by Kim Russell

Created on: November 20, 2009   Last Updated: November 21, 2009

I'm not butch by any stretch of the imagination, and my boyfriend is certainly not effeminate. But hands-down he is chock-full of female qualities, and I am not. He does the shopping, cooking, cleaning, full-time parenting of his teenage daughter - basically does all the things we typically associate with "mothering." He is a nester. He has that instinct. I do not. What does that make me? Besides a very, very, extremely lucky woman, it certainly does not make me male or butch or less of a woman. Our resulting adulthood/middle-age attitudes and approaches to life are combinations of our genetics, our upbringing, society's expectations of us as evolving individuals, and life circumstances.

The question should not be why men are different from women, but, rather, why people can differ so extremely. But it is the question, so, here are some thoughts. My boyfriend (further referred to as BF) was raised in a family that experienced a horrendous and highly conflictual divorce during his teen years. He became the mediator, moderator, peace-keeper and fill-in missing father figure/adult male for his five siblings and his mother. He began at too early of an age learning to plan a meal, rounding up the troops, making sure everyone was where they were supposed to be. I know his father; he is a nice man and was absent from their lives through no fault of his own. With this set of life events in place, BF naturally developed into a tender, caring, sensitive, intuitive, responsible adult. Since I did not know him during or prior to this period in his life, I do not know whether he was predisposed to this type of personality; but, having met his father, I would guess that he was always destined to be a kind, loving, emotional, expressive adult. We will never know whether his ultimate personality would be different if not for the poorly timed and poorly handled divorce of his parents.

I, on the other hand, was raised in an intact family with two younger siblings and two parents who both worked. My mother delegated most of the housekeeping to us kids (she is a terrible housekeeper), but she cooked hot meals, usually more than once a day. My mother is a fantastic cook. She did the shopping and the laundry and she was the official taxi cab for us three kids. She did nurse duty when we were ill. Dad did what he was taught by his father to do - he worked very hard and very long hours to provide financially for his family, but he never did anything that could even remotely be associated

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