Can boys be civilised, as in, made civil?

Such a goady thread title is bound to make people defensive surely.

No and it’s pointless to try. Gas them at birth like male chickens

No, but her subtext was pretty onbvious, to me at any rate, and the responses are very predictable and refusing to look beyond the surface.

While that is a great post, and I agree, that is not what the OP posted.

great post, Tallulah.

Boys are both complex and unique individuals and, under patriarchy, a societal problem waiting to happen. Under patriarchy boys are systematically taught to devalue and exploit girls and women. As women, we have been taught to allow, justify, minimise this. How can we find ways of countering our own socialisation and protect our boys from the most damaging aspects of male socialisation if we can't acknowledge that it is happening?

Completely agree mrsfrumble

Tallulah - because the title is pretty offensive, and her op basically says parents of boys are crap.

She must have a weird set of friends, because while I have often heard people say their boys are full of energy, I don't know parents who excuse their boys behaviour in the way the OPs friends do.

Hi OP, I haven't read most of the thread, but I am a mother of boys, one of whom went to live with his violent father as a pre-teen and has gone on to repeat a lot of his father's behaviours having been a thoughtful and sensitive younger child and never having been allowed to hide behind the "boys will be boys" concept. Another son, is still a kind and thoughtful young man. I think a feminist analysis of male violence does help inform how we bring up boys, at least the feminist women I know who have sons, do in general, have sons who subscribe a lot less to some of the more toxic elements of masculinity.

So we as a society need to work out how boys become men who commit violence against women.

Yes! Great. Perhaps if the OP had phrased her OP like that, we might have had some sensible answers. As it was, it did somewhat come across as an attempt to blame mothers of sons for male violence. Not only is blaming women for the actions of men the worst kind of misogynistic shit, of course mothers of sons are going to react to poorly-worded generalisations because we see our children as complex and unique individuals, not as a societal problem waiting to happen.

I'm surprised at the level of defensiveness on this thread. The op seemed to me to be raising a valid and interesting point. Why is everyone so cross at the idea that some parents may be holding their sons to lower standards than their daughters?

RiverTam - I don't think NAMALT is the problem at all. In my experience violent men are HUGELY different to normal men like my husband. Violent men are not normal, something has gone very wrong along the way to turn them like that. The two violent men I've known both grew up in very violent households. I couldn't say why my dad is violent and his sisters aren't - but I can definitely say I don't think boys growing up in happy, normal, connected households have much likelihood of turning out like my dad.

your title is so offensive that I was reluctant to open the thread. then I thought maybe it was tongue in cheek and you had a point to make, butno, it seems as if you and your friends are in some kind of parallel universe, where stereotyping half of the world as uncivil is normal.

I have a ds, and 2 dds. There are 3 very different personalities, they are all expected to behave and be polite.

Funnily enough my dh is also able to be civil, and my dad, and my brothers.......

I asked my 15 year old to comment: "He says that they learn it from parents who buy into ridiculous stereotypes and don't treat people as individuals"

Sarah - I'm sorry a lot of the parents around you are like this, but the OP moved onto talking about the link to adult male violence which really feels like bashing of young children displaying normal behaviour. The OP isn't even clear about what age children she is talking about, so it's really hard to judge. Is she talking about 4 year olds or 11 year olds? Or 17 year olds?

We all have anecdotes of parents making poor choices - I can think of it for both girls and boys. Missy was right in saying it was a boring stereotype. Everyone agrees parents who excuse their children's bad behaviour are annoying - I haven't seen anyone say anything otherwise.

Yes, I understood that perfectly. I thought that was what you meant. So my point stands but let me put it in a different way - does the stereotype of girls cause the kind of violence against boys and men that the stereotype of boys causes girls and women? Because violence against women and girls, predominantly at the hands of men, is a national and international issue. And those men were all once boys. So we as a society need to work out how boys become men who commit violence against women. But we can’t and never will be able to until ever time the question is asked you get a load of parents going NAMALT. And in the meantime a quarter of girls come out of school having experienced sexual harassment and violence, and a third of child sex abuse cases are peer-on-peer, predominantly boy-on-girl.

You've misunderstood her missy. She is complaining that parents of boys stereotype them and insist that their behaviour is innate when actually it arises from their low expectations. I am surrounded by parents like this myself and before I had my ds I started to doubt myself and think maybe they were right seein as I held a minority view with no personal experience. Then I had my ds and found I was spot on

I totally agree missy. Isn't the point that normal childhood behaviours, even if we don't like them, don't lead to adult violence/ assault etc? And if we do see concerning behaviours it's probably because there is something else going on?

My point was (obviously) that the OP simply trotted out a boring old fashioned stereotype of a boy. Well I did the same for girls. Yes we can all generalise and stereotype can’t we? Or we could try the intelligent approach of treating all children as individuals.

This thread reminds me of a 'bounty' thread I once started about cats shitting in my garden and found it yielded post after post criticising dogs.

Missy the word "bitchy" is a sexist slur. Aside from this, I haven't encountered minimisation of 'mean girl' behaviour personally, as a parent of a boy and two girls. But I agree it should always be tackled head on and not tolerated. As a parent of a ds I didn't find the op offensive as I have seen exactly the kind of minimisation and actionless hand wringing she describes.

AssassinatedBeauty Not sure if that was a serious question - so I’ll ignore it.

Polly makes a good point, I live near a secondary school and the boys always move out of the way for the pram, it’s the girls that stand there and don’t move, expecting me to go on the road - every time without fail.
Maybe while we’ve all been thinking boys are so unciviliced we must raise them to be respectful good people, we’ve forgotten how to raise our daughters to do the same?

Well, if I’ve missed your point could you explain it to me?

RiverTam do let me know the stats for how often you spectacularly miss the point won’t you?

missy do let me know about the stats for bitchiness against boys and men that’s the equivalent of violence against women and girls, won’t you?