Any feminist mums want to chat about bringing up boys?

DM has a great story (one of those that still gets trotted out at every family gathering) about having to physically seperate my brother and the boy over the road (both about 7 at the time) arguing over who'd push my dolls pram to the shops. I didn't give a stuff as I had my bike!

We have two boys (6 and 2) and we're trying to raise them to consider everyone as equals. They're both very caring but will also argue over who will push teddy in their little blue pushchair.

DH and I treat each other as equals in every aspect of life and I think this passes down in the same way as children can pick up and copy bad behaviour / disrespect too.

I was at a party recently where the kids were playing a game where you have to fish tiny plastic objects (about 2" big) from a sharks mouth. Two little girls fished out two small plastic guns and started shooting them at each other. No-one commented.

Later on two boys started playing with cars and all the adults started saying, oh that's boys for you, head straight for the cars, anything destructive... I think people just notice what they expect to see and it reinforces those expectations.

I read that on Saturday, drjohnsonscat, the same thought ran through my head - surely this isn't just boys' habits?

(As an aside, I had a friend who very much wanted to ban any plaything remotely endorsing violence. They lived some distance away so we didn't catch up very often. One visit when eldest boy was 6, walked in on them as she was brushing DD's hair, all the children playing guns and spears with innocent combs and toothbrushes).

Just returning to this topic to say this www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2013/jan/12/hannah-evans-mother-of-boys is the kind of article I hate. If I read one more time that "bringing up boys is like bringing up dogs" I am going to have the rage. And as for having a house full of muddy wellingtons and children who like to play swords with the cardboard roll inside wrapping up paper -that is a function of having children, not boys.

My girl and boy are constantly squabbling over who gets to play with the sword (actually the bit of wood that weighted down the bottom of a blind - it broke in two and fell out so we had two swords until one got lost and now we only have one stick to wave around madly). So many stereotypes in one article - and this is in the Guardian...Grrr

DS's dad sounds a caveman, BunFF no wonder he's your ex.

Sorry, not helpful. From what you've said, DP is a decent male role model to counter the ideas his dad has. You have a bright DS who thanks to you won't let his father belittle or bully him into conforming to some limited example of a Man's Boy.

Fwiw my DCs went to mixed schools, there seem to be distinctly separate friendship groups but not purely according to gender. In groups they hang out, socialise, the romantic attachments slowly started but by no means does everyone pair off and they still get together outside school en masse. I'd hope that blatant stereotypical attitudes get shouted down, I'd like to think each pupil feels as empowered as the next.

However hard we try at home, I see how DCs are affected, soaking up outside influences like sponges. Difficult to make any progress if one's own OH (even when an ex) or extended family can still able to exert adverse influence!

Your ex and his mates sound like school bullies, jeering at anyone different.

At 14 peer support is valuable. Does your DS have an uncomplex rapport with girls?

Christ. What a way to talk to any child, let alone your own child :( :( Must have been very hard for you, OP, to have to put up with that. Good on your ds for standing up for himself.

Yes, perhaps 'Unusually' would have been a better description. It may be judgement and not luck, but it's still relatively uncommon. My brothers are all pretty involved but then we are lucky to have two feminist parents (my mum and step-dad). Setting the example is absolutely key - my step-dad did all the cooking at the weekends, and made dinner for him and my mum despite the fact she was a SAHM. He also did (and does) the grocery shopping as she hates it. He did parents' evenings despite a job involving very long hours - admittedly I seem to recall in those days parents' evenings actually were in the evenings!

Funnily enough NotFor I thought when I had written it, that's not right, it's not 'luckily', it's because I would never have married/partnered someone who had attitudes other than that.

I left it partly because I couldn't be bothered to change it but also it was in the context of what someone else said about that being the most important factor. Looking at my post-natal group, I have realised that it is still sadly quite rare.

But I agree with you and it's the type of thing I'd have picked someone else up on.

Well my ds' ambition is to be a SAHD. Or a volcano scientist. I think he'd like to do both - juggling work and childcare like we do!

Admittedly I think this is based on a rather unrealistic assessment of what a SAHP does (he is 7!) because his dad is chronically ill, so he does do quite a lot of the stereotypical 'sitting about on his arse [er, he's in a wheelchair] drinking tea' that I think some of my colleagues think their wives do all day.

ds does mainly hang out with boys at school, but partly because of age and disposition, he tends to be with the quieter (younger) boys and some of the girls.

I've not come across the attitude of 'poor you' because I have a boy, but perhaps people tend to be more cautious when you only have one child?

What I particularly want to avoid with my ds is the chronic macho 'cannot admit when you don't know something' attitude I see among my colleagues. At the moment we are doing a programming project in my team. Three of the guys have much more recent experience than me and two of the other guys, despite the fact that I think that overall I probably have more experience of commercial programming than anyone else (but stopped doing it about a gazillion years ago). So the whole point of the project is for us to [re]develop our skills, but it's like pulling teeth getting them to admit when they don't know something and need help. They're quite happy for me to admit it, I notice! As am I - I'm not going to play some ridiculous game for the sake of it.

BlonderThanRed, you wrote, "Luckily DH is very keen to be equally involved with parenting...." and I did an inner squirm! I was just imagining how it would sound if a man wrote that/thought that - ie "I'm lucky that my female partner wants equal involvement in bringing up out child, so I won't be doing it all myself".

I feel really uncomfortable when women, unconsciously, indicate that for a man to be fully involved in parenting, this indicates something noteable and 'fortunate', as if the norm really should be that he's busy doing something else, like earning the money or pursuing his hobbies.

