Days 161-162: Gender in Our Lives

I have been thinking a lot about gender of late, in part because of the new baby boy coming to take his place in our family soon, and in part because Marshall and his wife found out today that they are having a baby girl, which I find to be very exciting news :)

Then, tonight, I came across an article about a family that has decided not to reveal the gender of their child to anyone until the child is old enough to make a decision about what gender he/she most identifies with and is able to tell people for him/herself what the gender is.  The baby is named Storm and not even the grandparents know if it is a boy or a girl, even though the baby is several months old.

The parents are making the argument that as parents we force too much on our children, and children should be allowed to come to these decisions naturally, but the article made me think more about how our gender affects us than about parenting techniques.

I think that one of the core elements required for a successful marriage is the successful navigation of gender-related differences between the husband and the wife.  The longer we are married, the better I get at this, but we both tend to ignore some issues related to gender and to exaggerate other issues.

When you get right down to it, while you can clearly identify some of our characteristics as being at least gender-driven if not entirely as a result of our gender, other things are less clear.  Do my daughter and I love shoes because we are girls, or is it just a part of our personality?  Does Barney enjoy yard work so much because he is a guy or is that just a part of his personality?

Those questions probably cannot be reliably answered and would receive a variety of answers if discussed with sociologists or psychologists.  The more relevant question then is how can we best navigate our differences that put us on opposing sides of the gender spectrum in a way that is healthiest to our marriage?  One thing I know is that we first recognize our gender differences and then learn to appreciate the different strengths that this brings to our marriage instead of focusing on the negative aspects that drive each other crazy.

My goal here is to learn to appreciate those areas in which Barney's masculinity and maleness serves to enhance my life, such as his willingness to kill snakes and bugs, tackle home improvement projects, teach the kids to play sports, and take out the trashes rather than focusing on the other areas of what I consider to be his "boyness" that I find to be somewhat less appealing and thus easier to focus on.  I also want to get better at encouraging his interests outside our of mutual interests that are more masculine in nature and thus less appealing to me.