CALLING HOME with Whitney Goodman, LMFT - All Women Lie, All Men Cheat?: Gender and The Family

Episode Date: March 4, 2025

Over 2,000 people responded to my Instagram polls about gender and family. Thank you again for participating! In this episode, I review the results of those polls and explore how gender stereotypes can harm family relationships: How hearing your parent speak negatively about the opposite gender impacts you What happens when your parents talk negatively about each other Sibling favoritism based on gender Breaking generational patterns of harmful gender norms in families Join The Family Cyclebreakers Club: www.callinghome.co/join Have a question for Whitney? Call in and leave a voicemail for the show at 866-225-5466. Follow Whitney on Instagram: www.instagram.com/sitwithwhit Subscribe to Whitney's YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@whitneygoodmanlmft Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey and welcome back to the calling home podcast. I'm your host, Whitney Goodman. I'm excited to be here with you all today. I'm changing my plan up a little bit here because I ran some polls on my Instagram stories about gender and families and the findings were so interesting that I want to talk to you about them. As always, before we dive into this stuff, these are Instagram polls. There is a chance that people hit the wrong option, that they didn't read the question. This is not like vetted, intense scientific research. So take what I'm saying with a grain of salt. Majority of my followers, I would say I think it's around 90% are women, 10% men.

So the findings are always kind of skewed in that direction, of course. But I thought that this was something really interesting to talk about, especially given the state of the world and kind of like where I'm seeing content going online when it comes to how women are being portrayed, what men want, relationships, marriages, families, how all of this is being impacted by gender. Before we get into that, I just wanted to update you that we did just start another monthly topic at Calling Home. This month, we are talking about how to navigate mental health issues in your family. So we're going to be talking about things like setting boundaries, taking care of people who have mental health issues, how mental health issues can

impact your family system, how to help and serve people instead of enabling them. And I have some really great interviews this month with people who have raised a child or a teenager with mental health issues or who have navigated things like that within the family. If you have any questions about this. And you would like me to answer your question for a Q&A episode of the podcast. Please do not hesitate to call in. You can call 866-225-5-466. And I will answer your question on a Thursday episode this month. Okay. So I want to talk about gender and the way that sex and gender identity influence family dynamics. And I want to start by having this conversation by just walking you through some of the polls that I did on my Instagram stories and how people voted

and we're going to have a discussion. And, you know, later I, of course, want to hear your reactions to this and what you think about these results. And you can leave comments on this on Spotify and let me know and DM me. I really want to hear from you all about this episode. So one of the first questions that I asked was, do you believe the men in your family respect women? I got about 2,000 responses to each of these questions, by the way, give or take a couple hundred on each. So do you believe the men in your family respect women? 43% said no. 22% said, I'm not sure. Twenty-eight percent said yes. Guys, that's crazy. That is startling. It is not shocking to me. But

it's not okay. So I want you to take a moment and think about that. Do you feel like growing up the men in your family respected, the women in your family? Do you feel like today, as an adult, you can look at your family and say, the men in my family respect the women in my family? Then I asked, growing up, do you believe your father saw your mother as an equal? 66% said no, and 12% said unsure, 20% said yes. So again, I want you to stop and ask yourself this question. You know, during childhood, do I feel like my father saw my mother as an equal? And if your parents both worked outside of the home, how did that impact this dynamic?

if one of them stayed home and one of them worked outside the home, do you think that that impacted how they saw each other as equals? Even if they did not do the same things for the family, one of them was the breadwinner and one of them was the, you know, caretaker, the person that organized things in the family. How did that impact, how they saw one another, and how respect was divided up within the family. And then I asked, if you grew up in a family with sons and daughters, were you treated equally? 13% said yes, 47% said no, sons were treated better. 7% said no daughters were treated better.

And 34% on this selected C answers. So a big percentage was not responding to one of those options. But still, we have this overwhelming percentage here between yes and no, saying no sons were treated better. So again, you can think about that. If you have brothers or if you have sisters, what was the difference between how the two of you were treated within the family? And then I asked, if you are estranged from a parent, is it your same-sex parent?

