Gender roles is not really a thing in my family. My parent brought us up to be that independent; they made us understand our normal gender roles but trained us ( maybe unconciously ) in a way that we could do the opposite gender's role, sonwe could still cope without the other gender.
Yeah, every parent will most certainly train their children in a way that makes the children understand that a male child is suppose to do and behave in a particular way and the female child should also do and behave in a particular way. Where I come from, it is so common to the females assigned to some specific duty and task while the male to some different specific task. This habit is cultivated by the parents right from when the children are still young so they can grow up and get used to it; and see it as a normal thing. It was common in my community back then.
A typical example from where I grew up is this: the girls most times do the dish washing, sweeping and cleaning the house, cooking or helping their mum to cook. The boys are mostly known for running errands ( except errands to the market ), sweeping the surrouding, washing their dad's car. But in some cases where one gender is too young to do a task, the other gender will fill in.
It was not so in my family and I think it is cool that we weren't raised that way. My parent assigns anyone to do anything in the house. Sometimes we take turn to do some task and chores in the house as if there is a scheduled thing. When I was younger, my eldest sister do the cooking everytime except for dinner while my second sister would wash the dishes, I was sweeping the house surrounding, uproot weeds when necessary and I run errands for everyone in the house ( being the last born 🤓), most times annoys me.
After a while we changed roles, I was washing the dishes, my eldset sis was sweeping the outside of the house while my immdiate sister was sweeping inside the house. Roles were exchanged several times and some of us got extra roles later on as we grew. My parents took in three other people with us; my cousin brother, one guy and a lady. We lived together as one family and they got their roles too and experienced the exchange of roles.
When I was around 16, my mom would intentionally invite me to the kitchen to stay with her till she's done preparing dinner. Before then, I would only help her and my sisters get whatever ingredient was needed to cook and then come to the kitchen several times to check, like an inspector. I really didn't buy the idea of staying in the kitchen for long, it seemed boring to me but I could not refuse at all because my dad was also in support of it. Gradually, my mom said I ought to learn how to cook and was teaching me by letting me do as she says and instruct. I became the chef in the house for a while and then my cousin also learnt how to cook. So, there was no need for us to fully depend on the ladies in the house for food.
The balance, my sisters over time, learnt how to put on the generator themselves, could fix some things in the house that is perceived to be guy's things like fix some wires, do some simple repairs for the generator. So, they also do not need to depend fully on the guys in the house to get things fixed. And yeah, that did not stop us from performing our duties as a lady and a guy in the house, respectively.
I think now I love cooking anytime anyday as long as every ingredient is available. I love the way we were brought up and it has helped us thus far. Here in school, guys have asked me why do I like cooking as a guy and my response is always like this, cooking is not stressful as it seems to be, it's fun to me.
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