[Author’s Name]
[Institution’s Name]
Essay on Cultural Myths: The Changing Roles of Men and Women in the Ideal Family
Many people believe that dominance hierarchy has gone just about as far as it can go. As technology advances, the culture, which so efficiently organizes large populations and quells internal strife, is creating unmanageable social and psychological problems for men and women, and their children. The safety it offers by way of resource abundance and military prowess is rapidly being outweighed by the dangers of ecological collapse and global war. More and more women and men are looking to partnership culture for health and security.
In start women were housewives and husbands commuted to jobs in the city. Families valued privacy and were separated from other relatives, who either remained in the city or lived elsewhere. It was both comfortable and isolating. The family was often on its own, knowing few neighbors, watching television in the evening, driving everywhere in private cars to anonymous shopping centers. Some people living in these new suburbs depended on rail lines to get to work, although more took advantage of the automobile as a form of transport. The federal government contributed to suburbanization by subsidizing mortgages for veterans and building highways that made travel between cities and suburbs easier.
In ideal culture women and men are interdependent, that is, they are able to remain separate and still stay connected. This creates the safety they need to relate with reciprocity of affection, with (equal) power, and with respect for differences. Second, they both have access to public as well as domestic domains of community life. This creates the freedom they need to relate to one another as whole persons. In our culture there doesn’t seem to be a lot of credence given to the idea that we can be different and connected at the same time. Our experience with individuality based on separation contrasts sharply with instances of individualism happening within a collectivity......
