We must provide therapy for those who need it

There is a problem that needs to be addressed regarding the price of therapy. Not only do we need to work on the price, but we need to be more accepting of people who do choose to do therapy.

Once people are able to accept the positive results of therapy, then we can come up with more and more affordable ways to engage in therapy.

A huge reason why therapy is so expensive is the high entry costs and also the low-paying work in order to get a license. This is a disaster and we need to step forward and fight for those who can’t afford therapy. The ironic thing is the people who can’t afford therapy are usually the people who need it the most.

One of my brother’s friends killed himself last year, and he was the type to say that therapy is for soft people. We don’t realize how much our emotions can drive our actions, which means we need a therapist who studies emotions and other things to make sure we are actually doing okay. People often brush off small problems that can gain weight and sink their ship in the long run.

“You are more likely to experience mental illness than you are to develop heart disease, diabetes, or any kind of cancer.” Lots of people tend to worry more about their diet than their emotions, when they don’t realize that mental illness is probably a bigger issue. People go through things and we need to accept that. We have to stop suppressing our emotions and actually use them and listen to them in order to improve our daily lives and health. If it works, continue to do it no matter what anyone says.

— Finn Smith, Boulder

Don’t assign familial roles based on gender

In recent years, the movement toward gender equality has strengthened and gender roles are in the process of reorganizing, or even collapsing. The Traditional American family structure, where women stay home and take care of the children while the father goes to work to provide for the family, is still an expectation within households. Though most people would love to see more women in the workplace and more representation in male-dominated fields, most people are not ready to see fathers being the primary caregivers in the household.

When men are seen taking care of their children alone, the response they usually get is praise and surprise. For fathers, parenting and childcare is called “babysitting.”

When we raise children in this environment, it instills a mindset of misogyny and establishes gender roles from a young age. This continues the family structure that promotes misogynistic tendencies that we are trying to steer away from. I was raised with quotes like “you throw like a girl” and “don’t cry like a girl,” as many children were. It made me feel small and impossible, as if people were expecting me to separate myself from my gender. When raising our children, we should not resort to assigning familial roles based on gender, because as the cycle continues, it will make it difficult for women to have the option of escaping the role of “caregiver.” If we set examples of equality, like omitting “…like a girl” from our vocabularies and not just assigning the “womanly” chores to just the woman, we can create a new generation of people who are more likely to help promote gender equality.

— Olivia Santangelo, Boulder