My parents’ differing actions, words, and behavior played a significant role in shaping my understanding of gender expectations for myself and the perception of gender in the rest of the world. My family of origin is the institution that has the most influence on my personal understanding of gender roles.. This matters because the lack of my dad’s presence majority of the time helped my mom combat a lot of the social conditioning, but then my father would randomly pop in and shove gender stereotypes down our throats causing us to have complexes.
My mother had a very equal mindset while my father did not. My mother was forced to be a single parent so she took on both roles of mother and father. I grew up not knowing where a “woman’s role” ended and a “man’s role” began because she did it all. She taught me about feminist theory by questioning the status quo to promote equality for everyone, not just women.
Growing up my mother did many things to challenge gender roles. One being through gifts she gave us. When I was eight I received a pet sea monkeys kit for my birthday. Stem is stereotypically not encouraged for girls. The box was blue and could be found in the boy’s toy section in the store. When I was 10, for Christmas I received a sling shot (It was taken away four days later for shooting out my neighbor Edna’s window). I did not grow up with a pink bicycle, my brothers didn’t grow up with blue bikes. We had green or orange or red or black. Easter baskets were not color coated pink and blue. They also contained things like potato shooters, soda, cookies and nerf guns not the norm of barbies and race cars.
When it came to choosing our extracurriculars, my mother challenged gender norms by encouraging us to learn, not focused on gender traits while never discouraging our curiosity or passion. She would not let me join Girl Scouts because “There is more to life than learning how to care for babies and cook.” All my siblings and I were signed up for snowboarding and swim lessons. I was put in horseback riding lessons because “You’re not going to be afraid of animals.” No matter what our gender, all activities and sports were an option (with the exception of Girl Scouts). There were no gendered sports and if there was a gendered sport we wanted to play, my mom would fight for that spot. For instance, my freshman year of high school, I wanted to play football. I was told no by the coach. “We don’t have the kind of equipment to keep a girl safe.” I let my mom know, and I was on the team, along with three other girls the following week. My younger sisters played competitive coed hockey from age five to eighteen. My youngest brother was in showchoir. Singing is usually reserved for girls and women. I also never had gendered sport equipment such as pink cleats or pink gloves. My father would take my brothers hunting, I was never allowed.
The tasks around my home growing up were not separated by gender, but instead were set by skill set. My brother and I are allergic to poison ivy so my younger sister mowed the grass because she had no allergies. Mowing grass is typically a male task. Christmas lights were hung not by the man of the house, but by me, the only one not afraid of heights. We all had to learn how to change the oil or a tire on the car before she would let us take our drivers test. I grew up watching and helping with the home maintenance my mother would do, from laying new flooring, painting, and installing doors.
I grew up in overalls, muddy, and barefooted. At my dad’s house, I would get disciplined for having dirt under my fingernails when my brothers did not. To my mother, marriage and babies were never the goal. Education was. Even my father’s family would reinforce gender roles by saying “When are you going to give me grandbabies” as if that was my only job in life. My brother heard “Are you going to play for the NFL?”. Being a mother and being expected to be good at sports are not the same, but to my father’s family it was life.
Emotions were meant to be felt. If my brothers were hurt, they were given the opportunity to cry but not by my father. They were “given something to cry about”, or “suck it up, men don’t cry”. My mother did many things to challenge gender roles when it came to clothing, but my father saw life a different way. I was forced to wear dresses to holiday events. I went through a “tom boy” phase where I only wanted to wear ball caps and my dad would make negative comments “you look like a boy”.
This had such a big impact on who I am as a person now. I have a deep rooted belief that I am capable of anything. I work in a male dominated field. I am the owner of a business. I teach self- defense and coach Brazilian jiu jitsu. I also grapple for recreation. I challenge power, roles, and expectations that are shaped by gender and I often challenge traditional ideas that keep women in less powerful or unfair positions. Traditional ideas like marriage. I am attracted to female lead relationships. I am the head of my household. I make the decisions in my intimate relationships. I am very comfortable as the protector. I also respect women as leaders more than men.
Although I am very grateful how I was raised, I am aware being a white woman raised in a feminist, inclusive home equals privileges. I benefit from racial privilege, meaning society often treats me more fairly just because of the color of my skin. Growing up in a feminist environment, I had access to ideas about equality and self-confidence that helps me challenge unfair stuff. I had more support to pursue my goals without being boxed in by traditional gender roles.
My maternal side mostly spaced how I understand gender, with the occasional social conditioning from my father. Thus highlighting my mother’s way vs my fathers way which is a fantastic example for the broader stereotypical world.
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