender. One spouse changes their personal gender, one changes their gender attraction. The spouse chose to marry one gender, and then chose to align their gender attraction with the shifting gender of another. According to the best understandings of the subject today, it is best to treat gender like the OP has suggested, by broadening perspectives. You must admit though, there is a place for restriction. The lanes painted on a road, the laws of musical harmony, and gravity are some examples. The OP speaks like restriction is only a negative. What if you look at it more like a tool for accomplishing your goals? A tool can be used correctly and incorrectly. That is an easy thing to reason, but I’d also like to propose another perspective on this matter. The better way to approach inspired documents. There are a couple characteristics of the doctrine surrounding the proclamation that we should consider. What do you get when you add these doctrines together: pre-existence, for-ordination, the veil, the purposes of this life, the word of God, modern day prophets, covenants and personal revelation? (Sorry I’m just trying to get to the point here) I think the truth is, any of us could be anything we choose to follow after. When I add up these doctrines I’ve listed, I find a deeper purpose in life, a divine destiny that transcends any earthly purpose, an answer to who I am destined to become. We could spend millennia exploring the possibilities of how we express our persona, but we can’t because we all have to die sooner or later, and it comes sooner rather than later. In LDS doctrine, we have eternity after this life, but his life is a time to prepare to meet God. It is temporary, just one round, one game level, one chance. We need to make this life count, and that requires wisdom, faith, and hard work. Like a missionary on a mission, we are given temporary assignments to fulfill, and they are never easy. But…they are always fulfilling. The point of the proclamation is to give a North Star, a beacon, to guide us in our quest to not only find, but to seize our divine destiny in this life. Thanks for the discussion.
Happy Hubby, actually I’m reading her next book Testosterone Rex that likewise debunks a lot of the “hormone-driven” studies. In fact, it was shown that it may be more of a reverse causation: when you have power, you produce more testosterone. Even so, when the testosterone went away, the power remained (in the case of a hapless castrated crab). Our bodies are often shaped by social pressures in ways that most people don’t realize.
Jewelfox’s comment reminded me of another passage from Delusions of Gender from Jan Morris, a male to female transsexual describing her post-transition experience: “The more I was treated as a woman, the more woman I became. I adapted willy-nilly. If I was assumed to be incompetent at reversing cars, or opening bottles, oddly incompetent I found myself becoming. If a case was thought too heavy for me, inexplicably, I found it so myself.”
Jeff G: “the scriptures are VERY clear that the natural man is something that we can and ought to throw off.” Yes and no. It says the natural man is an enemy to God (nothing about the natural woman, whew!), but it also says we are the literal sons of God and co-heirs, so where does the natural man end and the inherent divinity begin? There’s not a clear roadmap distinguishing the two.
Angela, the problem is the assumptions. If you assume that the church’s gender stereotypes are reflections of a divine design, then observations about how flawed those stereotypes might be from a scientific angle are useless. It doesn’t matter what science says – God meant for women to be nurturers in the premortal, mortal, and postmortal realm. That is their Role. It doesn’t matter whether a woman is “naturally” disposed towards nurturing or not in mortality, it is her *responsibility* to nurture. If social pressure (via stereotypes) can be used to ensure that girl understands God wants her to nurture in spite of feelings to the contrary, then all the better. Where you say, “rather than reinforcing these limiting stereotypes, we should be focusing on every individual’s potential as a daughter or son of God,” the other person would argue that embracing the stereotype is *exactly* how we fulfill our ultimate potential as a son or daughter of God. Your core identity must be classified as son or daughter, and that determines your roles and responsibilities.
I find the church’s fixation with gender, whether it be roles or stereotypes, baffling. I get that it is an outgrowth of our doctrine on The Family, which in turn is an outgrowth of polygamy and the belief that spirits have babies, but it is utterly silly to me for two reasons.
First, we don’t have even the foggiest idea how things work beyond the grave yet we talk in absolutes (as the Proclamation on the Family does). It’s ridiculous. Some humility on this count would go a long way.
