Yin/yang?

Dear Gabriel

I was listening to a radio talk show today and there was a conversation about the roles men and women should take in relationships. A lot of the callers felt that men should be providers and women the caretakers. Apart from the fact that this seems so archaic, I am interested in asking you if you think men and women can rise above their socialisation, or do they inevitably act out what they learnt from family and community. This has bearing on this novel I am working on which will be about a married couple over the lifespan of their relationship.

Many thanks

Belinda

Dear Belinda

Ah yes, the complementarity of the male and female roles. I often think that this isn’t so much how men and women are, as how much society feels men and women should be. Whether it’s holy books of various faiths, tradition, culture or habit, the notion of male dominance in relationships (and all the benefits that accrue from this) is an age old phenomenon. And perhaps in earlier times there was a kind of logic to this – men hunted and women looked after the kids and the pots – but in a post modern world this seems slightly weird. Yet even in a post modern world there are traditional societies for whom the concept of gender equity is slightly weird.

The problem with socially constructed gender roles, and the generalisations built into them, is that individual humans, and the couples they make up, don’t all conform to generalisations. So your couple will bring their own individuality to their relationship – and this could mean that he may be a gentle kind of man who shares in raising the kids and doesn’t mind doing chores, while she might be the higher earner with a high flying job. We’re all shaped by our individual families and it’s not inevitable that all families raise alpha males and compliant females.

I do think we bring our histories with us into relationships – and we seek out partners who help us to work through the unresolved bits from these histories. But I also believe that as relationships evolve, and circumstances shift, we change and grow. Your couple might relate to each other differently when then are 40 from when they are 20. Children could shift power dynamics between a man and woman, ill health could also have a huge impact, and a sudden loss of a job could be devastating to an alpha male. And so on.

So yes people can change and grow – and the more your characters evolve the more interesting I think they will be. Of course some enduring qualities will remain – you don’t want your characters to be complete chameleons – but if they are static they could get boring. I hope the writing flows!

All the best

Gabriel

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