Here’s What I’ve Learned About Raising Boys in My 30 Years as a Child Psychologist ( www.self.com )

m0darn , 10 months ago

As a millenial father of young boys this was an interesting read.

I felt this paragraph needed some clarification:

Both mothers and fathers have believed that teaching their sons to be “real” men is at the heart of their job descriptions. As recently as 2020, research I helped conduct for the Global Boyhood Initiative of the DC-based NGO Equimundo found that parents of boys press them to comply with cultural standards, even at the expense of their personal authenticity. When asked what was most important for their sons, parents told us that they should be emotionally strong (94%) and physically strong (61%), play sports (48%), have a girlfriend (46%), and, overall, fit in (59%).

I think the first sentence is somewhat meaningless if it isn’t followed up immediately with an explanation of what the parents felt ‘real men’ are. It’s just such a nebulous term. Maybe the final sentence of the paragraph was meant to be the explanation, but it isn’t actually clear to me if it’s

What is important to the parents, for their sons

or if it’s:

what the parents perceive as being important to their sons. (What they think their sons value)

Given the context I suspect it’s the latter, but it should be less ambiguous.

And maybe I’m overly sensitive but am I ‘pressing my sons to comply with cultural standards, at the expense of their personal authenticity’ when I tell them not to make poop jokes at the dinner table?

I guess this is just the challenge of social sciences.

gapbetweenus , 10 months ago

And maybe I’m overly sensitive but am I ‘pressing my sons to comply with cultural standards, at the expense of their personal authenticity’ when I tell them not to make poop jokes at the dinner table?

Absolutely. But there is spectrum from anti-authoritarian to conservative and table manners are somewhere on that spectrum.