How do we protect our sons from the manosphere?

[MyKindHiker]

Just this. I watched the Louis Theroux documentary with horror. What shocked me was all of these young men who have this horrible anti-woman ideology have mothers who loved them and specifically didn’t raise them with these ideas. How do we protect our sons and teach them decent values when they are coming across these attitudes online or amongst their peers?

I only remember HS’s mum being featured? And unfortunately, I think there was just too much to overcome for her; absent father, toxic private school environment (she probably thought private school would help him but it really does depend WHICH private school and the values of that school!) I think just keep vigilant, check phone, encourage female friendships, intervene if you hear anything derogatory…

What @Tiillytubby said but also let them know that really awful behaviour means they get disowned.

There have always been people that lose out in love and life but men due to their behaviours are more likely to get angry than just feel sad which lonely women seem more prone to.

Now they can find each other online and a lot of it is anonymous rantings so they do it without fear. Basically many weirdos of all types can find each other online these days. It’s the downside of the internet.

Just teach them that kindness is all that matters. Nothing else.
This will see them through every possible life and relationship scenario.

I think try to keep them engaged in real life. You see so many threads on MN where young teenage boys only seem to game or watch youtube. I am very lucky that my kids were mid teens before smartphones became commonplace so their socialising was done in person so to speak.

This absolutely will not see them through. It's extremely superficial and I can think of many tricky situations where it is not immediately clear what the 'kind' thing is and others where other considerations are more important than kindness (fairness for example, or justice).

This is a bit odd to say but I’m not sure how much can be learned from their experiences. When they were growing up, in the 2000s, this wasn’t a thing. Their parents didn’t know the consequences of their upbringing would look like this.

what theyre doing really is being nasty, disrespectful and living off proceeds of crime/ tax dodging/ conning people. 40 years ago it was dodgy pensions, then timeshares, now it’s investment platforms. They have no respect for their fellow humans and are focused on take take take and not what they can contribute.

people like this have always existed, and the upbringing factors are about role modelling, absent parents or lack of care, poor eduction and often poverty. Those don’t change with the men that chose the manosphere instead of drug dealing.

This. People pleasing is also a negative trait to teach and that is a common side effect of “being kind”

1. Raise them in a stable family, ideally with a positive and present father. Obviously we all try to do this anyway.
2. Maintain your relationship with them. Do things together. Be genuinely interested in what they think and do.
3. Raise them in a moral framework. This could be religious or not, but have a confident and well-reasoned understanding of the values you want to raise them with.
4. Keep them off the internet. Perhaps this should be number one. Delay smartphones. Heavily monitor and regulate access to the online world - parental controls, no devices in bedrooms, no YouTube/TikTok etc.
5. Keep them involved in real life - family, community, volunteering, sport.

Making children think they could be disowned is absolutely SHIT parenting.

Kindness is never superficial. It is fundamental to establishing decent relationships.

It was interesting to me how many of the men on that programme had "daddy issues." Dad didn't love them enough to bother with them or be around and they were so, so angry. I agree with keeping positive male role models in their life and also being positive role models ourselves. My children see me going out to work and sharing domestic responsibilities with their father..... there is no "men provide and are dominant and women stay at home and are subservient" archaic nonsense in this house.

And yes to keeping them off the internet as much as possible. DD1 is in Year 4 and this week so far I've already had two separate conversations with school mums about Roblox and how awful their kids' behaviour is after they've been on it and how some adult man contacted one of their children through it asking if they wanted to play a game. Just take it the fuck away from them! I know this gets harder to police as they get older but I think we should be doing as much as we can to delay and protect.

Good Male role models are really important.

We need a society where men are pulling up their friends/relatives for their behaviours it's not excused. It's devalued and expected they rehabilitate themselves.The expectations are much higher. Where empathy and emotional intelligence is valued by men.

You have the highest parental restrictions on smart devices.

You don’t allow smart devices in bedrooms or overnight.

They are told that a smart phone is a privilege not a necessity and that you have the right to check it if you deem necessary.

You talk to them openly about respecting women and consent etc.

You do research on educational films, documentaries etc to show them that you can watch together and the discuss.

You make sure all the men in their life are role models for the behaviour you want them to mirror.

You call out and make sure then men in your life also call out shit behaviour from other men when they see it.

Spend time with them. Do things as a family. Get outdoors lots.

WOMEN! Do lots of work to stop men hating you! 😭

The OP is literally a woman asking what she can do.

Yes but your list/ schedule is utterly exhausting

Or just the effort parents should go to, to make sure they’re protecting their children and raising them correctly.

Everything on that list could be done by both parents. It isn’t just aimed at Mums.

I'm maybe lucky with my kids with smart phones but I've been much slacker with parental controls etc than some people are but my teens seem to have a reasonable relationship with their phone. I'd say the most important thing with phones is:

1. no phones in the bedroom overnight (we all follow this rule) and:
2. Build phone free time into their day. This can be done by hiding their devices but also by encouraging them to do lots of different activities and make your home welcoming for their friends so they spend time with real people. They need to be able to amuse themselves without a phone.

