Cause I have a little boy too and I do not want him to be an asshole when he is a man. In the house I grew up in, we didn't really have trad gendre roles, except my grandma was kinda "old school" but my dad & mom were not at all so I like to think I had a pretty balenced upbringing. Things weren't really said out loud but it was very normal that men/dads cooked and did 1/2 (or more) of the cleaning, and women/moms worked just as many, if not more hours then their spouses and grandmas did the laundry. DH grew up in bazarro world with a mama slave and a dad who was "the boss", they got divorced when he was a teenager and were miserable his whole childhood so we come from very different families. I think how you live has the most impact on your kid(s) and even though I embrace certin gender roles, I also do "male" things and DH does "female" things. Like I cook and bake because I enjoy it, but I also am the only one who knows how to properly use power tools, and how to build, in fact all the tools are "mine", DH is the breadwinner but also the dishwasher and he does 1/2 of the other cleaning as well. Right now I am playing it by ear, in the future maybe I well get a little more aggressive about it, I'll see how we are living and what his attitudes are like.
nessy, master of the universe, uncle tykie's vegan kitchen, nessy.etsy.com

I teach that mama sticks up for her kids and herself. I tell her about problems I have with people and what I decided to do about them. I tell her when I talk to her school about prayer, and how important it is to do this with respect for the people who are educating my child, a gift I appreciate immensely.

I teach her also, that mama does the work in the house and yells and/or cries when daddy and kid don’t chip in. I’m working on that.

I’ve worked for as long as she can remember, she sees me working out my yoga classes on paper or the computer. She sees me reading, meditating, and wasting copious amounts of time on the computer. I’m working on that too. She sees me dying my hair weird colors and shopping in vintage stores. She never hears me complain about being fat or old or ugly. She loves my “sparkly� gray hair.

She also sees me criticizing her father. She sees me telling her father to back off when I think he’s getting too harsh with her.

What’s her father teaching her? That he’s inept at meal preparation and cleaning, that he can’t remember who has to be where, when. That he’s tired, and always demanding attention from me. he also calls her mother “Beautiful� like it’s my name, always with the thank you’s for everything I do.

Oh, and, he calls women on tv, or walking down the street fat and/or ugly. Actually, he hasn’t done that in a long time, because that was such a huge issue for me. above all else, that needed to stop. I remember her once looking sideways in the mirror about an hour after he called a woman in a parking lot fat, who was clearly not fat at all, but not stick thin. But thinner than me, btw. Telling dd that daddy thinks mommy is fat. Which is fucked the fuck up. But he honestly didn’t realize how much he was doing that. And he said he thought he was being facetious, and that dd would understand that he doesn’t really feel that way. (!)

But he’s been working on all of this too, a lot. Lot lot lot. He’s been taking her to her sports’ practices, making jewelry with her, reading and making her own clothes, so she has her own individual style. He’s a lot better at all this stuff than I am, so I’m happy about that. He’s real big on the reusing stuff, and DIY. When the two of them get together in an antique store, look out. You can be in there all day while they get all excited about shit they’re building and decorating.

Where did I learn what I teach? Well, my mother routinely cried while cleaning. Cleaning was such a huge moralistic issue in our house growing up, it was such a betrayal to leave a towel out, or not dust the house or whatever. So, I developed quite the complex about cleaning, I became afraid to clean when I was a kid because it stirred up so much wrath from my mom, and yet found myself doing my version of the same thing in my house. I learned that mama takes on all of the work and doesn’t ask for help till it’s blown up into a huge insurmountable issue.

But I learned a lot from my mom about what not to do too. She stayed in an abusive marriage for 17 years, and when she finally was free, she married the first guy to ask, and put the house in both their names, making herself now dependent on that guy. A guy who cheated and generally disregarded her needs. Though he was several steps up from my father. My mom also changed her name every time she got married, which bothered me.