When the day arrives that men and women assume, from the cradle, equal involvement in raising their DCs, then I'll rest more easily. I don't mean to pick on you specifically, as I think you just wrote this in passing but it really stuck out for me that you feel it's 'lucky' to have an interested and involved male partner.

I suspect that if men and women's inner, spontaneous attitude is that each gender is committed equally to the DCs upbringing, then any sons will imbibe this attitude from the start and it'll be there in the entire atmosphere within the family environment.

I have an 11wk old DS so am reading with interest. Luckily DH is very keen to be equally involved with parenting and we both want DS to grow up without gender boundaries.

The interesting time seems to be when they start school or nursery and have influence from other children as far as I can see from this and other threads. I guess you just have to keep leading by example and hope that they grow through this peer pressure to have their own thoughts and ideas.

I am a SAHM. I have four boys. We have brought them up to realise I am just as capable of working for a living as my husband, even though I haven't worked since my eldest was born. Ok, I do the vast majority of the housework, as I do it during the week, but they have always seen my DH do just as much as me when he's at home. In fact, they prefer his cooking to mine.

Now they're almost grown-up, I've noticed a difference in their friendships to when I was at school or college. They go around in groups of male and female friends, and think nothing of it at all. Even when they were younger, they'd talk much more to the opposite sex than we ever did. There is a much easier feel to their friendships than we ever had at their age. I know they think that girls are equal to them and I'm sure it's not just because of the way we've brought them up, they see it at school and their other groups so much more, as they're so much more integrated with one another.

I really do think this is the way things are becoming more and more. Ok, you'll always get Neanderthals, but you also get girls these days who think lads are useless, and you'll never get rid of the stereotypes altogether.

Yes another mum of a boy signing in here.

I do think alot about what I am teaching my son (2.5 yrs), as I am a single mum with an idiot abusive ex who turns out to have terrible attitudes towards women (& me specifically!). I want to teach Ds to not only respect women but also respect himself and encourage him to be more than the male stereotypes available - alot of which are restrictive and quite rubbish when you look at them!

As ex h is so sexist & determined that I'm going to 'gay' Ds (ahem!), I do spend more time thinking than I should about getting Ds dolls/ pink/ necklaces etc.

DS is mercifully free of gender assumptions currently, he only just learnt there are boys & girls, & I think mummies are still in a category of their own! He's got tons of energy but isn't destructive or aggressive, & can also concentrate for long periods of time - basically he's doing his own thing as a toddler, not a boy first... Although I'm sure that will change.

Should say this person was 20 years' older than me sp perhaps it was more common thinking in that generation.

I absolutely agree you, it is sad when people assume boys are a handful, and put them in "Little Monster" t shirts, I know it's meant to be light hearted but it's a sort of brainwashing.

Funnily enough LaGuerta I had a colleague with 2 sons say in all seriousness, "You must be worried sick these days, having a daughter, all that worry about them getting pregnant and out late with God knows who".

She worshipped her own sons, she and her husband thought it hilarious when they brought home a different girl every Saturday night, "You never know who you're meeting on the landing!" and regularly joked about 'the boys' sowing their wild oats, using that exact expression.

Presumably if they brought home a girl like my DD who later 'got herself' pregnant she'd be called every name under the sun.

I have 2 DSs aged 4 and 2.

The stand out surprise for me since having a second boy is the negativity adults have expressed about having male children and how unlucky I am to have got two boys as opposed to at least one "easy" girl.

"Is your second a boy... Oh, you're going to be busy.

"I really pity you having two boys."

From a mother of two boys in front of our children: "Don't you just wish you had had girls?"

Etc

It makes me so sad and angry that boys don't seem to be valued. It makes me worry too about what kind of impact this has on a boys' self belief and confidence.

The previous posts mostly focus upon ensuring that you raise boys to value women as equals. I wondered if anyone had had similar experiences to me on this aspect of raising boys?

Signing in with two DSes. Back later!

I have a DS and a DD. I've been with their Dad for 20+ years and I think he's been a good role model. Not perfect but hey neither am I.

If DS doesn't have some clue as to respecting women by 21 I'll be surprised and disappointed and feel I've failed. Like his father he was never into either football or rugby so in the UK he's immediately in a separate category to his peers. Socially he doesn't drink alcohol so another issue. But he's bright and when he puts his mind to it, affable, and I'm glad he's able to interact with people more particularly girls on an equal footing. I do think it's helped him having a DSis, no illusions, not just Yours Truly as a female template, we haven't got other female family members close by.

Likewise I hope DD has a healthy attitude towards the opposite sex and can keep herself out of man-pleasing stratagems -and be confident she's the equal of male counterparts.

Never fails to amaze when people you think you know, quite casually come out with something breathtakingly old school like, "Well, her brother's staying on to do A levels but she isn't, she'll be all right, no brains but she'll just get married anyway".
Each to their own.

I'll eat my hat though if either of them says in later life, "My parents led by example" because it's almost certain one generation feels more switched on and aware than the previous.

Since when did one need formal qualification or to know the correct jargon to be a feminist?

I quite like Rihanna she's very much a fuck it an fuck what you think as you encourage your son to be.

Espagnol, I worry in the same way re. DS. He's such a sweetheart, really thoughtful and has tonnes of empathy. But I see how boy/manworld can be quite a "survival of the fittest" jungle and the pressure to not appear girly affects him already.

Fortunately he has had a good feminist training in how to spot sexist nonsense, ignore it and go his own way.