On another mother’s forum, a mom posed the question, “Do Boys get a bad Rap?”. This was prompted by the same question asked on a recent Momversation (online video dialogue). I think they do. Growing up, I went to an all girls camp, lived in an all girls boarding house for HS, and almost went to a college for women. All that to say that so much of my upbringing evolved around empowering women and feeling empowered. I often came across the “us and them” rhetoric and may have fallen prey to it while I was younger. The older that I get, the farther my pendulum strays from feminism into the realm of humanism. Now that I have a son, I recognize that there are a number of systems in place to empower girls but it comes at the expense of suppressing what comes natural to boys. I think about it a lot. Because of that (and because of my own experience) I will make an effort to keep positive male figures in my son’s life (I’ve already screened preschools to see which ones have male teachers on staff and his pediatrician is also a male doctor). I feel that it is important that he is sensitive but I also don’t want to stomp out that active and often wild nature that makes him male.
My husband is as far from being an Alpha male as I am from being a prima ballerina. Neither of us watch sports (with the exception of a few Olympic events). Both of us were HS athletes and enjoyed it but neither of us are “jocks” or sports fanatics by any stretch of the imagination. Does this mean that I want our son to be carbon copies of us? Well, sort of. Papa and I share a love of reading, playing elaborate board games, hiking, critical thinking, and touching earth be it with our hands or feet. I’d love it if our son and any future children enjoyed those activities too. But seeing as my son is alone with me 90% of the time, I feel a responsibility to take him out with a bat and ball every once in a while. I take him to petting zoos and I touch the animals and insects so he is not afraid (meanwhile the hair on my back is spiked and my skin is in hives!) I don’t know how to properly pitch a ball or how to toss a football but there I am, teaching my son so he gains exposure. And to further nuture his innate attraction to balls and wheels, I’ve even taken him to our local fire dept for a tour of the trucks and a lesson on the order of Firemen. I also know the distinctions of construction vehicles– they all have different names and functions, ya know!
But just so that pendulum swings in both directions, I also give him dough to knead when I’m making bread. He rinses beans with me. When he’s old enough, he will know how to knit/crochet (even if it’s only scarves and beanie hats for his pals). I want him to have exposure to all of the above and through experience he will become whoever he chooses. I am after all the facilitator in this parenting relationship, not the dictator.
So with all of the nasty, hateful slogans out there created and churned by a number of mediums allegedly to build up the self esteem of little girls, “Boys suck, girls rule”– yeah, it was “written” on a locker in an Old Navy display in NYC and I sat and watched a little brother and sister bicker about which was true– I hope to just raise a boy who is compassionate, however wild and spontaneous he is by nature. He will learn that people say silly and hurtful things (even grown ups that sit in little think tanks and create national displays) and no, he does not “suck” and girls do not “rule”. I think that there will be a battle of the sexes until the end of time but he needn’t take part in it. I hope to teach him to embrace the human race and not to draw distinctions on size or age or race or one’s income. No one could have prepared me for what a job I have in store as a parent. This is proving to be the hardest and yet the most important position that I’ve ever taken on.
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I don’t think boys get a bad rap. I do think that in this age of “equality” and political correctness, too often people act like treating everyone the same is the best thing to do. It isn’t. People are different, boys and girls are different, men and women are different. It is simply important not to restrict boys from participating in activities traditionally thought of as feminine and girls from participating in activities traditionally thought of as masculine.
And keep in mind the feminist movement didn’t necessarilly taker into account issues Black people and other people of color were/are dealing with. It primarily focused on White women, whose issues are significantly different in many cases than Black, Latina, native American, west and east Asian women.
While the early feminist moment was created with white women in mind, I can safely say that within my lifetime, no man of any one race or culture has treated me better or worse, offered me or my mother higher wages, offered me a seat on the bus when I was with child, or refrained from calling me “bitch” because I am a black woman. So I’ve adopted feminist thinking and I’m sticking with it.
As for raising boys, I just don’t know that it’s as simple as not restricting them from for participating in traditionally feminine activities or encouraging them to do so for that matter. I keep going back and forth in what the key ingredient is without allowing my own experiences to cloud my outlook (I am raising the next generation after all). No law says that a man can’t wear pink or dresses in public or that a woman can’t work construction but it just isn’t common place and bound to leave them in social exile.
In any case, I think that relationships between men and women are a bit “broken” as proof of divorce rates and issues outlined in this commentary http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/08/opinion/08herbert.html?_r=1. I’m working on raising my son so he doesn’t fall within any of those boxes). I am more concerned with our sons being “tamed” in various stages of their lives in the name of correcting an imbalance that many experts see between the sexes. I could go on because I’m already seeing it at this age, but there’s an energetic little boy who is tugging at me to take him outside :o). Thanks for responding, B, your documentary photos of female boxers are what made me think of you!
