jayder on AskMeFi (fast becoming my newest daily read):

what was different about my mother and father's parenting was that my father constantly lectured us---he enjoyed expounding upon his conclusions about life---while my mother never lectured. My mom was more into providing us with enjoyable and educational experiences (museums, movies, festivals, art galleries).

My father and mother played almost identical roles. Does it have to be that way? I'm afraid of the situation that occhiblu describes later on:

I feel like my parents fell into fairly stereotypical gender roles when raising us, in that my father taught me structure and intellectual strength and my mother taught me to respect my emotions. The typical "dadness" my father displays tends to be, as someone mentioned above, delivered in the form of lectures or intellectual debates rather than heart-to-hearts. Which gave me a strong sense of my intellectual worth, but now, especially since my mom's gone, makes it hard sometimes to connect with him and just talk about our lives (to the point where he's explicitly said, "I don't want to hear about it," mostly jokingly, when I've had emotional quandries). I wish he could have connected with us more on a human level, rather than just as the moral-examplar "Dad" construct.