In a family where the roles of men and women are not sharply separated and where many household tasks are shared to a greater or lesser extent, notions of superiority are hard to maintain. The pattern of sharing in tasks and in decisions makes for equality, and this in turn leads to further sharing. In such a home, the growing boy and girl learn to accept that equality more easily than did their parents and to prepare more fully for participation in a world characterized by cooperation rather than by the “battle of sexes”.
If the process goes too far and man’s role is regarded as less important—and that has happened in some cases—we are as badly off as before, only in reverse.
It is time to reassess the role of the man in the American family. We are getting a little tired of “Momism”— but we don’t want to exchange it for a “neo-Popism”. What we need, rather, is the recognition that bringing up children involves a partnership of equals. There are signs that psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, and specialists on the family are becoming more aware of the part men play and that they have decided that women should not receive all the credits nor all the blame. We have almost given up saying that a woman’s place is in the home. We are beginning, however, to analyze man’s place in the home and to insist that he does have a place in it. Nor is that place irrelevant to the healthy development of the child.
The family is a cooperative enterprise for which it is difficult to lay down rules, because each family needs to work out its own ways for solving its own problems. Excessive authoritarianism has unhappy consequences, whether it wears skirts or trousers, and the ideal of equal rights and equal responsibilities is closely linked not only to a healthy democracy, but also to a healthy family.
(Note: Answer the questions or complete the statements in NO MORE THAN THIRTEEN WORDS.)
小题1:Children raised in a family where roles of men and women are not sharply separated are more likely to
_________________________________________________________________________________.
小题2:According to the author, the ideal family pattern should have ________________________________.
小题3:In a family being aware of the roles men play, women will not _______________________________.
小题4:What is the passage mainly about?