I don’t think boys get a bad rap, either. Overall, I still think we are living in a “man’s world” so to speak, in which traditionally masculine qualities are valued over traditionally feminine qualities. I think this is particularly true in the U.S. compared to other western (e.g. European) societies. I also don’t think that most efforts to empower girls come at the expense of boys. My philosophy on gender is the same as my philosophy on race, socioeconomic status, age, etc. – I don’t make any assumptions about anyone based on gender, just as I don’t on any other sociodemographic characteristics. I think it is important to think of people as individuals, and not to assume for instance that all boys are one way, and all girls are another. Although on average for instance boys may be more “wild” and girls may be more “tame”, there are so many differences among individuals, and so many people that do not fit the stereotypes, that I don’t think gender generalizations are useful. I agree with your ideas about humanism and the importance of teaching humanism. But I would argue that humanism encompasses feminism, as feminism is the doctrine advocating social, political, and all other rights of women equal to those of men. What humanist wouldn’t agree with that?
Many thanks for sharing these thoughts.
We’re about a month away from becoming parents of a boy (so the sonograms say) and have been pondering many of these questions ourselves. Several times we’ve asked “What if he wants to play football?” and the like.
We want to be supportive of our son and his future decisions, but I remember well the pointless aggression exhibited by some of my peers (and at times myself) growing up. I hope we can discourage our kid from engaging in this behavior and still enable him to engage in any activity that will contribute to his growth as an individual and as a productive member of society.
While it very much is The Man’s world, that has nothing to do with your average male’s chances of success out there. And it certainly isn’t a picnic for little boys. To claim that gender is irrelevant to the challenges kids face growing up is a specious argument at best. Your average young boy is slower to develop verbally than the average girl of the same age. Certainly there are plenty of exceptions that challenge this assertion, but I am not terribly interested in exceptions unless my child happens to be exceptional. That men are more likely to find themselves on the wrong side of the law than women I think says a lot more about the issues facing boys than generalizations about male advantages or the pro’s and con’s of humanism/feminism.
That said, I don’t think this is some major problem in need of a men’s movement to solve or what not. I mean after all I am male so my attitude is typically masculine: we’ll (Pele and I) figure this out on our own without demanding that the world change for us. The first step in figuring it out however is recognizing the potential problem.
Well, this is a sensitive topic for me. I’m the daughter of a hard-core feminist (who is reasonably famous in her area). I’m also the mother of two amazing terrific boys, and I have two brothers. I do think my brothers suffered a lot because my mother’s feminism didn’t leave room for appreciating much that was inherently male. The whole concept of something being “inherently male” was to be eliminated and males were viewed as oppressors and not much else.
I’ve done a lot of reading about raising boys because I don’t want to repeat my mother’s pattern. Don’t get me wrong. I love her dearly, and in some ways, I’m probably also a feminist (or at least a beneficiary of the women’s movement, as a successful professional myself in what used to be a traditional male field).
However, a lot of what I read and see in our culture does not put forward flattering images of males. And I don’t think our educational system or our culture is doing the best possible job of raising strong, compassionate men. Schools are not designed for boys’ ways of learning. Maybe they don’t work that well for a lot of girls too, but I do believe that there are biological differences in the ways boys learn which mean that traditional school models are even less likely to work for boys than they are for girls. I think there aren’t many good role models for men in our society either.
I could probably go on about this ad nauseam. I don’t know whether I’d label it as “discrimination”. Maybe it is. I do think the pendulum has swung too far and that it has not resulted in an equal appreciation for both males and females in our society, For my mom, and others of her generation who participated in the women’s movement, I think it is totally foreign and alien to her to think that we might need to do things not only to help girls succeed, but also to help boys realize their potential. To her, boys always have the advantage because they are boys and therefore they don’t need anything else. It’s kind of sad really.
Anyway, that’s just my perspective from where I come from,
Jacqui
Papa, I don’t claim that gender is irrelevant to the challenges kids face growing up. I’m simply saying that we place too much emphasis on categories of gender rather than individual differences. Actually, I think that gender is probably more relevant to challenges kids face in the U.S. than in other western societies, because we I believe we have more stereotyped ideas about gender than, say, western or northern European societies. I think that this actually leads to some of the problems in our society that we attribute to innate gender differences, that may to a large extent reflect cultural differences about ideas of masculinity. For instance, you mention that men are more likely to find themselves on the wrong side of the law than women. Rates of incarceration for men in the U.S. are much higher than in say, Norway. Does our much higher incarceration rate for men reflect something innate about maleness? Or does it reflect something about our cultural ideas about masculinity? I would argue it reflects the latter.
Yay, you’re back online. (Beautiful post, but I’m taking the easy way out.)
Smita, judging from your response we are in general agreement. That said whether any of this has to do with inherent maleness or enculturated behavior makes little difference to me. The fact remains that boys have a different set of challenges to face because they are boys, and I think its worth recognizing that.