Studying gender roles, particularly women's role in the building of the British empire in the nineteenth century has led me to question part of the reality I, and most likely you, have grown up with.
My upbringing started in the 1980s, not the 1880s but I do question the extent to which values changed over that period. After all, 100 years need only see three or four generations. My Nan, born in 1912 could inculcate values in me that she had adopted from her parents who lived through the late Victorian period. Women's rights changed dramatically over my Nan's lifetime, but assumptions about women's role in society, I believe, have changed very little. Even our very own formidable female prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, ironically, believed a woman's place was in a domestic setting.
All you need to do to establish the views of today's society on the things men and women 'should do' is explore your local Toys R Us. We introduce our children to their future roles in society at a very early age. Girls get play kitchens, dolls, pushchairs, cleaning equipment and shopping trolleys and boys get toolkits, cars, toy guns and sheriff badges. Of course any one of us could flip those conventions, but experience tells us that if we operate outside of social norms we will be shunned - very few people would risk this destiny for their children.
So the role of women in the home, deified in the modern, enviable title 'domestic goddess', isn't far removed from the old Victorian one. The difference now is that, fuelled by feminist ideals, women are under pressure to be so much more. A successful career is admirable and to be a successful, high earning working mother and supporting partner is considered as reaching the pinnacle of women's achievement, although I'm sure being all those wonderful things must take its toll on a woman.
What I'm not presuming to do here is say that a woman or a man shouldn't be all those things if that's want they want from life. I'm not saying women should stay at home and men go out to work and I'm not saying women shouldn't have successful careers and men can't be stay at home dads. So what roles should men and women assume? What I'm suggesting is, rather than jumping head first in the role that society has been setting you up for for the last millennia, make a conscious decision about what roles feel right for you. If you're one half of a couple, talk about this and see what works for both of you rather than unconsciously assuming 'traditional roles'.
Remember, we live by standards that European culture has invented. Other cultures attach value to other things. Had our history been different, the ability of women to bear children might have elevated their status above men rather than leave them dwindling behind and we could be living in a very different society.
I am probably not what you would consider a traditional feminist. I believe in true equality for all, individual liberty, agency and choice where those freedoms do not impeach on another's right to the same. It's hard to imagine a world any different from the one we live in. Just listen to John Lennon's 'Imagine', the world can only change if we challenge our assumptions and imagine, and work towards, alternatives.
