Gender Roles

Gender roles play an important part in society. However, I think that traditional gender roles change all of the time. For instance, men are to be looked at as the "breadwinner" on the family, while the wife is depicted as the "homemaker." Nowadays, women are out in the workforce making money and are spending less time in the house. My parents, for example, work hard at their fulltime jobs. Yet, my father has been working at the same place for twenty-two years, while my mom is flexible with the doctors that she assists. Both of my parents are away from home equally. As I was growing up, I started seeing my father more at home and doing the domestic work. He would do the dishes, laundry, and scrub the toilets. When my mom would get home from work, dinner would be ready for the family to eat. I always thought that it was odd that my father and I aren't as close as we should be, considering all of the time that we spent with each other.
I wouldn't necessarily call this my very first peer group, but this is one that I can remember vividly. The playground at my elementary school was divided; kindergarten through third grade had one, and fourth through sixth had their own. When I was in the fourth grade, there was a kickball field on our side of the playground. However, all of the older boys played on it. I had a group of ten or so friends that were all girls. We had been together since kindergarten. We had asked the boys many times if he could join them or at least alternate days to have the field. Of course we couldn't come up with a compromise, so the group of girls and I made up our own field. We used sweatshirts and books as bases and we provided our own ball.
For the remaining time in elementary school, we used that field everyday of the school year. I remember towards the end of sixth grade, we challenged the boys to a tournament. By that time, we had practiced everyday and we were ready to face them. It seemed like a big even because all of the sixth grade... [continues]

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