Second, and most meaningful to me, is that, if we take our theology to its logical conclusion, gender is essentially wiped out. We have multiple scriptures about Jesus suffering for all; taking upon himself the infirmities of all, the struggles of all. He did so in order to succor all people who come to him. If we believe that to be the case, then there is no ailment, condition, or mental state which Jesus did not experience and with which he isn’t intimately familiar. If there was even one blind spot then he would be unable to fully succor us and he would cease to be God’s Son. Am I right? As a result, he understands the condition of all females, women, males, men, etc. **fully and completely**. In fact, we could argue that he understands those conditions better than do we, because we haven’t experienced all of the permutations and conditions of someone of our genders. In essence, in Jesus all gender and other labels are swallowed up and become meaningless by becoming equal in Christ, for they all become one in Christ.
So, between our incredibly vague, tiny perspective of our pre- and post-mortal existence, and our theology of Jesus’ atonement, can someone please explain to me why this is a hill on which I must die? Please explain to me why this gives us the license to toss people out of our community or to treat some of God’s children as second-class citizens in his kingdom **when he refused to do so**?
Unfortunately, I don’t anticipate that anything will change on this matter. The church is in full-on worship of the idol of The Family, to the point where we no longer worship the true Christ who is so clearly described in our scriptures. We have changed him, limiting the scope of his atonement because of The Family. That is idol worship and we need to address that fact in order to heal our communities.
Thank you Hawkgrrl. I couldn’t agree more with the overall theme. If a difference is real, it does not need to be taught or enforced. For example, no need to teach and enforce that only women breastfeed. If differences are not real – if, e.g., one wants to exclude women from education or driving a car – well, that difference must be taught and enforced because it is not real.
I’ll add this to the discussion. While the church strongly and repeatedly teaches gender differences in the abstract, increasingly it avoids delving into specifics. As one example, the artwork packets on LDS.org include sections for “Fathers” and “Mothers.” Apart from fathers giving blessings, the two sets are nearly identical. Judging from the images, men and women are primarily nurturers. There’s next to nothing suggesting the PotF roles of presiding, providing (at least providing money), or protecting (at least beyond bicycle falls). Take away gendered clothing and hairstyles and a child wouldn’t pick up on any differences between men and women from this art.
Below is one of my favorite examples of the struggle church leaders have to get specific about gender differences. The quote comes from Elder Christofferson’s October 2013 Conference address. The only logical conclusion that can be drawn from the remarks is that Elder Christofferson believes that men should be tough, coarse, rude, greedy, vain, and seekers of popularity and vanity. That’s pure bunk of course. Thankfully the church does not encourage these attributes in men. But the exercise highlights why its so risky to ever get specific.
****************************
“A third area of concern comes from those who, in the name of equality, want to erase all differences between the masculine and the feminine. Often this takes the form of pushing women to adopt more masculine traits—be more aggressive, tough, and confrontational. It is now common in movies and video games to see women in terribly violent roles, leaving dead bodies and mayhem in their wake. It is soul-numbing to see men in such roles and certainly no less so when women are the ones perpetrating and suffering the violence.
Former Young Women general president Margaret D. Nadauld taught: ‘The world has enough women who are tough; we need women who are tender. There are enough women who are coarse; we need women who are kind. There are enough women who are rude; we need women who are refined. We have enough women of fame and fortune; we need more women of faith. We have enough greed; we need more goodness. We have enough vanity; we need more virtue. We have enough popularity; we need more purity.’ In blurring feminine and masculine differences, we lose the distinct, complementary gifts of women and men that together produce a greater whole.”
This is all about to become very irrelevant in another generation.
Already the technology is here for women to reproduce by cloning without the need for a penis and testes. We are a very long ways away, on the other hand, from men sprouting a uterus and ovaries containing oocytes with the immortal primordial germinal cytoplasm.
