Zach+B.

Gender Roles in the House

Gender roles play a big part in society and in some households. In the household most people think of stereotypical roles that males and females take part in in the family house. After interviewing my parents I foung out that this is not one hundred percent true their families. They weren’t always going along with these stereotypes. In my Mom’s family, she has a sister and a brother. In the house her and her sister would usually set the table and help clean around the kitchen, while her brother didn’t take part in any of those activies. Also sometimes they used to make a salad or something else for dinner. On the other hand my uncle, their brother would usually take the garbage and occasionally help out in the kitchen. This mostly goes along with most gender stereotypes because the girls are doing the kitchen work while the boy is doing the outdoorsy, more manly stuff. But it doesn’t because my Mom remembered multiple times that he was helping out in the kitchen and taking part in what his sisters did. Also my Mom told me stories that multiple times, her Dad would rush home from work. He would do this so that he was able to cook dinner. Apparently my mom said,”Even though the food wasn’t that good, at least he put the effort in.” In my Dad’s family there was him and his two brothers. Their roles in the house were to take out the garbage and ocasionally set the table. His Family was basically the same scenario as my Mom’s family except there was usually no one but his parents doing the kitchen work. But my Dad remembered that he had set the table a few times when he was a kid. In my family today I have two sisters and a brother. I find that we all do equal amount of work in the house. We all help to set the table and occasionally I will take out the trash. There is no stereotypes about gender in my house because there is nothing that my sisters do around the house that my brother and I don’t do. Gender roles in the house have changed over time. When my parents were kids, I found more of a clear cut pattern. The girls were doing the kitchen work while the boy were taking out the garbage. But there was an exeption because my Grandpa did come home to make dinner, which would be considered going against the gender stereotypes. Then I compared it to my family and I saw a big difference because we are all taking part in everything around the house.

All telling, NO anecdotes makes it duller than it should be. Surely there is a story that captures workplace life as your mother/father saw it. Surely there is a second story that captures the change. Don't blame the interviewee here; go back and ask them to tell a story --MrC

I like all of the examples you gave. I think that you should re-work the transition from the second to last paragraph ( ".....house that my brother and I don't do.") to the last paragraph ("Gender roles in the house......") so that they sound smoother. (Madeline Katz)

I liked the way you compared your mom's upbringing and your dad's. I think you should use the world basically a lot less and i think you need to elaborate on the main idea. Also, give more life to your stories, ask your parents about personal experiences that have affected them. (Micaela Silver)

I like how you included information from all sides of your family: yours, your mom's, and your dad's. However, I feel that you took the same sentence and rewrote it using each person's different experience: you start off quite a few sentences with something like "in my family, i have two sisters and one brother" so it gets a little repetitive. ---Tamsin

I like how you compared your family to your mom and dad's and gave personal experiences like setting the table. You gave good examples, but maybe you can expand on one of them and tell a story about it. (Nicole)

You should say some more about your life. I liked how you used the rest of your family. (Jordan)