Responses week 6

Terry,

I do think that this is a very common occurrence, especially in traditional American families. I do tend to notice that some ethnicities tend to have more 'mixing' in their get togethers, but in my experience many American families maintain this sort of gender conscious socialization pattern. 

I'm not sure if this is necessarily a good or bad thing. I think that very often it is a good thing for people of the same gender to congregate together in order to share their thoughts and ideas, or just to have fun without worrying about the opposite gender. At the same time, I think that having both genders present is what makes a party whole, so that you have the positive aspects of both.

What I mean by that is.. In my family, women don't tend to play sports. So unless we have some male-female interaction at a party, its doubtful that a game of volleyball will come up in the backyard. However, since we do almost always have mixing, we end up doing a lot of fun and fullfilling things that we would probably not do if both genders weren't present. 

At the same time, there is still some separation that occurs at my family functions. While men do help, its basically the women that take care of the cooking/setting up/cleaning. I really don't have a problem with this because it feels like more of a habit now that i'm older. I can't imagine a party without females in my household , because I don't know who would clean up the mess :p