Idle thoughts

You know, I was thinking the other day. Yes, inspite of my brain numbing overnight shifts, I do think on occasion. It was about work. And men. And people. And families. And societal evolution.

You have early man, who start out as nomadic hunter-gatherers. How the stronger genes survive and of offspring that carried these traits to survive in a very primitive envorinment. Yada yada yada.

As things progressed, you get communities. Things are better in numbers, yes? So people evolve too, things change, you get the family unit. And working communes, cohesiveness, settled areas; we've tamed the land and ourselves along the way. We've started to think, to conceptualise, to form moralities.

This is an over simplification, of course, but you get the idea.

My point is this : eons ago, men were the providers. Men were the ones that went out to face the things that went bump in the night. True, women have evolved too. Women work. The dual income family is really the norm now, not the exception.

So do men still feel the same way now, thousands of years later? I mean, you don't have to fight a sabre-toothed tiger anymore. But I do appreciate that perhaps there are certain things that happen at work, for example, that we women don't see, or notice.

Do men, as they are now, still feel pressure to protect their families? Support them (even if their wives are working). Provide for them? Do you worry about what people think of you as a man, if something happens to your family? Is there stress inflicted on men from family and friends to do well? As a male thing? And not just as a individual?

It may sound weird, to have to ask. And I know of people in my generation who DO still feel this way. But how much pressure do men have to protect and care for their families now, I wonder?

And you know what? I don't think I will ever stop working. But I also realised that I do want a man to be a Man about things. I don't want to wear the pants in the family. I want to be the woman and I embrace everything that's insinuated with that concept. I'm just not so sure of the generation after mine.


And I don't know if I am happy or sad with that either....