There's not a doubt that the world we live in today is one that promotes gender neutrality. The fact is, however, that gender neutrality goes against everything that God had planned when it comes to the roles of men and women. Gender neutrality is not written in our DNA as men or women. Gender neutrality goes against everything that is natural about the female and male entities. 
I know that, as a parent, I am constantly bombarded with gender-neutral propaganda. And even as a Christian who believes and desires to practice the God-ordained roles for men and women, I, too, have become confused at times in my parenting as well as in my own personal life.
And this is why I love Glenn T. Stanton's book, Secure Daughters, Confident Sons: How Parents Guide Their Children into Authentic Masculinity and Femininity
. Stanton, a family researcher with Focus on the Family, presents and discusses the importance of why raising our children according to their gender really does matter.
I know that, as a parent, I am constantly bombarded with gender-neutral propaganda. And even as a Christian who believes and desires to practice the God-ordained roles for men and women, I, too, have become confused at times in my parenting as well as in my own personal life.
And this is why I love Glenn T. Stanton's book, Secure Daughters, Confident Sons: How Parents Guide Their Children into Authentic Masculinity and Femininity
. Stanton, a family researcher with Focus on the Family, presents and discusses the importance of why raising our children according to their gender really does matter. He discusses what gender-appropriate behavior looks like at various stages of your child's life. For instance, is it okay that my toddler boy wants to play with his sister's dolls? He also exposes the difference in parenting styles between mothers and fathers. This was really insightful to me as it made me more aware of why my husband and I differ in how we parent.
The book even dedicates separate sections for raising boys and raising girls. The section on raising boys focuses on how we can parent our boys to be competitive and take healthy risks, but at the same time not be overly masculine and me-centered. Having grown up in a household of girls, this section was very enlightening to me because it helped me to see why my boys are the way they are.
The section on girls discusses how we as parents can help our daughters to come to a full awareness of their power as a God-created female (he does this without focusing on the feministic view of women.) He discusses how feminists have damaged a healthy view of the unique gender of female. He also talks about how we as parents can instill security into our daughters.
This book was very insightful. Perhaps the sections on raising boys and the differences in parenting styles was the most helpful for me. I feel fairly confident in raising my daughter (although there is always room for improvement, of course), but I really lacked understanding in the ways boys operate because, let's face it, I'm not a boy and I didn't grow up with boys. So that section was very eye-opening to me.
One problem I had with this book was that it used some secular positive examples of women (such as Oprah Winfrey) in the section on raising girls. I felt that it would have been better had he presented positive Christian woman as examples instead. I also would have liked if the author had offered more practical applications for how we could encourage these gender differences in our children.
*I received this book for free by the publisher in exchange for my honest review.
1 comment:
hi Amber! i recently discovered New Leaf pub. - maybe you already review for them, but i saw some cool dinosaur and other creation stuff and thought of you guys. :).
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