Family Gender Roles Essay

Society is made up of many institutions that influence interactions between various people all over the world. Family is one of these institutions and is very important to society. It, along with other institutions like language, and culture, is what distinguishes out species from others. Within a family there are specific gender roles that are assumed to be displayed. Males are meant to be the primary breadwinners, while females are mean to be the nurturers (ones who care for the children) and the homer-runner. These roles are implemented from a very young tender age. If you walk into a children’s daycare or preschool classroom, you can observe the influence of these family gender roles: three and four years are already displaying the learned …show more content…
According to the United States Census, 14,473,000 children were looked after by a single parent in 2012 (Vespa, Lewis, and Kreider 2013). In India, my cousins usually only lived with their mother and grandparents while their father worked in a different state. As a result, the typical family gender roles were split between their mother and grandparents. In addition to this, the community around them, such as the neighbors, were supportive and helped their mother and grandparents. They would come over with their kids to keep my cousins and grandparents company while my cousins’ mother would work in the store that she was running to help with the immediate finances of the family. Within the Indian culture, there is a saying that everyone follows: atithi devo bhava. This phrase is similar to the Golden Rule within the bible and means “to treat everyone as if they were God.” Because of this typical code of conduct in the Indian culture, people were very accepting that my cousins’ mother cared for my cousins as a single parent. According to Sociology: The Essentials, this is an example of collective behavior, and as a result, new social norms can be established through certain situations (Andersen and Taylor 2013: