I am a Woman! Modern and Traditional Gender Roles: Talk to Me Honey!

Jane and Joe James have been married for 15 yrs with two kids. In the the past two years their level of intimacy has decreased drastically. Small fights would turn into days of not speaking. Constant yelling and screaming which is slowly affecting their children, Sam and Mary has now put the question of divorced in the air.

Most couples who suffer from lack of communication resort to a means to an end when the relationship has ended. Couples dont realize that when they end things, it affects a group of people who surrounded them. Communication is one the three components that is needed for any relationship to survive. Why is it that couples tend to drift from conversation when conversing got them to where they are? Problems that arise typically with conflicted relationships are money, the home, family, work etc. One problem that probably doesnt seem obvious but attributes to alot is the women in the relationship. Men who want submissive wives and women who conform to that role will respond less to their spouses negative antics. Non-traditional women are more responsive and would react more. If one or the other occurs, it seems that the struggle for control is always at a tug.

Keith Sanford, psychologist at Baylor University conducted an experiment that used different assesments to measure conflict communication with in married couples. Via questionaires and reports through self, partner and observer showed how couples handled conflict. Other factors such as validity with the questionnaires and the context of the data had to be included in the experiment to validate their results. Results showed for the context-general assesment, more wives engage in communication when more behaviors and trait-like qualities arised as well in the context-specific assesment which dealt with a single event. For husbands, in the context-general assesments, men scored lower and the correlation between the context-general and context-specific was not significant. Overall, there was significant difference in the partner-reports used.

What does this all say? In my observations, it shows that women would react more in situations of conflicts that readily calls for conflict(s) whereas men dont probably see where conflict began and just feed into because its in their nature to "fight" and "argue " back. Whether a traditional or modern wife, conflict doesnt change just the actions and reactions involved have evolved over time just like men and women. The ability to communication isnt going to change. Use of verbal communication and in order to resolve conflict before it escalates into something greater has to change between the people who started it.