For example, a daughter being estranged from her mother. 31% said yes. So I'm estranged from a same-sex parent. And I found this to be really interesting given the responses to the other questions. 23% said no opposite. 21% said, I'm estranged from both. And 26% again on this one, we're selecting to see answers. So again, pretty interesting that the largest percentage here are estranged from

a parent of the same sex. So a daughter being estranged from a mother, son being estranged from a father. Very interesting. Then I asked, if you are estranged from a parent or have a challenging relationship, do you believe sexism plays a role? Forty-five percent here said yes, which I found very interesting that most were responding saying, I am estranged from a parent of the same sex, but I also believe that sexism plays a role. Very interesting. I'm not sure what to do with that yet. So if you have any thoughts on that, let me know. Then I asked, growing up, did you hear your father make negative comments or generalizations about women? 56% said yes. 36% said no. 8% selected here to see answers. So more than half said yes. Growing up, did you hear your mother make negative comments or generalizations about men? Fifty-five percent said yes and 40 percent said no. Six percent wanted to see the answers. Pretty similar split here. I was not expecting that. Pretty similar division among, you know, both people saying, I heard my mother

say negative things about men and I heard my father say negative things about women. Okay. So I took this to TikTok and Instagram because I wanted to hear more about what you all had to say about this. And some of you said things like I heard you're just like your mother or vice versa. Oh my gosh. So this is one of the worst things I think you can do is say something negative about your partner. Like say, oh, they're so horrible. They're so annoying. They're so lazy. And then tell your kid that they're just like. them. And I think that this is a really common pattern that we hear that relates back to gender because a lot of the time we are telling our same-sex child. And I'm sorry, I keep using gender and sex interchangeably in this episode. And I know some of you are going to call me out for that. So please forgive me. But you guys know what I'm trying to say. We are often saying that, like, our son is just like their father or the daughter is just like the mother while simultaneously saying very negative things about them. I think you can also identify traits in your child

that are very similar to the partner that you don't like and shame those traits in your child, right? Because you don't like them in your partner and so you don't like seeing them in your child. And that could make the child feel really, really awful. Another person said, yeah, I reacted so strongly to defending whatever parent I was being compared to as well, which of course you're going to do. If you're being told in a negative way, you're just like your father and you relate to that quality and say, oh, I am kind of like that. Of course you're going to get defensive of that parent because you're ultimately defending yourself or a part of yourself that is being criticized. Another one of you said, yes, both spoke poorly of each other.

I think to get an upper hand on me choosing them, which is very interesting because this can be done as a way to convince you, like, I am the better parent. Look how bad they are. But I think in the end, it actually just makes the child not want to be around either parent because they're so sick of being put in the middle, right, and having to choose. And they may also, again, be seeing, like, wow, you're pointing out things that I also relate to or that I don't think are a big deal or I don't see that in that parent. Or I think that that's a good quality and having to defend parts of yourself, like I said, or having to defend your parent who you are 50% of. This is interesting. Someone else said, dad spoke poorly about mom and women in general saying things like single

women who take vacation are hoars. So this is a perfect example of, I think, things that a parent will say about women or about men that they might defend and say, oh, well, I wasn't saying that about you about their child. But their child is automatically taking all of this and putting this in their brain of like, okay, women who are single and go on vacation equal this. If I wear this type of outfit, it means that. If I am this type of man or this type of woman, it means something bad. And you can say things about someone that your child identifies with without saying it about them. And it has the exact same impact as if you said it about them. Someone else said, you know, my dad would say that women were quote unquote asking for it because of clothing

choices or if I was into a certain sport that that implied that I had a specific sexual identity. And so I want you all to listen to these and just hear how easy it is to hear these off-the-cuff remarks about gender and what that means about you if you identify with that parent who is the same gender as you, the same sex. if you are of the same gender or sex of the person that your parent is talking about and how that can seriously mess up the way that you see yourself and the way that you see others and how hard it is to break down some of those beliefs. So let's go back and let's take a second to talk about this. And I think it's important for you to go back to some of those questions and ask

yourself and, you know, how do I feel like the men and women were treated in my family? How did they talk about one another? How were tasks divided in my home? And how has this impacted the overall dynamics within my family? And the biggest thing that I want to focus on first here is this feeling of did my parents see themselves as equals? Did the other parent believe that one was inferior to them? And I think that that comes out in the ways that they talk about one another, right? And that influences the way that you see yourself. So if you grow up in a family where your mother stays home and your father is the breadwinner, and he works outside of the home. And he speaks negatively about your mother. He comes home every day

and is like, oh, what did you do today? You don't know what it's like for me working outside of the home. Like, I'm the one that has to earn the money. I need to sit down on the couch. You need to make dinner for me. He's like putting his feet up and she's serving him dinner and making sure that he's relaxed and all of his needs are met when she's been home with the kids and working a 12 hour shift with young children for 12 hours that day. And it is clearly visible to the children that there is a power hierarchy here, right? The father is the one who needs to be taken care of, coddled, respected more. He is the one that is doing the hardest work by earning an income outside of the home. And the mother is doing, you know, kind of just like this easy,

whatever work, there may be this rhetoric that she is lazy or that what she does isn't worth as much. And depending on your sex and your gender, you are going to absorb some of those stories and those meanings, right? And you are going to look at your parents and say, okay, I want to be like, dad, because he gets this respect. And he's the one that makes money outside of the home. And so he's the one that gets taken care of. I don't want to be like mom because she seems really tired and really inferior here. And I'm watching my dad walk all over her. And if you are a woman, you're a daughter, you're even looking at mom and saying, oh my gosh, like, okay, I guess that's my fate. That's what I have to do. And obviously, this is generational and this has shifted over time. But the ways that

we watch our parents interact with one another and the ways that we watch our parents treat us and our siblings matter and they dictate how you are going to behave and what you are going to pursue. I think lately online we are seeing this huge battle of these two opposing ways of living your life, right? You can either be in a quote unquote traditional marriage where the wife stays home and she takes care of the children and she doesn't work and she cleans the house and she cooks and the man goes out and he works and he comes home at the end of the day and there is this clear delineation of gender roles, responsibilities, all of that within the home. Or as a woman, you can say, I'm going to go out and work and I'm going to be a boss and I'm going to

pursue all this stuff and I'm going to be really ambitious. And there's very little shades of gray in between. And I can tell you personally, I feel like I don't fit into either one of those camps because I work for myself. I have employees, but my hours can really be built around when is the right time for me to work. I am able to schedule things around picking up my kids from school. I work really late at night so that I can be there for certain things. I do not live the life of a corporate employee who has to be in the office for certain hours of a day, but I probably work as many hours as they do. I just do it in a different way. And I also take on maybe a lot more, quote unquote, like traditional roles in my home that I enjoy and that I

want to take on. But I also don't do a lot of domestic labor because I don't have time. And so I outsource pretty much everything in my life, like cooking, cleaning. You know, I am raising my children and I am hands on with my children and I am doing my job. And there's not a lot of space for anything else. And so I feel like I don't fit in to this definition, you know, of what being either a stay-at-home mom looks like or a working mom. And that can be a kind of awkward thing to navigate. When we talk about being a family cycle breaker, I always tell you all that the first step is awareness, right? And so if I ask you this question, do you believe the men in your family respect to women. And your answer is, I'm not sure or no. And your thought is, I want to change that.

I want to create a family culture where I believe that the women in my family show respect to men and the men in my family show respect to the women. And I want there to be a mutual culture of respect. And that can include that we feel that we have differences. that we bring different things to the table, that we offer different things in our relationships, that we are unique, that we have different skill sets, all of that can be true while still offering mutual respect, right? And I think that when you grow up in a family where you feel like women are viewed as less than, they are not given respect, they are treated in a demeaning and disrespectful way, that impacts you. It impacts who you choose to partner with. It impacts

how you see yourself, your self-esteem, and it impacts the way that you raise your children. And so you have to develop this awareness that, you know what? In my family, this is the way that I saw there not being mutual respect between men and women. And in this question I asked, you know, do you believe the men and your family respect women? And I primarily ask the question in this way because 90% of my listeners and my followers are women. So I'm curious about their point of view. But the way that disrespect shows up in a lot of families is going to come across as messaging, which is in the way that we speak to one another and the way that we speak about one another. So how the men in your family spoke about women's contributions to the family,

the way that they looked, the way they presented themselves, how they spoke about them as they aged, how they spoke about women at large. Were they making certain types of jokes or comments that were demeaning to women? If there was domestic violence in your home, where men were committing domestic violence against women, if there was any type of abuse, verbal, emotional that was coming, you know, from a male partner to a female partner or from a father to daughters, these are going to be things in your family that are likely patterns of generational trauma that are rooted in gender and in gender stereotypes. And so we have to think about, you know, how are these things showing up in my family? How did I internalize them as a woman? And what do I want to do about that

to make it different in my family today. So what am I looking for in a partner? Am I looking for a partner that is going to speak to me in a certain way that doesn't find certain jokes about women to be like funny or just brushes them off of like, oh, that's just how we talk, you know, or that's locker room talk. These are things to look out for that you can start to change within your own family, right? And then when we think about, you know, the question of, do you believe your father saw your mother as an equal, I think this is where we start to think about how do we want the division of labor to function in our homes? And how do we want to show one another respect and honor and appreciation for the things that we do? And I'm a big believer that it's never

going to always be 50-50. Everybody's going to have different skills, things that they're better at, things that they're more equipped to handle, things that fit better in their schedule. We're going to have moments where one of you is down and one of you is up and you have to carry more and you have to find a way to be able to make it feel fair. And I think that's really what is at the root of this. It's that it's not always equal, but it needs to feel. fair. It needs to feel like the right division of labor for you and your partner during that season of life. And so I know for me personally, like, I have a very, what I feel is a very egalitarian and like 50-50 type of relationship where we both pull a lot of weight and we

split things up equally in a lot of areas of life. So that includes, you know, work and also includes home life. And so when I was pregnant, that was something that my spouse could not do for me. They cannot carry it. They cannot do it. They cannot understand it. And so that was hard because it was the first time that I was feeling like, we can't split this. There is no way for you to take this on. And there's part of me that was resentful of that because I could still see my partner, like going to the gym and working and being able to achieve things at the same like velocity. And I had to slow down. And I had to, you know, be the one that was pregnant. And of course, you're grateful for that. And it's a blessing and all of that. But I'm

talking more about the mindset that you have to get into that they're going to be seasons of life where one of us can't do something. And the other one can. Right. And making that feel fair. So if you are going to partner with someone and you are going to say, you're going to go to work, one partner is going to go to work, and the other partner's going to stay home, and they're going to raise the children, is there a mutual level of respect that I can look at you and say, I am so grateful for what you're doing and I respect it. And I think that it is honorable, important work for our family, and you can look back at me and say the same thing. And we're not in competition or building this resentment of like, well, you don't make money.

Well, you don't help in the house. Can we see that what we are doing is complimentary? It's necessary for the, like, greater good of the family and that it feels fair for us. And I think for a lot of you that grew up in families where you feel like your parents did not see each other as equals, it likely comes down to this very ingrained belief that the partner who is out earning money is the one who deserves more respect and more honor and more accolades. And that's just not true because the partner who's doing things at home is making it possible for that. other partner to go out and to do the work. And sometimes one partner is working for a couple of years and one staying home and then they're switching. And you just have to find a way to make that structure work for you, right? And to find a way for there to be mutual respect. And this is kind of

one of those sneaky ways that it's just like how these gender stereotypes can be woven into our family dynamics. And if you want to choose to lean in to some of those stereotypes and to say, I want to be this type of person in my marriage, this is what feels good to me. I want to stay home. I want to do this. It feels good. Great. That's wonderful. But there has to be mutual respect on both sides in order for that to function. And I think that's where we see a lot of trouble come up in families is when one person looks down on what the other person is doing and is disrespectful because of that. And you can even see abuse in families come about because of that lack of respect. And you'll see that through financial abuse, domestic violence, you know, types of

control, coercive control that can come up when you feel like you do not respect what one partner is bringing to the table and that you can put them down for it. When we look at how gender impacts sibling dynamics, and again, this question that I asked was mainly directed towards women because that is primarily my following, you know, that it seemed like most of the women who answered this poll, 47% felt that the sons in their family were treated better than the daughters. And we have an entire four-week content block on our website at callinghome.com dedicated to adult sibling relationships. And this is something that I have talked about is that the most finite resource for siblings is their parents' attention. And when you feel like a sibling is being treated better

because they are a male and you are a female and there's nothing you can do about that, you are going to start to integrate that and it gets in great. and you start to believe that your brothers are better, that they deserve more. You can then carry those beliefs into marriages and friendships and relationships. And I've heard so many stories, you know, in these groups about like, well, I had to do all the dishes and clean up after dinner and help cook while my siblings sat on the couch and they didn't have to do anything. And these are where we learn some of the early.

