Raising Up a Boy

Cozy in bed this morning, I was listening to the news with my six year old son beside me, clutching his newest Lego creation. Together we heard that a mother had both of her arms broken with a crowbar in a “vicious road rage incident.” As I strained to hear the rest of the story, I heard my son murmur, “I hope that doesn’t happen to you.”

It’s International Women’s Day.

We are being encouraged to strike for the day. I hope that it will make a difference.

Nevertheless, I went about my usual morning routine (I’m not sure how else I would get fed) and then, while my child finished his last bites of breakfast, I brought up the news item. He wanted to know what a crowbar was. He wanted to know why a person would do that. He wanted to know why women would strike. I did my best to explain.

There’s nothing like describing the world to a child to make you hear afresh just how crazy it all sounds.

Over our early morning cup of tea my husband and I talked about our role in raising a boy; how we can ensure he respects the women in his life. We have a more traditional marriage, in that he works out of the home, and I am here, working in the home office but available for childcare most of the time. I’m not sure how much of an impact that will have on his perception of women in the workplace. After all, plenty of his friends’ mothers work: lawyers, bankers, accountants, teachers and even an airline pilot. He knows stay-at-home dads and his own father strives to spend as much time with him as he can.

Still, it’s the little things isn’t it? It’s the things that people actually say — not on the news or from behind a podium — it’s those things that become part of our programming as adults.

I’m a child of the seventies. There were still plenty of misogynistic wisecracks on the go in my school years. Come to think of it, they were still the norm when I headed out into the workforce. Dumb blonde jokes were all the rage and the word retard was bandied about by kids and adults alike. Women were in the workplace, feminism was on the rise but in everyday life, in homes and schools and workplaces it was okay — safer and easier — to laugh.

Even now, women shy away from the label of feminist, attempting to shrug off what is unsaid; the notion that it makes a woman a man-hater and/or a killjoy.

I am a feminist, a quiet one. I like being a woman and a mother and a sister and a wife and a daughter…. I like people regardless of gender. I like individuals who are kind, funny, hard-working and deeply-flawed. Kindnes is the one I stress to my son.

So, how to raise our sons to be feminists?

Never mind how complicated the world can be, choose to be kind. Seek to understand before responding with anger. Kindness to others (let us include animals in here) and just as important, kindness to himself. It’s okay for boys (and men) to cry. It beats the alternative. And while I’m at it, it’s okay for women not to cry. I have been judged for not showing enough emotion. Sheesh.

So far that is my plan. Kindness.

Keep in mind, he’s just starting out in Elementary school. I am aware that things will become multi-layered as we progress into adolescence and beyond (yikes), but for the moment this will be my refrain. Say it again! Kindness, people, kindness.