Mothers of boys I need your help | Mum In The Madhouse

Mothers of boys I need your help

This parenting lark is hard work.  Just when I think I am doing well, something comes along that gets me questioning what we are doing or how we are doing it.

femanist boys

As a woman I find the fact that I am the mother to two boys something of a challenge and a huge responsibility.  Now before I continue I just want to say this is not about whether or not it is harder to parent boys or girls.

I want my boys to treat women as equals and that will be completely down to the way that we as parents bring them up.  I know that I need to stop just focusing on getting through the day and week with them and start to think about the future and how to mould them in to the men I hope that they will be.

Feminism starts with Men.

I am a firm believer that feminism is as much down to men as it is women,  That men have a responsibility to feminism as much as women do.

So feminism starts with me raising feminists, but how do I do that?

This is what I don’t have answers too.

I know that when one of the boys is crying that terms such as “crying like a girl” should not be used.  That words have so much power.  That we should not use the phrase battered women (the woman didn’t have any power over the abuse), no, it was the man was the abuser, so let’s get rid of that term and put the onus and the man.

I hope that me and MadDad are good role models and examples for the boys.  We both believe that women and men are equal and we have an equal relationship.  I demonstrate that women can do most things as well as men and some things much better.

I show them how to cook and clean, I get them involved.

When they were smaller we didn’t have boys boys and girls toys.  We had a toy kitchen in our kitchen and encouraged the boys to play with dolls and buggies.  In fact they were just copying their daddy’s actions.  They loved pink.  We didn’t reinforce sexual stereotypes.

Then they started school.  Wow, that was a change, soon pink was for girls, blue for boys.  Crying was for sissies and more.

My boys do not need to “Man up”.

I need to work not just raising boys, but gowing men.  I know that they are like dogs, they need exercise, good food and lots of praise, but what else do they need?

So mothers of boys I need your help.  How do I do this, what advice can you give me?

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