why is it hard to like other people’s boy children

I am a mother to girls, and have no brothers and I admit I don’t have much experience of raising or being around boys. The boys in my life I can find them overwhelming, frustrating and to be honest, self centred and lazy.

However, I am wondering if this is related to how people parent the boys, and a patriarchal society rather than the boys - as in it’s not their fault, they were not born this way. Is this something other parents have noticed, like Little Prince Syndrome?

My husband has a 12yo son and even after 5 years I struggle to bond with him. I have 2 x 9yo nephews and I also struggle with them. All 3 kids have different parents.

The boys are all overbearing in conversations - yell and talk over everyone else and already at their age ?!? mansplain and refuse to accept explanations or answers, challenging everything, ie. They all seem to ‘know better’ when a female answers a question and all have very singular topics they are only interested in, not interested in other people really. Step son is obsessed with football, so everything you do has to centre around that, and if it doesn’t, he’s completely disinterested in anything else and just mopes about.

I notice the boys all seem to opt out of clearing up, after a meal finished they will return to either talking about their chosen topic without noticing everyone else is clearing up, or go do their own activity, and have to be asked/reminded to do even minor tasks such as take a plate to the kitchen. I often watch them at family parties and while everyone else is pitching in, they have wandered off kicking a ball around quietly and when asked to help ‘oh I didn’t realise…’ however if it’s something slightly dangerous, they will barge in and get in your way even if you don’t want them to help they feel entitled to ‘help’ like SS demanding to be allowed to ‘light the BBQ’ unsupervised

They are nice boys, but I often read posts on here about people’s useless husbands, and think hmm well, there seems to be an awful lot of these males around… and it probably starts young!

My DH often feels frustrated as he’s very much an equal partner with a female, and believes in equality. He feel like he’s always nagging his son to try to get him to learn about life but many females seem to enable this! DH’s mum acts like SS is made of china, and my mum is the same with my nephew.

Is there a way we can tackle this as society?

OP you're not wrong. It's hard to put a finger on why but it does feel harder to bond with boys especially in the loud and shouty phase where kids are no longer small and cute but still far away from being teenagers,

I feel there's a collective culture of not encouraging boys to develop individual personalities. It starts by the limited boring clothes in shops. It feels like every single boy is dressed in olive green, navy blue and beige with dinosaurs. They all end up playing football, Minecraft, Legos and screeching 6-7 with their friends. If you see a group of boys together it's really hard to tell them apart. It might be a precursor to lad culture where you can't tell any man in a stag do apart either. They are simply bonded by a love for drinking and breasts.

In contrast, girls are far more introspective, like to define their personalities very precisely and think about ways of expressing this to the outside. Eg the Hello Kitty universe has loads of characters and girls will fiercely have a favourite which reflects some part of the personality. There's the black and pink cute gothic Kuromi or the white and blue fluffy Cinnamoroll whose colour scheme also defies gender stereotypes. Girls also have very specific favourite colours, animals, hobbies and fashion style. When you speak to a girl, you get a very clear idea of who she is as a person and it's usually totally different to the girl next to her.

Speaking to boys of the same age you only get a fuzzy idea of who they are as individuals but it often feels like they're all talking about the same collective hobbies, trends or memes. Maybe for the same reason, grown men don't have the same sense of personal responsibility. They tend to see themselves are part of a collective and whatever their mates are doing are fine for them as well. If the lads are all taking Sunday off to go cycling for 6 hours despite kids being home then they will rage if they don't get the same privilege.

@Goldenbear sorry, what does this actually mean? I’m stupid and am ‘reading the wrong things?’ And you know better and read the right things - but just conveniently haven’t posted anything as an example? Just thought policing me, ok.

the more people tie themselves in knots angry at this idea, and lashing out, the more the point is being proven. We know this is an issue in society we just don’t want to admit it’s an issue in our families because it’s too close to home. It happens to other peoples sons. Less nice families. Girl mums are also to blame it seems but no one has posted a single reason why, apart from girls are becoming influencers and having plastic surgery bizarrely.

