The Roles of Men and Women

Maybe it's because I just went through a pregnancy and am currently nursing a newborn, but the different roles of men and women are starting to make some basic biological sense to me. Regardless of whether men are generally stronger than women or whether women are generally more nurturing than men--both rather disputable generalizations--there are some basic, indisputable biological facts that make it pretty obvious why God assigned men the primary responsibility of protecting and providing for the family and women the primary responsibility of nurturing and caring for the children. 

First of all, if you're going to have a full-time protector and provider, it would make sense for that person to be the member of the family that does not frequently go through physical changes that render them less able to protect and provide. However physically/mentally/emotionally able you normally are at fulfilling these roles, your ability to do so, at least physically, can greatly diminish during pregnancy, particularly if you experience a lot of morning sickness and/or have a physically demanding job. The fact that biologically women are forced to do the brunt of the work of bringing a child into the world makes it seem appropriate that their husbands carry the greater responsibility of providing for the family and protecting their wife and children, especially at times when they are in more vulnerable physical states.

Secondly, once the child is here, it is the woman's body that produces the necessary means of nourishment for that child, so it makes the most biological sense for the woman to be the one who has the primary responsibility of caring for the child. Not that the man should not share the load of childcare to the extent that he is able, but as all nursing mothers know, no matter how willing the father is to help, there is a lot of baby care he simply cannot biologically provide, namely the hours of nursing that infants require.

Our modern society has found lots of ways to circumvent these biological facts that have helped define the roles of men and women throughout history (formula, breast pumps, grocery stores, jobs that require more brain power and less physical labor, etc.), but it is only these modern conveniences that have helped disconnect people from the biological realities that make the wisdom of the differences in the primary roles of men and women in the functioning of the family unit more obvious. 

Of course, there has been plenty of suppression of women throughout history that had nothing to do with biological realities, such as their right to vote, to own land, to get an education, to dress how they choose, to pursue whatever career field they would like to at times in their life when working does make sense or is necessary for them, to choose whom to marry, to choose to get out of harmful or unfulfilling relationships, etc. I'm not suggesting that all the traditional ways women have been treated are biologically justified or anything of the sort, or even that women should be forced to fulfill roles that their biological makeup seems to lend itself to. Obviously, everyone should have the choice of how they would like to live their own lives. All I’m saying is that the idea that in the family unit the man is more biologically suited to protect and provide for the family as his primary responsibility while the woman is more biologically suited to nurture and care for the children makes a lot of sense to me and that you don't have to be an anti-feminist jerk to suggest that perhaps that is the way God planned families to function under ideal circumstances. Yes, those are my thoughts.