Our traditional cultural concepts of what a man is, of what a woman is, are twisted, distorted, almost comically bloated stereotypes of what masculine and feminine really are.
When the role model of what a man is does not allow a man to cry or express fear; when the role model for what a woman is does not allow a woman to be angry or aggressive - that is emotional dishonesty. When the standards of a society deny the full range of the emotional spectrum and label certain emotions as negative - that is not only emotionally dishonest, it creates emotional disease.
If a culture is based on emotional dishonesty, with role models that are dishonest emotionally, then that culture is also emotionally dysfunctional, because the people of that society are set up to be emotionally dishonest and dysfunctional in getting their emotional needs met.
What we traditionally have called normal parenting in this society is abusive because it is emotionally dishonest. Children learn who they are as emotional beings from the role modeling of their parents. "Do as I say - not as I do," does not work with children. Emotionally dishonest parents cannot be emotionally healthy role models, and cannot provide healthy parenting.
Much family research in Consumer Behavior has implicitly assumed that gender roles are shifting within the household, yet there is a dearth of direct investigation of that assumption. However, to understand the dynamic nature of households, we need to understand the manner in which spouses do gender. An examination of gender in the household is also important because many differences observed in household research do not appear to be biologically inevitable, but socially enforced.
In terms of research on decision-making, I concur with Bristor and Fischer (1993) that not using a gendered-lens is preventing us....
