No one is happy.

I was on my way to the shop, walking through the park when I overheard a couple of women discussing a toy and whether it was appropriate for a boy or a girl. There has been a strong movement to blur gender weighted toys and to encourage boys to receive things that in the past would be the preserve of girls and visa versa. In this

ideologically driven mood we are determined to mix and match like sweets in a bag, the genders, so that encouraging boys to play with dolls and girls to push a truck around will develop a society in which out of work poorly educated males will recognise their role ,and make an ideal house husband.  

When I was growing up in the 40s and 50s, the gender identification was clear. It was based on a society which assumed that men went out to work and women prepared for marriage and to have children. This was not a bad contract for the bulk of people and whilst not written in stone. Many women rejected the stereotype and ploughed their own furrow by becoming part of the full time workforce, competing for a piece of the proverbial pie, by often deciding not have a family. Many accepting that they couldn't do justice to being a mother and a full time member of the workforce. 

Then came the evolution of the Welfare State.     It becoming a surrogate husband, providing an income stream which

meant that the role of the male began to diminish. 

Resentment has come, interestingly, not from the male side but rather from the female as they became a media talking point. Feeling overwhelmed by the pressure of having to be a a person in their own right on the job promotional ladder whist raising children they sought both more state aid and demanded that their partner (if they had one) played a much more intensive role in child rearing. 

The pressure of living beyond ones means is a cruel dilemma, wanting it all is a human failing and some how we have landed in such a mess that no one is happy !!!