Gender Roles and Relationships

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FAMILY BACKGROUND/ATTRACTION
Part 1 Family Background
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• Why examine family background?
• Background influence
• The family is the chief socializing influence on
  children.
• Children learn about social relations via
  modeling and rewards and punishments.
• The extent of family influence is contingent on
  the childs personality and how they react to the
  environment.

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• How do we overcome negative influence?
• Examine your family background and develop a self
  understanding.
• Take responsibility for your past.
• Make peace with the past.

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• Areas of Influence
• Parental attitudes toward children/the importance
  of approval and acceptance
• If parents love and approve of children, children
  develop high self esteem and feel they are
  loveable and capable of being loved.
• Parents who criticize make children insecure in
  marriage, sensitive to criticism, jealous.
• Parents who ignore children lead children to feel
  inferior or unworthy. In turn, they will expect
  partner to fulfill unmet needs.

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• Attitudes toward the opposite sex (based on
  psychodynamic theory )
• Boys attitudes toward women
• If boys had good relationships with mother and
  sisters, they will learn to like women.
• If father had good relationships with mother and
  daughters, sons will repeat this pattern of
  relationships toward women.
• If father was hostile and cruel toward women,
  boys will dislike and distrust women.
• If mother was controlling, abusive or cruel to
  husbands and sons, boys will later resent women.

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• Attitudes toward the opposite sex (based on
  psychodynamic theory )
• Girls attitudes toward men
• If girls had good relationships with father and
  brothers, they will learn to like men.
• If mother had good relationships with father and
  sons, daughters will repeat this pattern of
  relationships toward men.
• If mother were hostile, cruel, or distrusting
  toward men, daughters will dislike and distrust
  men.
• If father were hostile or cruel toward wives and
  daughters, daughters will learn to dislike men.

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• Family Attitudes toward Physical and Verbal
  Affection
• Children in undemonstrative families, or families
  who dont express affection, they have difficulty
  expressing affection as adults.
• If children are deprived of affection as a child,
  they may expect or demand it from mates.
• Attitudes towards Sex
• It is best for parents to be open and accepting
  about nudity and sexuality.
• Parents who cover up children and attempt to
  repress sexual desires may lead children to have
  discomfort around their own sexuality or be
  hypersexual as young adults.

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• Gender Role Socialization
• A gender role is a persons outward expression of
  maleness or femaleness in a social setting.
• Children learn masculinity and femininity via
  modeling and identification.
• Areas influenced by gender roles are masculine
  and feminine traits, division of role
  responsibilities, and vocational roles.
• Children who come from more flexible gender roles
  may become more flexible, and from more
  traditional may become more traditional.

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• Family Values and Work Habits
• Children learn work ethics from their family
  environment.
• Children learn materialism from their family
  environment.
• Communication
• Effective communication is essential to a good
  marriage. It includes listening, understanding,
  being open, positive, supportive and discussing
  conflict reasonably.
• We learn communication styles, open vs. closed,
  dominant vs. submissive, etc. from our family
  environment.

( See Chapter 1 of your book for other
influences outside of the family).
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FAMILY BACKGROUND/ATTRACTION
Part 2 Attraction
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• Attraction Definition
• cognitive a belief structure of knowledge
  about another person
• affective a feeling/emotion about another
  person
• behavior the tendency to approach or avoid
  another person

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• Theories of Attraction (to be explained in class)
• Balance theory
• Reinforcement theory - definition
• Gain loss theory a person who provides a gain
  in esteem is more liked than a constant rewarder
• anxiety reduction negative evaluation causes
  anxiety, gain condition reduces anxiety and
  results in positive feelings towards the
  evaluator
• competence- if evaluator changes opinion over
  time, it may be due to hard efforts of the person
  being evaluated, leads to a positive sense of
  competence
• discernment change in opinion over time of
  evaluator implies s/he is a discerning
  individual. Discernment proves the person is
  worthy.
• contrast positive things following negative
  makes the positive seem more so in contrast.

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• Factors that Affect Attractiveness
• Proximity Frequent precursor to attractiveness
• Physical attractiveness
• Physical attractiveness vs. Character/Personality
  (notes to be given in class)
• The importance of physical attractiveness
• matching hypothesis we tend to pick mates
  similar in attractiveness to ourselves
• couple attractiveness Study
• Standards of Attractiveness

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• Other factors Personality and Social factors
• Similarity we tend to like those who are
  similar to us in attitudes, opinions, and
  preferences.
• Complementarity opposites attract, seems to be
  less strong than similarity.
• Reciprocity we like those who like us.
• Personality is also important people with
  positive personality. qualities are more liked
  than those who possess negative qualities,
  extroversion is very important in first
  impressions.
• Self disclosure how much we tell others about
  personal things, as long as it is appropriate
  disclosure, may facilitate attraction.
• Unconscious factors sometimes we do not know
  what attracts us, someone may be reminiscent of a
  parent we were close to or they have qualities we
  wish we had - some believe in a concept known as
  physical chemistry.