Growing up Canadian While Living Abroad by Geraldine Mac Donald-Moran

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Canadian Love- March 2005

A reader from abroad has inquired about enlightenment on Canadian/ Western Love? He kindly requested that I give him the secrets to winning the heart of his Canadian girlfriend; suggesting that all women think the same way and that therefore, they must want the same things out of a romantic relationship (things that are, unfortunately, incorrectly assumed by his own culturally and personally biased judgment).

Reading his letters, I discovered the need to profoundly investigate the notion of what is Canadian Love? It is a topic of intimacy and complexity: a bucket that could be filled to the brim with diverse viewpoints and arguments.

Lets think about it and put a drop in the bucket!

My initial reaction to his request was that of a woman born to a Canadian generation of liberty and choice (you see, I too am highly biased). I told him that what I do know about Canadian women, in general, is that they enjoy their freedom. Then I gave a strong suggestion that the only person who could help him would be the girlfriend in question: Look no further than the girl standing before you. Look no further than yourself. Lo and behold, he wrote back.

Yes, I said, we share the same anatomy and physiology, which some might think could be enough to imply that we share the same needs or interests?

Everyone knows that this is not the case but the contrary. ' To each their own', is not a light cliché but one laden with truth: women vary greatly among individuals and between cultures. The development of ideals, beliefs, values, interests, behaviours, mannerisms, and LOVE, is highly dependent upon the cultural upbringing (the cultural socialization) we receive as youngsters.

Okay, this is where I advocate nurture vs. nature; the process of learning about love is thus influenced by the society in which we are raised and by the examples we are given by our society.

Our perceptions of what love means, consequently, are tainted by the society in which we are raised. A similar physical response to romantic love does not indicate a common desire for the ways in which love is expressed or articulated; nor does it specify or delineate the multiple causes or motivations for 'loving' in the first place.

Lets illustrate some ideas, in order to validate this point of view for the benefit of our readers who question (Canadian style) love.

1. Gender role definition varies among cultures.
2. Gender role expression varies among cultures.
3. Romantic (as well as the variable forms of other types of love such as friendship or love toward a pet; a community, a place, an item or object-human beings report and exhibit multiple types of love) love definition, and expression, varies among cultures and between individuals.
4. The social results, or evidence, of these definitions and expressions, vary among cultures and between individuals: Evidence that is also subject to laws formed and regulated by the very same groups or societies in question; such as the acceptance or negation of same sex marriages, for example.

In Canada, as well as innumerable other countries and cultures worldwide and in present times, small children are exposed to social stimuli that help them to form and define their gender role in society. Expert psychologists suggest that one's gender role is formed between the ages of three and five. Boys learn to be boys and girls to be girls: snakes and snails or sugar and spice.

Whether it is pink shoes and blue trucks, or face paint and the use of specific dress codes, these indicators play informative and important functions in each and every culture's tendency to demarcate the differences between men and women, girls and boys. But travel to other cultures, or watch Discovery or National Geographic channels, for confirmation that some cultures encourage, and even demand, greater or less show of such aforementioned 'cultural role characteristics'.

Differentiate the sexes in order to unify them appropriately, in specific socially acceptable ways, later? (That's another topic all together).

Canadians may be more unisex, gender blending and less specific about the ways in which we teach gender roles or display love for that matter, but we still achieve the mission; naturally and nurtured.

Where love is concerned, there are always individual factors to consider, for the expression of romantic love may be social, and learned, but nature plays a grand role that must never be excluded: Nature, the one true link to all of humankind.

Nature, the one factor we cannot refute.

The need to love, and be loved is probably universal and even when a physiological response may appear to be very similar if not exactly the same; humans are mammals that are driven by rational (and too often irrational) thought.

Canadian, romantic love, to one such as myself, is a participatory and reciprocal emotion: one that is given as well as received, multi-faceted and complex. While thanks to a growing equality between men and women, love is less defined by gender and more defined by the individuals concerned.

Since it is impossible to eliminate one's familiar upbringing, our generation is probably more affected by ancestral beliefs and values than will be the generation to come: As we are, in general, more multi-cultural; global, international and broad spectrum than the previous generations of Canadians and change obviously occurs as much as our environment fosters the transformations.

Aside: one day my four-year-old son was behaving in a way I found socially unacceptable. When I asked him to stop the ' behaviour' in question he turned and said

" Oh Mommy, go back to the kitchen where you belong."

On other occasions very young girls have commented on how handsome are our sons. These premature expressions of appreciation for male beauty have provoked many conversations at our kitchen table, making our Canadian sons aware that the culture they live in may approve an earlier, or more uncovered, expression of romance and romantic interest than if they still lived in Canada: differences noticeable even to them.

Tell me; how composite is the definition of gender and how intricately tied is that definition to what we perceive as love in each and every culture or to each and every individual?

© Geraldine Mac Donald-Moran


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