Posts Tagged “gender roles”

Ok. Back to writing.

I recently took my daughter off to her first year of college, and picked up a pearl of wisdom from her Residence Hall Advisor.  I’m not sure I’ve fully processed it yet, but he may be on to something.

I was standing in the common room of my daughter’s suite. She was unpacking her clothes in the bedroom. Another father was in the common room with me. His daughter was in the other bedroom. We were cleaning out our Blackberries while waiting for our next command.

In comes the R.A.. “I bet everything in this room is just perfect,” he announced.

We concurred.

He continued, “I love the dads of girls. They are the best.”

“Why is that, and who is the worst?”

The gist of his response: “Moms of boys are the worst. They are incredibly involved. They don’t let their sons do anything. I had to referee a disagreement on closet space between two moms! They don’t realize the stuff will be on the floor in no time. Moms think their boys are completely helpless. And they are – but the boys don’t care.” He continued on, “Fathers of girls are the best. They know their place. Help if asked. Stay quiet otherwise.”

We can leave the nuances about fathers of boys and mothers of daughters to another day. We can also set aside the fact that I agree with anybody who thinks I am the best at anything. A few questions come to mind however:

• In this dorm, the girls’ fathers felt their work was done. The boys’ moms were getting one more parenting lick in. In a work setting, when is it right to just let the action happen? When do you stop “helping” and let people do things for themselves?
• Are America’s youngest working generation impacted by how their parents have been parenting? Are America’s young women more prepared for college and the workforce than America’s young men? Are fathers not helping on move-in day because they know their daughters are already capable? Are the boys truly incapable?
• My generation experienced gender roles in a particular way. If I remember correctly, no male contemporary of mine would have allowed his mother to arrange his dorm room. Does today’s middle-aged manager understand that the 20-something worker has a completely different mindset than a 40-something? Does the 20-something worker expect mom-like help? Is the middle-aged manager prepared to mother the boys? What about the girls?

I’m sure one R.A.’s off-handed observation isn’t as good as a well-researched dissertation. It certainly isn’t adequate to create a new field of thinking about managing across generations. But kids do say the darndest things….