Sunday Scribblings, Traditions.

G'Day,
The Sunday Scribblings prompt for this week is "Traditions"
Appropriate since we are approaching the time of year that is most steeped in traditions all over the world. Christmas.
But.
One of the prompts I read was by Liza who put up a film clip of the song Traditions from the Fiddler on the Roof movie.
It got me thinking, in my own round about way, of the traditions that we enforce on our children within our families.
There is a lot about this subject floating about. In many different forms.
I think that today we have moved away from a lot of the traditional roles that men and women have had in the past and these changes have in turn altered our society greatly. One reason being that to keep up with our standard of living requires two wages coming in to the house. Mum works outside the home.But to do this she has to have childcare services. The government will give her a subsidy to pay for said childcare, if it is with a registered childcare organization, so the children are taken away from their home environment to outside care. And because the government has done this, childcare is arranged through businesses that can cause the care to be very expensive for families to afford. Most probably grandma is still in the workforce for the same reason so she is unavailable for childcare as well.
The results of this social change , whether right or wrong will no doubt be seen in its effects on this generation as they age and become adults themselves. We will see.
I must admit I am taken in by today's consumer society and have followed the path of being outside the home to supplement the family finances and therefore uphold a decent, though not highly paid, standard of living for my family. I can well remember the days when we scrimped to buy basics for the kids and went without ourselves and I don't want to have to go back to that again.
I started work when my eldest son was 8 years old and my youngest child was about 18 months old and have been working ever since. I was lucky though there were no govt. subsidies to be had in those days so my Mum and Dad looked after my daughter for me.The boys had a teenage neighbour stay after school until I came home.
My eldest son was a monster of a kid and always up to some sort of mischief. I felt that he would punish me when I walked in the door after work for not being there for him when he got home from school in the afternoons, by being really naughty. The other two kids seemed to go with the flow much easier than he has done. I do not know if my working affected him badly or helped because of the rise in our standard of living. Either way mother guilt is a drag isn't it. I still get it and question myself over it.A myriad of questions over what could have caused his depression.
On another note, but the same subject., is gender roles that we enforce on our children. For example little boys traditionally play with trucks, little girls play with dolls. I don't know if we can actually be blamed for enforcing these as the different sexes do have preferences for different toys. Without much prompting they seem to choose these things for themselves.Girls are nurturers, boys are warriors, type of thing. There are of course, lots of differences in personal tastes to be taken into consideration here too. But, I reckon we are made different, we are built different, we are meant to be different, and we are different to complement each other. So woman's liberation aside, we will always be different.
I know that the traditional gender specific roles that were taught to me as a child have pigeon holed what I am today but they have also helped me to prepare for those roles. I am the person who looks after every one else. Mum, wife, sister, aunt, daughter, friend, employee, cleaner, etc etc. I have always done so. Even as a child I was the kid at the party or B.B.Q. or what ever, that had the job of looking after the younger kids.
This is a subject that I could write a lot about, so I had better stop before I ramble on and on and get diverted to strange places.
Bye
Love Linda.