earliest messages about our position in the world, right? And what we should expect. And we are groomed to kind of participate in some of these dynamics. And so again, if you're thinking about breaking some of these cycles in your family and you want to do things differently, you might want to consider, like, how do I want to be more equal with my kids? And of course, they're going to be differences from child to child because of who they are and their personality and their developmental status and what you can expect of them. But are there ways that I can have kind of a standard expectation for my children that does not make it feel so biased if this is something that I grew up with that I really didn't like? Now, this question about fathers speaking

negatively about mothers and mothers speaking negatively about fathers is something really interesting to me. And if you're a child that grew up in a family where you constantly heard your parents speaking negatively about each other and also speaking negatively about the opposite sex. So saying things like all men are X, all women are this. You can't trust men. Women will always screw you over. Making a lot of these. generalizations, you are going to internalize that as a child, especially dependent on your sex, right? If your parent is saying, all men are X, all men cheat, all men do X, and you are a son, you are, of course, internalizing those beliefs and taking them in. If you are a daughter,

you are then thinking, okay, this could be true about all men. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy to some degree that you then start to meet people like that. And you tell yourself, well, all men are just like this. And so that is what I should expect. All right, I want to recap for you how some of this, you know, growing up in an environment where both parents speak negatively about each other and the opposite gender can impact a child's emotional development, their relationships, and their perception of themselves. If you related to a lot of what you heard today, then some things that I want you to look out for and to think about are how did these messages distort my views on relationships? So did it make me more negative or cynical of

relationships? Or do I believe that conflict, mistrust, and resentment are normal parts of love? And has it made me really struggle to form healthy relationships or avoid commitment or replicate some of these toxic dynamics. It can also really create a lot of gender stereotypes and internalized bias. So if a child is constantly hearing negative remarks about women or about men, they may develop deep-seated biases and think that that is just the way things are because it's what they always heard. They can grow up thinking that men or women are always manipulative or untrustworthy or that they're cruel or unreliable and you just integrate and internalize all this stuff that you've been hearing and you view it as fact

rather than a bias that is maybe just a projection of the experiences of your own parent in the world. You may also develop self-esteem issues. So if a child identifies with that criticized gender, they might internalize negative messages. about themselves, which leads to self-doubt, insecurity, shame, blame, things like that, can also make you really fearful about embodying some of the traits that the parents condemn. And so you're going to suppress those parts of yourself, especially if they are parts of you that you identify in another parent that is being, like, hated on by your other parent. You also might notice that you have a lot of trust and attachment issues. So if you are

exposed to constant negativity between your caregivers about the opposite gender, you may struggle with trust or feeling like you're going to be betrayed or manipulated in relationships. You may also develop an insecure attachment style, which we talked about attachment styles in that Love is Blind episode from a week ago, and you may develop some of that anxious attachment or really become very distant to protect yourself. It's also possible that, you know, you're going to have a lot of trouble with conflict resolution problems because if your parents were very just hostile and made all of these generalizations about the opposite gender instead of getting to know the other person and having healthy conflict resolution, you may struggle to manage disagreements in your own relationships. And instead of saying, I should work this out, you just kind of say, well, that's how all women are, you know, and become very passive aggressive or avoidant or even. aggressive instead of open to different types of communication and understanding one another.

You also can have a lot of chronic stress from being caught in between two parents or caregivers who are always at odds. And we know that this can lead to anxiety, emotional instability, or depressive tendencies. And the biggest issue that I see here is that without conscious effort, which you are raising your awareness by listening to this, you can replicate these patterns in your own relationships and continue the cycle of negativity and dysfunction. And so what I want you to take away from this is that growing up in this type of environment can be difficult and there is a very strong chance that your caregivers and your family are still like this today. A lot of this is very cultural. There are so many cultures, religions,

communities, where there are deeply entrenched gender stereotypes that really stop families from functioning well. And so you have to make the commitment for yourself that I am going to try to build healthier levels of respect and introspection and conversation and repair and fairness and equality within my relationships, whatever that looks like for me and my partner and my family so that we can have a healthier relationship moving forward. I'd love to know what you thought about this episode. Please remember to leave us a review on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. You can also leave comments or questions on Spotify.

Those reviews and ratings really help me grow the podcast and they help me to keep producing this for you. And as always, you can join the Family Cycle Breakers Club, which is our membership community. for people who would like to take this another step further at www.com.com. I will link that in the show notes. Thank you all so much for listening and contributing to this episode. And I will see you again on Thursday for another Q&A episode. The Calling Home podcast is not engaged in providing therapy services, mental health advice, or other medical advice or services. It is not a substitute for advice from a qualified health care provider and does not create any therapist, patient, or other treatment

relationship between you and Calling Home or Whitney Goodman. For more information on this, please see Calling Holmes Terms of Service linked in the show notes below.