FAMILY RELATIONS: GENDER AND FAMILY LIFE

The first thing that comes to mind when I see Gender and Family Life, is The Proclamation to the Family. In the Proclamation to the Family a husband is to lead his family in love and righteous, and to provide and protect. A mother is to nurture their children and usually stay at home. In some families, this is not always the situation.

                As mentioned in the previous paragraph, men are to provide, preside, and protect. However, the world and Satan see this as you need to make more money to have everything you want to be happy. “You can have anything in this world if have money.” We need to make sure our families are provided for but need to make sure we know the difference between need and want. Men are also to preside over their families. If they are always out working how can they preside? We need to help them focus on the big perspective. Protecting our families especially now in these last days is so important. Especially when we include the Lord in our everyday lives. Having a worthy Priesthood holder who can bless our home with not only physical but spiritual protection will help keep us safe against Satan. While everything has an opposite, we need to think about how to wisely use our free agency.

                One topic that is personal to me with experience, was addiction and breaking addiction. I battled anorexia for several years in high school and it manifested even more after having my 3^rd child. Through outside help, and love and support from family I have been working on this for several years and working on changing my mindset to help overcome this. This cycle is similar in ways to other addictions and breaking those that others might have. Whether it is same-sex attraction, drugs, etc. No matter what someone is going through, we should be there with support. This doesn’t mean we agree with what they are doing, but if someone truly wants to break free, we can be actively involved with helping.

                 For class, we watched some videos this week about men who had explored same-sex attraction but were able to break free of this and ended up wanting to be with women. We need to make sure that we put men in their masculine role. Just like women who want to be included, men do also even if we don’t realize. Whether or not we all want to be liked, and just because we have certain feelings doesn’t mean we are going to act on it. According to a theory by Bem, titled Exotic becomes Erotic, usually, men that have same-sex attraction will go through a cycle. However, even with those feelings, they necessarily didn’t want to react upon those such as kissing or holding hands.

                We shouldn’t label people or elude to someone being gay or lesbian. Just because a boy might like to draw flowers or do something different doesn’t mean he is gay or acting upon feelings. If a girl likes to play with rocks or a sport, we can encourage and see where it goes. We all have different roles in life, and we are equal in our own way.

                We need to focus on our families and what will bring us closer to each other. By working on what we need to individually and as a family we can become better people. If we are married, focus on yourself and if you are a wife help your husband be true to his masculine role of presiding, providing, and protecting.