by John Graham

Created on: October 25, 2008

Gender defines who we are and how we conduct our lives.

We are not all the same. Men and women are not equal despite what political correctness and certain activists would have us believe. That is not to say that one is better than the other, but we cannot all be squeezed into the same pot.

My wife works outside the home while I write at home. Thus, I take complete care of our twin daughters (now two) during the day while she takes over in the evening. It is perhaps the reverse of traditional roles twenty years ago. I feed, change and bathe the children, care for their hurts and do a lot of the cleaning and ironing while my wife is the principal breadwinner.

However, I am more logical than my wife while she is more of a feeling person. That comes from our different genders, which in our youth persuaded us to study different disciplines. I was trained in mathematics and nuclear science and my wife took law and communication sciences. Fortunately our traits are complementary and our children benefit. I tend to be more organized while my wife allows far greater freedom. There is, of course, a great overlap in our behaviors, nothing is black and white. We both like music as well as art and drama. We like reading, exercising the mind and body, and cleanliness. We just do all these things in different ways.

The children copy both of us so I am surprised occasionally when our girls enjoy dressing and undressing themselves and each other. I expect them to stay dressed. My wife on the other hand is surprised at how much they like wiping the table and picking up and disposing of garbage. These are small characteristics but they emphasize how differently my wife and I behave because of our genders. The children magnify how different we are and how differently we behave.

In my previous marriage, forty years ago, I was the breadwinner and I was often away on business travel while my wife was a stay-at-home mother to our children. I rarely cooked and never did household cleaning. That didn't seem to affect our children. Both our son and our daughter grew up to be very successful, talented, and nice people. Gender differences were the norm in our household.

A reversal of those roles of breadwinner and home keeper, might have hidden the differences of man and woman but they have not. I can affirm most definitely that gender defines who we are and how we conduct our lives.

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