Why is it so?

I seriously don't know why I bother to read Southern Cross, the propaganda paper for us Sydney Anglicans. It makes me so, so, so cranky. Every single month. Argh!

This month in particular has an article which defies belief. Well sane and rational belief anyway.
'Raising Boys and Girls in a unisex culture', written by an English Developmental Psychologist and originally published in a newsletter for the Council for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood. I encourage you to read it, and join with me in a chorus of indignant howling....

There are absolute distinctions between male and female, in biology, neurology, physiology and psychology. Boys and girls are different by design and are put on this earth to fulfill different functions. Despite widespread acceptance of
certain of these absolute distinctions, there remains an institutionalised
attitude which is against any acknowledgment of sexual differences. A Christian
needs to identify the issues which currently attack the absolute distinctions.

I agree with a number of her points here - male and female are different by design. You can't deny this fact. You can however deny the fact that we fulfill different functions - overlooking the obvious child-bearing - and I don't believe that the snail's pace progress being made in changing these antiquated views can be called an 'institutionalised attitude'. Men and Women are different, but we don't need to be constrained by those differences.

Actually, most women do not want to be in competition with men. Polls taken of teenage girls show that the great majority still aim eventually to be married and have children, but many may not dare articulate such old-fashioned
ambitions.

Argh! Yes, polls may show that girls want to get married and have kids eventually, but that doesn't mean that they don't want to take their place alongside their male peers, in education or in the workplace. The desire to be a mother and a wife does not negate the desire to achieve any other ambition!

Children should be taught to share in the work of the household. Division of labour need not be stereotyped. But boys as they get older should be proud to use their increasing upper body strength to serve at home. Girls should be
encouraged to develop the intuitive personal touch.

All I can say is huh? How does one develop this, how does one encourage one's daughter? I obviously need more guidance...

Now, among the dross there are actually a few nuggets of truth, namely the increasing sexualisation of girls in recent times. These are issues that are being dealt with in the media, as are more general parenting-related guilt-trips. Only last week our esteemed Archbishop was talking about the difficulties inherent in present-day child-raising - and he has some very good points about the need to spend time with our kids, to be interested in them, to not just spend on them... He wasn't quite as histrionic as some commentators in the UK have been, lamenting in an open letter to Tony Blair that society is rushing headlong towards the death of childhood. This rose-tinted version of childhood has only been around for a couple of generations, and then only in affluent Western societies... Three or four generations ago children were still being sent up chimneys (or down t'mine) in the UK!
I try my best with my kids, and I'd say that most parents do the same... I do have an idealised view of my own childhood, and I guess the main difference between me and my peers, is that I do my damnedest to give my kids the same opportunities - they walk to school themselves, they don't have a playstation, they play out on the street with the other kids until called in for dinner, they play down in the creek, or over in the football fields. I have to let them go, although ever-mindful of the dangers, because I remember how much I loved it. And I can't deny them that.

I can't put my fears and insecurities about parenthood above their enjoyment of childhood.