Dh’s family is the ridiculous “traditional� setup. Dad worked, mom stayed home dad knew nothing of what was going on in the house, yet made all decisions. Discipline was delayed till dad got home, when mom gave dad the report of all the ways the kids misbehaved during the day. Dad was viewed in this house till he died as having been manipulated by this shrew of a woman, because he tried to do some things the way she wanted. Their anecdotes of their past is full of things like, “and she chose where we went on vacation, because she had to see her cousin…� as in… who does she think she is, having a say in a family vaction. Seems to me a production was made of things done her way, drawing undue attention to it from the kids. But, I wasn’t there. What do I know?

“They think I do not know a buttload of crap about the Gospel, but I do!�

though i am raising a girl i think so far we are doing pretty good. Carl is a SAHD who does clean and cook so I think from the beginning nessa is getting a good idea of equality. I haven't actually started talking about it yet not really sure at what age to begin. Carl does have some old fashioned gener role ideas but nothing to hard core that I couldn't break.growing up in my house my mom worked, my dad was laid off for about 5 years so he ran the house during that time, he did cook and took care of all school meetings and such he was even cookie"mom" for my brownie troup one year. He always taught me that I didn't "need" a man but that if I wanted one that weas fine as long as I still lived the way I wanted to live. he taught em to take care of myself and be able to.(I wasn't allowed to get a DL until I could change a tire while he watched) he never went for that but i'm a girl bs. when my cars would break down he would stand there and tell me what and how to fix it but i did all the work. i greatly appreciate my dad for all of this. though my mom was a feminist she didn't really talk much with me about it. she was a single mom with my sister for 6 years and put herself through school all while working full time jobs, she never rushed home from work to clean house or cook, so i think though non-verbal my mom taught me a lot as well. i guess i don't have any conrete ideas of how to go about this yet either I'll be watching the post.

Jessica
I'm a rock star baby.....Ja Rule

but at 9 he seems to genuinely not see a gender definition of roles. I have to admit that I've been trying to convince SO that it's 'the man's job' to take out the trash. call me old fashioned, or lazy.
I was raised by a single mother who taught me that I did not Need a man. When I was an adult she finally got into a relationship, and is much happier for it now, which does put a little spin on things for me, because I really did internalize that I don't Need a man, and I know I don't, but I want the one I have but don't necessarily know How to make that work, kwim?
I was a single mom with ds until he was 6, so he knows I can do it all. My partner now pulls his weight for the most part; we both work though he works more and I stay home with baby/work from home more. We both do housekeeping and cooking, errands, etc. He participates equally in parenting. (I'm appreciating him more, typing this out!). He's a good one.
What's interesting for me is watching how dsd 9 observes our dynamics. She lives with a lesbian couple and stays with us on weekends, and watches me like a hawk. she orders her dad around and tests him constantly and tries to play the pampered princess...and Loves it when he draws the line. I don't know how much of that has to do with our relationship, but I do hear her parrot me verbatim--in ways that are appropriate for me to speak to my partner, but not for a girl to speak to her father. I realized the other night that when I was pregnant last year yes I would order him around all the time, 'honey can you get me a glass of water', etc. when I very well could have done it myself, but, you know, I was pregnant--and wondered if that gave her some idea of how you're supposed to treat a man. i don't know. I definately see that how we "fight" and work out disagreements is totally observed by the kids. I seem to have gone off topic, it's a big one. more later?