When studies and experience show that women are far less violent and prone to war (which will not be an option with the proliferation of nuclear weapons), they will be forced to get rid of us in order to survive. Societies that don’t will be manipulated into being wiped out by each other. Menless cooperative societies will have a strikingly competitive advantage for survival. Already there is a 10 to 1 survival advantage of women over men in deaths from murder and traffic accidents and falling off ladders.
They might keep a few men around in cages at zoos for historical purposes or perhaps a few as pets. I say to the brethern , enjoy the power of your priesthood whilst it lasts because it ain’t going to last much longer.
Well that escalated quickly.
Mike
Fetishize much?
I second orangganjil on this one. We’ve gone way too far making God in our own image and heaven look just like now but without all the other annoying people. Have you ever noticed that all the pictures of families don’t have any teenagers?
Hawkgrrrl,
“so where does the natural man end and the inherent divinity begin? There’s not a clear roadmap distinguishing the two.”
Exactly!!! This is exactly why any dichotomies like those don’t carry much weight: By your own admission, we don’t even know what each option actually entails or rules out.
Skipping right to the bottom to capture a thought before it escapes my increasingly porous brain:
meaning, people should behave this way, but if it’s not natural to them, they won’t anyway and you can’t make them
No, but they can make themselves. The Gospel is supposed to be transformative; the whole idea is for us to desire to, and to push ourselves to, become something that we are currently not. To perfect ourselves, as the Savior charged. Being reminded of this and encouraged to make it a goal is not a bad thing, nor is it a useless endeavor – it is, indeed, the eternal calling of prophets.
That is not to say that the ideals espoused in the Proclamation are the ideal point of arrival, although many of us tend to throw out a lot of good baby with the bathwater that we abhor. I will go back now and read the rest of the post and see where Hawk takes it. 😉
OMGOMGOMG totally ignore my last comment in the context of the post. I should have known better. Not only did I inadvertently agree with Jeff G, which is somewhat rare, but the comment could be misconstrued as implying that people should or could make themselves act in conformity with their respective gender “norms,” which would be the farthest thing from my mind.
Take your hormones, marry whomever you wish, adapt your body as your deepest soul drives you. But repent of your sins and seek to perfect yourself and come unto Christ. That’s what I mean.
Not sure what the big fuss is over. I am a man, and I can generally do a lot more physical labor and do it more efficiently than a woman. On the other hand, I cant bare children and I suck at nurturing with small children. It just shows me we are d3finitely made different and have different advantages over the other but yet are still dependent on each other. Not sure what the point is. The Proclamation says it how it is, nothing more, nothing less.
NewI – I think your comments taken together hit upon something profound. The Gospel is supposed to make us uncomfortable. We are suppose to strive to change who we are into a vision of ourselves only God can really understand. Thus it is God who should be the shaper of our deepest soul, not the church, not the proclamation, not our Bishop, not even (I’d argue) entirely ourselves. When it comes to gender (identity and roles), it seems like we need a lot more personal revelation and a lot less pushing by outside forces.
rob – I have what is generally accepted as a male body, but cannot generally do a lot more physical labor or do it more efficiently than a woman. While I cant bare children, I’m pretty good at nurturing. Am I a failed man?
The problem of the proclamation is that it pushes generalities that aren’t necessarily there, with too little deference for individual differences. As varied as people are, we need to encourage everyone to develop all their talents, not just those “primarily” associated with a particular gender.
I wish the focus of the church wasn’t so much on “men’s duties” and “women’s duties” but on the work to be done and everyone pitching in according to their willingness and talents. It is odd to me that the church genders talents and virtues when Christ (and God!) is supposed to possess all of them.
I have to wonder if Rob read the whole post as his comment is an excellent case in point. It’s also an excellent example of “this has been my experience; ergo it’s everyone’s experience.”
Also, Hawkgrrl, thank you so much for the obvious time and work you put into this. I’ve had something similar I’ve been wanting to write about for a long time, but yours is so much more scholarly and methodical than anything I could write. Great work.