@Goldenbear yes there are mum blinkers but it doesn’t have the same dangerous effect on society. Having mum blinkers and raising a rude girl doesn’t cause other women to get assaulted and raped. Unless you believe that women provoke men into assaults

I don’t know what parallel universe anyone is living in but yes, we all probably agree that patents should stop perpetuating this by socialising girls differently to boys. However, teaching life skills such as housework and life admin is valuable, so it should also be taught to boys equally as it is to girls. It’s not though. And the thousands upon thousands of daily posts here about people’s husbands, and the statistics about male behaviour backs this up.

There are “mum blinkers” too. Dd then 15 was waitressing at an event and one woman my age was a guest twittering on that she bet the girls all “knew her son jack isn’t he marvellous plays rugby bet all the girls love him” etc.

To be polite they nodded along as dd said afterwards we couldn’t exactly tell her her son is a massive misogynist twat and all the girls despise him. Constantly pestering for nudes grades girls to their faces and particularly vile to girls he deems less attractive. Mum blissfully ignorant.

@Clockbook so the police, and all of the professionals who contributed to the website I posted about female violence don’t know what they are talking about? It doesn’t start at a young age via socialisation? It’s no one’s issue? It’s something that just randomly occurs in late childhood and early adulthood? We can’t reduce risk factors of offending by raising children differently? Why do boys and men offend? Is it genetic ie nature vs nurture? What counts as ‘firm evidence’ - rising rates of sexual assault?

It’s warmed my heart how the overwhelming majority have essentially responded with “WTF are you on about OP!”

Mate. This whole post is precisely about how it’s not being predisposed but is socialised by parents. In a way it’s not for boys. How has that gone over your head I don’t know!

Some of the comments about women and girls are really quite appalling and do not correlate at all with stating I have met boys who are lazy and entitled. It seems it’s ok to hit back with gross stereotypes about women and girls in a bid to try to prove me wrong that men aren’t a danger to women as statistical aggressors, and to point out that male entitlement needs to be addressed in childhood to protect women.

It is true that there is a large portion of women who hate women, and these women are raising boys. This thread very much shows this

I agree I have this feeling of discomfort

Not everyone is good or bad, no one is that linear.

A 15yo lad who is delightful to someone else’s mum, might not be as delightful to another 15yo girl. I mean, they know their target audience. I don’t mean to crap all over everyone’s delightful children but clearly some boys aren’t being delightful to other girls but where do they come from? Whose kids are they? How did it happen? If we don’t know and don’t look carefully it will never stop and the entire community who enabled it will be to blame.

are you actually open minded to the answer or is this a sarcastic question? It’s hard to tell frankly as no one is open to actually listening.

I already posted a link to the Violence against Women and Girls police website which stated that everyone needs to tackle the issue at a young age. Men who have already offended often continue to offend so it’s too late. We need to raise boys to respect women and be functional members of society, this includes learning basic life skills and not that some jobs are for girls and some are for boys.

I gave examples of what I view as problematic parenting that I have witnessed. Things like allowing boys to continually dominate conversations with only their own topics, learning how to mansplain at a young age, talking over the top of girls, using their strength to dominate a girl to get their own way, parents not expecting them to help with household chores, ‘boys will be boys’ behaviour excuses and different expectations and responsibilities for girls.

The men who are offending or abusing women come from somewhere… where do people think they come from? Another planet? They are being raised all around us. Of course no one likes to think their child or their parenting might be problematic, but denying misogyny is lunacy. It’s NIMBYism

The whole community should work together to prevent violence against women and girls and this includes recognising that we could all do better. I already posted I really do want these boys to grow up into lovely men, and I can try to educate them and help as part of their community.

Misogyny is a huge issue, just the other month Louis Theroux aired a whole documentary on the manosphere.. did you hear about this? Have you heard of Andrew Tate? Young boys and men are being taught online that men are more valuable than women, and how to manipulate women into sex and use them. There is a huge issue with boys watching porn online and expecting girls to re-enact what they have seen.. surely I don’t need to go on?