Being the only woman in a household of men (when you have only sons), or the only man in a household of women (when you have only daughters), can also cause tension as you try to make equitable decisions about discipline. Sometimes, in this kind of family system, you may feel like a minority in the family because of a strong gender-based culture in the family. You may feel excluded or put down because of this difference.

You may hear things like, “How can a mother understand her son's needs as a man? As his father, I know best.” It can feel like they are ganging up on you. Put down in this fashion, you can be denied full participation in parental decision-making. You can be treated as an outsider, excluded from the loop of information in which everyone else is often included. Or a daughter confides to her mother, “I'll tell you, if you promise not to tell Dad — he wouldn't understand.”

As you lose credibility with your children for being of a different gender, you are told less; as you are told less, you lose credibility for knowing less. In the end these behaviors can marginalize your importance in the family.

In such situations, the parent who shares the same gender identity with the children is often given more confidence, respect, empathy, authority, and support by them than the other parent. Sometimes it may feel like being loved in spite of your parental designation and not because of it. And when you protest, you can be accused of being oversensitive.

To have the children and the spouse you love treat you as a second-class parent because of your gender can hurt. You are being neither equally valued nor equally included. So what is to be done? Don't allow this kind of family discounting or exclusion to go unchallenged. Even in the most trivial of family affairs, assert your position as a parent of equal importance. Don't allow yourself to be put down. Don't allow yourself to be kept out.