Rob, “On the other hand, I cant bare children and I suck at nurturing with small children.” My husband is awesome at nurturing small kids and I’m awful at it. That’s why he loves serving in Nursery and Primary and chose a career working with kids. Not everyone has the same experiences.
So true Mary Ann. I too have “Nursery” as my favorite calling, but not at all for my wife. I am more patient with kids than my wife. I can sew better than my wife. I have always done all of my own ironing. I have a couple that are friends of mine and she just did a bathroom renovation all by herself – tile, plumbing, etc.
We are all different in different ways. Isn’t that cool!
Now for full disclosures, I don’t stop to ask for directions and when my wife vents about at issue I still often say, “Well here is how you can fix that…”
I never ask for directions, but my wife doesn’t complain about it either because I use GPS way more often than she does! (Google Maps much better than Apple Maps by the way!)
That’s the thing about stereotypes. Sometimes they are true and sometimes not. If we cherry pick them they seem like destiny or universal whereas they clearly are not.
“When girls get the clear message that what boys do is more valuable, they may deliberately try to avoid “girly” things so they are not lumped in with the losing team.”
I totally agree. This is exactly what I find so heartening in the church and discouraging outside the church. The church respects the work of motherhood and those who choose to focus some years in that area are not seen as losers, whereas my experience outside the church has not been so positive. I was at a party with all non-LDS a while back where a female dental student admitted she was interested in oral surgery, but was going to stick with general dentistry because she thought the extra years of training and hours involved would be less conducive to raising a family. Wow, did she get slapped around. Not sure if anyone actually said the word “loser” but she was strongly criticized for such considerations. And she was going to be a dentist!
Someone who chooses the “girly” things deserves as much respect as those who choose traditionally male pursuits.
Yes, it would be great if both parents made family a priority. But let’s not pretend that the physical demands on women who become mothers through gestation are anywhere close to what biological dads experience. I needed two surgeries in order to try to get my body back into some semblance of functionality after 45 months of vomiting and 5 years of diabetes, and I have chronic back issues that require exercise every day and various ongoing treatments the rest of my life. My husband…well had to put up with a sick wife, but was not personally physically impacted. And so I am grateful for the counsel that it is his responsibility to provide.
I don’t think the church pushes stereotypes at all. In April 2008 General Conference, Elder Ballard said, “There is no one perfect way to be a good mother. Each situation is unique. Each mother has different challenges, different skills and abilities, and certainly different children. The choice is different and unique for each mother and each family. ” Marriage and family are important to LDS, but we each are entitled to revelation as to how we should do that in our own lives.
“For those raised in very gender-role focused homes, there is also substantial bias against males who act in “female” ways, being nurturing, exhibiting lower ambition, or helping in domestic tasks..”
Seriously? One of the first things I noticed about Mormon men was how they pitched in with domestic tasks. We had an investigator who was skeptical of sexism in the church and actually tallied how often a crying baby would be taken out by mom or dad–and was very impressed with the dad ratio. In 1995, the same year the PotF was introduced, there was an excellent article, “Work Enough for Two” by Brad Wilcox in which a young newlywed couple work through issues of domestic chores and develop the motto, “There is no such thing as men’s work or women’s work. There’s just work that needs to be done, and we do it together.”
So I am not really seeing the lack of participation in domestic tasks for families who choose a division of labor along gender-role lines.
A few years ago all our stake’s bishops and high counselor families went through the beta-testing of a new marriage relations course for the church. The message that came across time and time again was that the difference in communication style, talents, etc. was greater between individuals than between gender groups. It discouraged Mars/Venus stereotypes.
“We don’t need to teach sexism any more than we need to teach materialism.”
I actually agree…but I don’t think that the gender-based assignments of responsibility in the P0tF is sexism. (but maybe I am just stupid because I don’t really know what those words like feminism and conservative that people throw around are, either.)
