Gender difference

 Gender has a huge role to play in families. Every gender has their own aspects to bring into caring for and helping out in the family. These differences are not set in stone though. There are cases where not all of these apply. No one is the same.

Females tend to be a little more nurturing than males. Their natural instinct when they see a baby is to protect it and care for it. Females are also more social. They are more about communication and talking. Women are more likely to talk for hours with each other about anything and everything. I think the marriage expert, Mark Gungor, explains the female brain very well. In his talk, " A Tale of Two Brains", he describes a female's brain as a ball of wire where everything is connected. They're always thinking, and their brains are always at work. He then connects this to emotion. Women tend to be more emotional than men. They often connect their memories with emotions as well so they tend to remember things for a much longer time. He also talks about how each gender handles stress. Females tend to want to talk about it with someone. They want to rant to someone, but they do not want them to give a solution. A rant is enough to reduce the stress for them. That is because communication is such a big asset to a women's lifestyle, as I had mentioned previously.  

As a girl myself, I agree completely with most of these things. I definitely tend to talk more than most of my guy friends. I tend to be emotional but only when I'm super frustrated and have had enough of life. I tend to bottle up my emotions until they get too much. I know a lot of females who do that as well.   

Males are obviously different. They tend keep to themselves more. They mostly talk to people when they are talked to. They also seem to want to fix everything they possibly can. Often when a female complains to them in moments of stress, they try to come up with the best solution to the problem. This is just how they are. There has been an experiment done with two babies, one girl and one boy. They were both placed behind separate rooms where they were placed behind a plexiglass dividing them from their mothers. The girl sat and cried until her mother came to get her. The boy, on the other hand, began trying to break down the barrier. He tried to find a way to fix the problem. He had that instinct from a young age. Their minds work a little different from females in many ways. Mark Gungor explains their brain as consisting of boxes that do not touch, and they should never touch. Every time the man needs to talk about something, he pulls out a box about that topic and talks ONLY about that topic. One of these boxes is called the "nothing box". As it sounds, it is a box with nothing in it. This is where the man "turns off his brain" and thinks about supposedly nothing. Mark explains this as their favorite box to go to. 

I have seen the drive to fix things countless times with my dad. He is always trying to fix things to help my mom when she is stressed, often making her more stressed though. It's kind of fascinating to watch.

But what happens if there is only a female or male in charge of the family? The children often have a hard time learning the tendencies that apply to each gender. That isn't always the case though. As I said before, these behaviors are often instinctual. The father or mother just helps with bringing out the habit of applying those instinct in their everyday lives.