1. Good male role models for our sons as they move past young childhood (as mentioned in the book Raising Boys) - so it goes beyond fathers to seek out sports coaches, teachers, youth leaders etc. Proactively sign them up to clubs or classes where these role models are present. Engage other positive males in your world.

1. Delay smartphones.

^^ I meant to bullet 1 & 2 but I quite like the 1 & 1 actually as they are both equally fundamental imo

A starting point for me would be making respecting women, starting with you as their mother, an absolute non-negotiable.

Don't over rely on men/your husband to manage behaviour, have difficult conversations or hold authority - teach our sons that women absolutely deserve the same level of respect as their male counterparts, and any behaviour or language that suggests otherwise will mean real consequences.

I also think there’s something in not running around after them, and essentially creating man babies. We’re their mothers not their slaves, and they can wash their own pots - in their own homes as adults, the basic expectation should be that they don’t rely on their wives or partners to do all housework.

This is personal - but I also wouldn’t teach my son that the household or childcare is just my job as a woman. I wouldn’t accept a division of household labour that isn’t equal with my partner, I work FT and have my own identity outside of mother.

I genuinely believe that teaches boys not to expecting doting, subservient housewives as adults, because that hasn’t been modelled to them as the norm.

I watched this last night.

It struck me that the people who got sucked in felt unconfident about themselves, felt like their other options were limited. And the guys who were at the top, making the money, were feeding off that.

So I would say the best things you can do are

1. Teach them cynicism. Teach them what a pyramid scheme looks like, and that that’s what these guys are running. Explain that these guys are saying these things because it gets them views - they don’t necessarily believe this stuff, they just know it gets views which can be monetised. Explain the real chances of making money in this increasingly crowded sphere are very very low and will require increasingly extreme stunts.

2. Give them the confidence that they can be successful in life without this shit. Talk to them about career paths they may find interesting and be successful in, and make sure they get the education for those paths. Teach them that they don’t need to be some caveman bro to get a girl and in fact it will turn a lot of girls off. Encourage them to keep up IRL friendships and interests so they are not lonely and vulnerable to this (or any other) online cults.

That's rubbish. There are plenty of other attributes needed to be successful and happy in life than just kindness. I'm of the opinion that #bekind leads to people often not having their own boundaries and subjugating their own feelings in order not to upset others. That's no way to go through life. You need self-belief, integrity, ambition, resilience etc.

I think treating other people respectfully is more important than being kind. In the workplace, for example, if you're in a senior position you may need to act in ways which may not always be received as being kind, but if you treat others with respect it will be received well.

If you're a single mother( as I was for my son from the age of 2) I think it's important to try to get good male role models into children's lives. I was lucky and had a fantastic father and brothers-in-law who could show how to be a highly successful man but also an extremely loving parent and husband.

It's also so important as a woman to show that women are equal to men both in terms of work but also things like using power tools, DIY, digging, decorating etc.

I also think that mothers need to take a real interest in the hobbies that their sons are interested in. I went to numerous football matches, snooker tournaments, rallys, F1 grand Prix etc even though they wouldn't have been my choice of things to do. I had to do it as I was a lone parent but it's really important that married mothers do that too, don't let it become just a "man's" thing.

Keep them off the internet.

Delay smartphones. Heavily monitor and regulate access to the online world - parental controls, no devices in bedrooms, no YouTube/TikTok etc.

Obviously this is an issue that mostly needs to be fixed by men, but OP, I think you were asking more specifically what can Mums do, so I'll answer from the perspective of a son.

I think the most important thing you can do is let your sons see you as a person, as a human

Growing up, it felt like so many of my friends didn't actually know their mothers. They just saw them as Super mum, someone who just organised everything in the background and made life run smoothly, but they didn't actually know that much about them. They knew Dad's stance on all kinds of stuff, because Dad had time for conversations with them, because he wasn't running around trying to make life run smoothly.

My Mum seemed different. Part of it was that she had cancer when I was 14, so I got to see her scared, and worried, and at times with her dignity in tatters. And I got to see the effects of my Dad's behaviour when he had affairs. I'm not saying she didn't try and keep the worst of it from us, but me and my brother definitely saw her hurt, which I don't know that a lot of boys of my generation ever saw.

But it wasn't just that side, it was the fact that she tried to actually have deep conversations with us. My friends all had shared interests with their Dads. They'd know Dad's opinion on politics, but not their Mum's. My Mum loathed sci fi, but she sat and watched Star Trek with me every week, because it was an opportunity for conversation. When I got a computer, she played the games I bought, because again, it was a way to bond. She did the fantasy football with my brother, because again it was a way to connect.

I think for a lot of boys, Mum is more of a force of nature than a person, and when their primary example of a woman is someone who's feelings you don't have to worry about, it's easier to see all women like this.

I reminded my brother of this a couple of months ago. His son is 9, and he'd just had a really good day out with him, watched the football, and my brother was saying how they'd had this really deep conversation. I asked him when the last time SIL had managed to have a day like that with him and he went very sheepish.