I came from a home where my dad works full time and makes all the money and my mom bitches about how she's not his slave, yet cooks all the meals and does all the cleaning. He doesn't show appreciation at all and she doesn't give a shit that he makes the money. Not the healthiest situation, and sadly, my 23yo brother still lives there and has learned to treat my mom the same way my dad does. It's sick and my mom doesn't even see it. The kid doesn't even pay rent... but that's a different rant for another day...
What I learned from my mom was that she had the strength but not the courage. I wasn't going to be like that. Even now my dad could never treat me like an equal that is capable of understanding things like he does.
As for my kids, I have a girl and a boy (and one more kid coming out soon)... I feel pretty good about the way I am raising my kids. Thier father is the one that taught me how to cook. When he has them, he cooks full meals every night. He also obviously does all the cleaning and chores around the house since it's just him there.
Here, at our house... I work fulltime but SO works out of the house (and probably more than me on top of it). Most of this pregnancy, he was doing all the cleaning around the house. I usually cook dinner (cause I like too - but he cooks for the kids when I'm not around), but SO always does all the dishes. It's shared work. The kids also have chores that are far from gender specific. My son has to take the trash out and change the litter box, but all their other chores are shared - they sweep, vacuum, clean their room (that's a given, right?), do their laundry and they even like to shovel the ashes out of the fire place to clean it. Mostly, he does more cause he's older, but they compromise a lot so it feels fair. They also have to set and clean the table. When they occasionally say "why do we have to do it?" I say "who else is going to do it?" I mean, SO and I work all day and we take care of a lot, but they are part of the family and they live here too...
I think one of my biggest frustrations of being pregnant is that it allows more of the gender roles to kick in. Like, I was able to deal with the firewood up until about a month ago. Now, I have to ask SO to bring it in... then DS likes to help cause SO is doing it. I can't climb the stairs to the attic and I can't take the trash and recycling to the end of the driveway. These are just s few things, but i really don't like my kids to see me sitting around asking "the man" to take care of these jobs that are stereotypically done by men. At least I'm better at building the fire...
I hope that my kids see that all chores can be done by anyone who lives in the house, regarless of sex. Soon they will see me going to work and the big tough record producing SO staying home and taking care of the baby.
I think I just answered no questions that were asked. I guess I have more thinking to do about this.
I don't know, we do what we can - right?

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I actually think this question has something to do with my relationship to my daughter's father ending. I also grew up in a quite traditional household, my mom was a SAHM until I was in middle school. And a miserable one at that. I think because she felt like it wasn't a choice she was unhappy with it. On a sidenote, now that she's working she's also unhappy with that...so maybe just overall not feeling autonomous in her life. And she also was an intellectual feminist. And I was so convinced I would be different. I went back to work/school when my daughter was 4 months old and I know myself well enough to know that I am happier and more fulfilled working at least part time. And I know what I want to do. In our household however, yes, I was doing most of the work... I was commuting, working on a phd, working 20 hrs/wk, and doing most of the work around the kids and general household. And I was stressed. I don't know if it's gender or that I chose someone who just had very different standards in terms of maintaining the house; but either way I was not happy with the dynamic we had and I didn't want my kids seeing that as their role model. We tried several different systems to have more equality and none of them worked, b/c no matter what my ex wouldn't hold up his end of whatever system we had in place. And the crazy part of all of this is intellectually my ex absolutely agreed with me about equality, but in practice we just couldn't make it work.
The second part of that is that I kept picking up on small ways my ex bought into traditional beauty standards. He would want me to dress a certain way, was always looking up celebrities online, wanted to subscribe to maxim, was into porn and strip clubs (not occasional as he claimed, but an everyday thing); and as much as he denied that he "bought into" all this stuff, our house was a collection of pop culture shit I'd worked for years to avoid. And I had a really hard time with it...we tried to come up with compromises and I tried to explain where I was coming from, and my own struggles with loving my body and not surrounding myself with unhealthy expectations, the impacts of media, etc. And once again, though he understands it intellecutally we could not seem to translate that into a workable compromise. And though he would talk about understanding, he just wouldn't actually work to make changes...which is the whole thing about the way men and women relate is that I really believe men and women have to be committed to doing things differently...and it is a rare man who will be. At least that's the way I'm feeling right now...in my heart I believed my ex would work towards equality (I wouldn't date someone who didn't), and once we lived together it was just a completely different story.
Finally, having a daughter made it so much more serious for me... I couldn't ignore it anymore because as she grows up I don't want her to think it's ok to have those kinds of dynamics. She will see them at his house I'm sure...but her primary environment will not be like that. I guess what I'm saying is that we can say all we want, but if we are not really working to model what we say I'm not sure how effective it will be.