I Want Better For Our Sons
Our world is getting increasingly better for our daughters, but let's make sure our sons don't get left behind
In Accepting the Unexpected, I step away from writing about travel to comment on the bigger journey of life. While the topics may vary, the central theme is always the same: living life means learning to deal with the unexpected.
I knew I was pregnant with our son almost immediately.
It had taken us over two years to get pregnant with our daughter, so when we decided to try for a second baby, I told my husband that we needed to start after our daughter turned one because we had no idea how long it would take.
I was pregnant within a month.
Before I had the big sonogram, I was convinced we were having a girl. We would be able to reuse all of our daughter’s clothes. They could share toys and be best friends. I’m the oldest of four girls. What did I know about raising a boy?
But we were having a boy, and my life and my understanding of the world would never be the same.
Our June baby made his personality clear from the very beginning. He loved snuggles and went from zero to hangry in seconds, making me feel like my body was never my own. He was all systems go and then he would fall asleep with no prompting. He was smart and inquisitive and once he started talking, he had to know everything about everything. He was fiercely loyal and wanted to be a friend to everyone. He was every stereotype of a boy and did not apologize for it.
And twelve years later, he is still all of those things and so much more.
I’ve spent much of motherhood making sure that my daughter knows that she can do and be anything she wants. As a girl mom, we’ve had deep conversations about life and the world and religion and now that she’s a teenager, bodies and sexuality. I don’t want her to see herself limited by her sex but instead I want her to see the benefits of being a woman. I believe that a better world for women is a better world for both of my children, and it’s a lesson that we’ve discussed over and over again.
But as both a high school teacher and mom to an almost-teenage boy, I’m becoming increasingly concerned that we’re not working hard enough to make sure that we are creating a better world for our sons as well.
Ok, stop, take a deep breath, and put your knives away. I want to be perfectly clear. While the world for women is so much better than it was before I was born and my daughter’s future is even brighter than my own, I know that we are not there yet. There is still work to do, especially on the global scale.
But our boys are in trouble, and that is not good news for our boys or our girls.1
Reading Of Boys and Men by Richard Reeves helped to give me the research and words to highlight much of what has concerned me for years. (For an excellent discussion of his book and the issues he highlights in his book, I highly recommend his recent interview with Pantsuit Politics.) The book helped me narrow down my three biggest concerns for not just my son, but for the students who are in my classroom on a daily basis.
Boys and Relationships
My son loves his friends. He never wants anyone to feel left out and if he goes too long without interaction with his friends, he becomes a genuine monster. When we first moved back to Indiana, we let him play video games far too much because it was the only way he could talk to his friends, especially our old next-door neighbor who continues to be like a brother to him. We knew it wasn’t healthy, but we had a hard time saying no because he needed that connection. This past year he became really good friends with some of the boys in his class (including his cousin) to the point where they were asking for random sleepovers after soccer and basketball games and sometimes just randomly because they weren’t sick of each other. Those friendships are everything to him and we are eager to help him cultivate relationships that keep him from feeling isolated and alone.
For his sake, I hope those friendships last, because the statistics are stacked against him. According to recent studies, the percentage of men with at least six close friends has fallen by half since 1990. One in five single men says he has zero close friends. Men without close male friends are less physically, emotionally, and mentally healthy. They are more likely to turn to internet chat rooms intended to radicalize them into dangerous social behavior. They are more likely to harm themselves and others. Men who have healthy relationships are better for society and we should be finding ways to help our sons build these relationships.
Boys and Academics
Our son is a June baby. As a teacher who spends many hours with adolescent boys, I knew that we would eventually have to make a decision about whether or not to send our young five-year-old to kindergarten. Our son is bright. He has always loved books. But for the duration of his first year of pre-K, he had no desire to learn academics. He wanted to play and explore and be with his friends. His teacher recommended we give him another year of pre-K, and so we “red-shirted” him. It was the best decision we could have made for him, even though at the time we struggled with keeping him back from his friends. By October of the following year, he was actually able to identify letters and he was passionate about learning. We haven’t been able to slow him down since.
In Of Boys and Men, Reeves argues for a blanket redshirting of nearly all boys before kindergarten. While I don’t believe that all boys should be held back an extra year, I do believe that a lot of them should be given an extra year to mature. It really shows up in junior high and high school, as male students who are more mature are able to better compete with their female peers who reached puberty before them. They also have fewer discipline problems. Is this easy for parents? No, we have a social system that punishes parents for working by requiring them to pay far too much for childcare. But this could and should be used as part of the argument for universal childcare as a social good.
Finally, we need more men in all levels of education. In 2017-2018, women held about 76% of teaching positions in public schools, and the number has only risen in the five years since that survey. Boys need to see men in early childhood classrooms so they can have an additional male figure in their lives and see that men can also care for children. Boys need men in elementary classrooms for the same reason. Boys need men in English classes for the same reason as girls need women in science classes: they need to see that reading and writing are not just activities for girls, just like girls need to see that science is not just for boys. And we’re not going to get more men into education without raising salaries and benefits for all teachers.
Boys and Careers
Boys, and girls, need more pathways to careers. Technical training should be a standard offering in all high schools. Not every high school student is ready for college, nor does every student want to continue studying for four or more additional years. I have had some very bright male students who have expressed a strong desire to work with their hands and join the workforce immediately after graduation. And with the gender gap in colleges and universities growing to 1.3 female to male ratio, this should be an educational reform that everyone can get behind.
We’ve been telling girls for years that they can get into the sciences and tech world and succeed, and they are. But that also means we have significant gaps now in the service sector. We need more men going into education, nursing, social work, and other service jobs where men can have successful and even lucrative careers. My son didn’t have a male doctor until we moved here two years ago, when he was ten. He didn’t have a male teacher until he was eleven. I don’t think he has ever seen a male nurse in action, even though I have a cousin, an elementary school friend, and a friend of my husband’s who are all male nurses. I don’t think he’ll ever change his mind about being an engineer, but it is important that he sees these service sector jobs as valid career paths for men. And our needs in all of these careers will not be met if we are only recruiting candidates from one half of the population.
So Much More
I have barely scratched the surface here, but if we truly see ourselves as interdependent human beings, we understand that we need to lift up both our boys and our girls. Will my middle-class white son who was red-shirted and lives with his two parents, a sister, and two dogs be ok? I think so. He seems to be doing just fine. But I know what kind of world I want him to grow up into, I know what kind of adulthood I want him to have, and if that is the case, a goal of equity needs to ensure that we are lifting up our girls and boys, giving them the opportunities to grow and contribute to society in ways that help them flourish into adults that are making a better world.
Imagine what our sons and daughters could do together if we gave them all a fighting chance.
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Because my experience as a parent is entirely dealing with two cis-gendered children, the entirety of this essay is going to be dealing with that as my experience. Even with family and friends and students who are trans or non-binary, I cannot speak to their experiences or speak for them.
I am interested in reading that book.
Sarah, this was an excellent piece and one that echoes a lot of conversations we have in our home. My husband is a fourth grade teacher at a classical school, and his heart aches for his boys who are often short-changed by the academic system that doesn’t consistently meet their needs. He’s the first male teacher his students have, and I always love seeing how the boys flourish in his class, although it’s saddening that they have to wait until fourth grade for that experience.