Starting from birth every human is given a gender and from that point the roles one must play throughout life starts. Males are taught by society to be aggressive, show power, and never ever show signs of weakness (crying.) Females are taught to be polite, submissive, and respectful, but both genders in no way stick these traits that society has assigned to them. Especially today, with women now working full time jobs and men staying home more often to watch the kids or even do house work.
The Navajo Indian families have mostly the same characteristics as your typical or "societies" family, but has shown signs of becoming more egalitarian. First, Navajo families are matrilineal. This means the women have all rights to the property that the family owns and when she dies the property becomes her daughters. The fact that the land is owned by the females has actually set them back a bit in the past because the males didn't care as much about home because it wasn't theirs. Females were known to take care of all the children and do all the housework while the husband worked a full time job. This isn't any different from a traditional family, but it made it much more difficult for females to get out of this role.
Over the years, the Navajo have become a much more educated and (good or bad) "Americanized" families. With the Americanization of the families males began to gain more economic power within the families giving them more power than they had ever had. The result was actually exactly what the females wanted, men started working around the house more and wound up becoming more involved with his family. Also, coupled with the fact that more income was desired, women started to work part time jobs. Thus, leaving less time to do housework and causing the males to pitch in and help.
I believe the Navajo are a small scale of exactly how families today are evolving. No longer are men the true breadwinners who make all the money so his wife can take care of the kids.