I think those responsibilities are actually pretty empowering. They respect the nurturing work that women do. Before the PotF came out, there were times when I felt strongly about taking a certain step regarding our kids. At times, my husband wondered why I was the one to receive revelation about that issue, shouldn’t he? When the PotF came out and was clear that mothers “are primarily responsible” for nurturing children, that really clicked with us, that it was her stewardship. Of course she can delegate parts of it, but she is the one primarily responsible. Having spent time in countries where women are seen as inferior and men in charge of everything, this is a refreshing breath of empowerment for women in those words.
I love the idea that a married couple can be equals even if they have different roles within the family and contribute in different ways. I have non-LDS friends who think that equality is something they can only get by earning income like their husband does. They talk wistfully of wanting to have a second child, or spending more time with a child they have…..but they have to pull their weight, and non-paid work at home is not recognized as work.
Let’s not pretend that there are not negative consequences to teaching that women should do the same things as men.
Naismith,
I imagine it is because I’ve lived most of my life in Utah, but my experience is so much the opposite of yours. I have often heard women put down and degraded for daring to admit that they don’t want to have children. I can’t tell you the number of times I have heard stay at home dad’s referred to as lazy or irresponsible . . . because non-paid work at home is only recognized as work if women are doing it. When I decided to go to graduate school I had multiple women in my ward confess to me that they wished they could do the same but that their husband would never support it. Admittedly, growing up I had leaders who realized that I was very smart and ambitious so they encouraged me to pursue a career, but they told me I shouldn’t look outside of careers like teaching and nursing because those were “mom careers.”
I don’t bring all this up to discount your experience, which I trust is accurate. My point is that the Church does a much better job at appreciating motherhood and homemaking and caretaking than I have seen outside the Church. However, it does a much worse job at appreciating anything women do other than motherhood. I wish we could work on finding a middle ground where both men and women are praised and appreciated for bettering the world based on the talents they actually possess, instead of the talents we want them to possess. Can we in the Church value caretaking enough that men are praised for it instead of called lazy for not having employment? Can we value women enough that they can pursue their talents and dreams that lie outside of motherhood without being considered unrighteous? Just because we excel in one area does not mean we can’t work to do better in others. I think we can do better.
I also have to say that I feel very stereotyped as a woman in the church:
“femininity “is the divine adornment of humanity. It finds expression in your … capacity to love, your spirituality, delicacy, radiance, sensitivity, creativity, charm, graciousness, gentleness, dignity, and quiet strength.” – Principles of Leadership Manual
“Women bring with them into the world a certain virtue, a divine gift that makes them adept at instilling such qualities as faith, courage, empathy, and refinement in relationships and in cultures.” – Elder D. Todd Christofferson, Conference 2013
“Because it is their nature to give and please others, many women do not realize their intrinsic worth.” – Richard G. Scott, Ensign 2008
“To Adam He said, “Hast thou eaten of the tree whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldst not eat?” Now, Adam’s response was characteristic of a man who wants to be perceived as being as close to right as possible. Adam responded, “The woman thou gavest me, and commandest that she should remain with me, she gave me of the fruit of the tree and I did eat.” And the Lord said unto Eve, “What is this thing which thou hast done?” Eve’s response was characteristic of a woman. Her answer was very simple and straightforward: “The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat.” . . . Later, “Adam blessed God … and began to prophesy concerning all the families of the earth, saying: Blessed be the name of God, for because of my transgression my eyes are opened, and in this life I shall have joy, and again in the flesh I shall see God.”13 Adam was thinking about his responsibilities. He was trying to align his performance with the desires of the Lord. Eve said, “Were it not for our transgression we never should have had seed, and never should have known good and evil, and the joy of our redemption, and the eternal life which God giveth unto all the obedient.”14 Eve’s response was characteristic of a woman. She embraced all, wanted to make sure that everyone was considered. One response was not more correct than the other. The two perspectives resulted from the traits inherent in men and women.” – Richard G. Scott, Conference 1996
I do not see myself in these descriptions of how women are. I’m sure many women do. I’m also sure many men do.
