There was a big news story over the weekend here where I live in Maine about women in "non-traditional" positions, in this particular case, covering some ladies who work in a local brewery. The news made this sound like it's such a strange thing for women to be doing, but it got me thinking after they'd finished the broadcast and I was moving on to other things....
Are we still that far in the dark ages, when females cooking up batches of beer is considered so far out in left field they need to do a long exposition on the news to point that out?
Sorry....maybe it's just the way I was brought up.
My mother was raised on a farm, and the traditional thing about farm families was that, between diseases, accidents and other such things that would prevent children from surviving to adulthood, there were always as many children as the parents could produce. Just as an example was my grandmother's family, with 16 children, in which all the boys went out every morning to work out in the fields and all the girls were charged with cleaning the house, cooking the food, making the clothes that the family would need, etc. One of my mom's aunts, thinking she didn't have much time left on this earth when she was approaching her 96th birthday, wrote her memoirs, which included talking about evenings on the farm, when all the girls would gather in front of the fire (as this was prior to electricity being a common thing, so it was the way for them to see what they were doing) to knit underwear and socks while the boys tried to put together the things they would need to play whatever game they may have created while out cutting hay or hoeing the garden.
These were the traditional roles that my grandparents were raised with, and the roles that they brought up their children with, for the most part....
Except there was a minor kibosh for my mom and her siblings: There were no men to go work in the fields with the exception of Pepere, as there were four girls. When faced with having to do all the "manly chores" by himself or use the daughters he'd been given, Pepere broke with tradition and brought his girls out into the fields. When grandchildren started to arrive, some male and some female, the grandchildren were told about the "traditional" roles, with the girls being shown knitting, crochet, embroidery, etc. and the boys being sent out to the field, but there was also a lot of non-traditional time. My sisters and female cousins were just as apt to be out in the barn, shoveling manure, feeding the cows, milking. The boys all learned how to do simple clothing repairs.
By the time I was having children, the world had shifted. Women no longer stayed at home to take care of the children because men could no longer make enough of a paycheck to cover all the bills without assistance. My mother's words from my high school years, which she was never allowed to experience because, back when she was graduating from 6th grade, the higher grades had a tuition that your parents paid, just like going to a university now, and my grandmother saw no reason for a woman to have a high school education in order to cook, clean and change diapers. I went out and took whatever job anyone was willing to pay me to do (within reason, as I was taught that a woman who has any other means of providing for herself should NEVER stoop to selling her body). I've held several "traditional male" positions in my life, so the news story about women in the brewery threw me for a loop.
It never even crossed my mind that, in this day and age, there was still such a major deal about "tradition".
So, this sheds new light on recent stories about people dying under a hail of stones in the Middle East. It sheds new light on the attitudes I've run into with the current batch of political leaders who are trying to get elected into various offices this year. It especially makes me rethink a couple of things that I was mulling over pertaining to the current "work in progress" as well as the historical romance and the sci-fi that are waiting in the wings.
Tradition isn't always as dead as I might think it is. There may be chivalry still out there in the world, people raised in tradition the same way I was raised non-traditional, and some of these values may come into play when a non-traditional woman finds herself alone in a very traditional country where she's considered a second class citizen.....
Are we still that far in the dark ages, when females cooking up batches of beer is considered so far out in left field they need to do a long exposition on the news to point that out?
Sorry....maybe it's just the way I was brought up.
My mother was raised on a farm, and the traditional thing about farm families was that, between diseases, accidents and other such things that would prevent children from surviving to adulthood, there were always as many children as the parents could produce. Just as an example was my grandmother's family, with 16 children, in which all the boys went out every morning to work out in the fields and all the girls were charged with cleaning the house, cooking the food, making the clothes that the family would need, etc. One of my mom's aunts, thinking she didn't have much time left on this earth when she was approaching her 96th birthday, wrote her memoirs, which included talking about evenings on the farm, when all the girls would gather in front of the fire (as this was prior to electricity being a common thing, so it was the way for them to see what they were doing) to knit underwear and socks while the boys tried to put together the things they would need to play whatever game they may have created while out cutting hay or hoeing the garden.
These were the traditional roles that my grandparents were raised with, and the roles that they brought up their children with, for the most part....
Except there was a minor kibosh for my mom and her siblings: There were no men to go work in the fields with the exception of Pepere, as there were four girls. When faced with having to do all the "manly chores" by himself or use the daughters he'd been given, Pepere broke with tradition and brought his girls out into the fields. When grandchildren started to arrive, some male and some female, the grandchildren were told about the "traditional" roles, with the girls being shown knitting, crochet, embroidery, etc. and the boys being sent out to the field, but there was also a lot of non-traditional time. My sisters and female cousins were just as apt to be out in the barn, shoveling manure, feeding the cows, milking. The boys all learned how to do simple clothing repairs.
By the time I was having children, the world had shifted. Women no longer stayed at home to take care of the children because men could no longer make enough of a paycheck to cover all the bills without assistance. My mother's words from my high school years, which she was never allowed to experience because, back when she was graduating from 6th grade, the higher grades had a tuition that your parents paid, just like going to a university now, and my grandmother saw no reason for a woman to have a high school education in order to cook, clean and change diapers. I went out and took whatever job anyone was willing to pay me to do (within reason, as I was taught that a woman who has any other means of providing for herself should NEVER stoop to selling her body). I've held several "traditional male" positions in my life, so the news story about women in the brewery threw me for a loop.
It never even crossed my mind that, in this day and age, there was still such a major deal about "tradition".
So, this sheds new light on recent stories about people dying under a hail of stones in the Middle East. It sheds new light on the attitudes I've run into with the current batch of political leaders who are trying to get elected into various offices this year. It especially makes me rethink a couple of things that I was mulling over pertaining to the current "work in progress" as well as the historical romance and the sci-fi that are waiting in the wings.
Tradition isn't always as dead as I might think it is. There may be chivalry still out there in the world, people raised in tradition the same way I was raised non-traditional, and some of these values may come into play when a non-traditional woman finds herself alone in a very traditional country where she's considered a second class citizen.....
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