Not in response to Naismith particularly, but my thoughts in general:
The real question for me is this: If I don’t naturally possess a quality that I should possess because I’m a woman, am I supposed to put my energy toward developing it at the expense of some of the more “masculine” talents that I naturally possess? If I am capable of making much more money than my husband and he is so much more nurturing than I am, should we ignore our natural talents and pursue a Family Proclamation model because that’s what God wants even if it makes us unhappy and poor?
Naismith, like EBK I trust your experience is accurate. It just hasn’t been my experience. I watch my retired dad laze around watching TV all day, yelling at my mom when dinner is late. He says he’s already done all that’s required of him back when he had a job.
My husband is a good guy, but he’s hard to convince that the kids or house has anything to do with him. He once admitted to me that he considered my 8 am to 10 pm, Mon-Mon, on-call nights housewife-ing to be less demanding than his 40-hour job (which requires frequent standing but not physical labor) — therefore it was fair for him to come home and do nothing. Even when I worked full or part time, he would never get up with the baby because, he said, alertness at his job was more critical than mine. He works in the medical field and I worked for a financial company, so he had a point, but somehow this extended even to weekends and vacation. If I tried to take a Sunday nap, he’d leave the kids and take a nap himself, so I’d just have to get back up. Sure, he takes the kids out of sacrament meeting because he’s bored, but ask him who should take the crying baby out of a movie theater and it’s a different story. There is nothing he’s heard at church that has changed his view. He’s told me several times that his female coworkers are jealous of me for having a husband as “helpful” as he is, referencing that once or twice a month he throws clothes in the washer and sometimes even moves them to the dryer. So, if he is to be believed, his aversion to “women’s work” is typical of Utah County husbands.
I also have a family member who, for health reasons, stays home (no kids) while his wife works. She comes home and cooks dinner (if not traveling), but he scoffs at whipped husbands who come home from work and give their wives a beak from the kids. He laughs at “paintings of Joseph Smith doing effeminate things” (I assume he means Liz Lemon Swindle’s art), and, as Sunday school president, tries to limit the number of female teachers because, he says, he thinks women will get too uppity if they hear from other women in all three block meetings.
I watched an article circulate among LDS friends on Facebook about how to keep your husband happy. One of the items was not overspending “his” money. Nothing wrong with wanting your spouse’s happiness and budgeting, but “his” money?! Those three letters revealed the writer’s feeling that the husband’s financial contributions entitled him to more ownership of the bank account than the wife.
I agree the church does an excellent job of elevating motherhood and validating the choice to stay at home. But staying home ought to truly be a choice. What exactly are we afraid of will happen if we support women seeing if they like and are good at things outside the home?
Laurel, your husband sounds like my Utah-county brother-in-law. We must be related.
Laurel, the experiences you related in your comment are horrifying. Do you think it’s possible that you and your sister ended up in such relationships because of your parents’ attitudes?
I remember when I had my first child, and it was a huge adjustment going from full-time career woman to SAHM. I was plagued by anxiety. After a couple of months of sleepless nights, I asked my husband to give me one or two nights a week on weekends when he would get up with the baby and feed her a bottle so I could sleep. He was incredulous. He didn’t get it. He was resentful. To be fair, he was incredibly supportive in other ways and never complained when I didn’t make dinner or clean even though I was home (paralyzed by anxiety) all day. Before we had children, he would do about 60% of the cooking and I’d do about 60% of the cleaning, so our household management was pretty egalitarian. Now, five years and three kids later, we’ve settled back into a pretty egalitarian rhythm. If I’m honest, he does more for the kids and household than I do when he’s home. He gets up with the baby and lets me sleep when he can. I don’t know how women do it when they have to do all the domestic work themselves. I hate that our church allows these attitudes to thrive.
Someone made a comment to me recently that having a wife stay home is more of a luxury for the man than it is for the woman. I’m grateful I have the opportunity to stay home, but I believe my friend’s statement is accurate.