Active discussions

Meet the Other Phone. A phone that grows with your child.

Meet the Other Phone.
A phone that grows with your child.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Talk
AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

What can we as parents do to stop our sons turning into the men we read about on mumsnet daily?

205 replies

Watermelon46 · 02/10/2022 09:39

…….or to teach our daughters not to put up with any of this.

It seems (from posts on here) that so many children are living in toxic environments, with fathers who are man children who are used to their own way and throw their toys out of the pram if they don’t get it, and mothers who appear trapped in this environment.

I see and hear elements of this behaviour from grown men regularly with my friends and my own family, including ourselves, so know it’s not just made up on here.

What can we do to break this cycle?

OP posts:
Lunar270 · 05/10/2022 18:36

WahineToa · 04/10/2022 15:36

Lunar270

oh I get it, it’s tempting to engage but I wanted to respect the OP and discuss what she’s asking.

My suggestions above are genuine. These are frequent problems I see starting in young men who later become aggressive or abusive. Studies on domestic abusers and rapists clearly show a similar pattern of thinking, women are inferior, they’re deliberately causing arguments by not doing as they’re told etc . These types of men don’t hear what’s being said to them, they create false narratives to justify they way they are behaving. What these types of men really hate is being ignored or rejected, ‘put down’ or told their behaviour is so bad women don’t want to be around them. They get dangerous like that. So I really do believe teaching all our children but especially boys, that others can reject you and that’s ok, you’ll find others who you can be friends with and it’s not ok to insist someone else accepts, befriends or engages with you. Teaching them to accept that rejection and not be too hurt by it, is an important lesson. An extension of that lesson would be to help them express their hurt or rejection in appropriate, healthy ways.

Yes definitely. I think expressing or dealing with hurt, following rejection is huge. I can't help feeling that the media has a lot to answer for, amongst other things.

Perhaps you and others can educate me but is it actually possible to wear a woman down? I don't mean wearing like that muppet upthread but romantically.

I'm not a fan of rom-coms but a lot of them (and other films/TV perpetuate this 'thing' where men will prevail. Even when a woman starts out hating a guy, he will invariably win if he grinds her down enough. I suspect this does not reflect reality but does seem to lead men into harassment as they don't take no for an answer.

NeelyOHara1 · 05/10/2022 19:09

As a play on the Borg 'Resistance is futile', I wonder whether "Persistence is Futile" could be a useful soundbite to empower a girl/woman to stand firm against the, sadly, often successful, ploy that if a boy/man just keeps on asking or pushing he'll "wear her down, eventually"?

WahineToa · 05/10/2022 19:29

Perhaps you and others can educate me but is it actually possible to wear a woman down?

Not with me but with some women. Sons girls are socialised to think it’s flattering and the more dangerous message behind this is that they don’t learn how to set boundaries with men early on. They also don’t know what respect and genuine affection looks like.

Persistence is Futile I love that!

Sh05 · 05/10/2022 19:32

I think it's mainly upto dad's do set a good example. There's two men I know really well, both are very different dad's/ husbands/ brothers to the females in their family.
I only have to look at their own father's to see why.

JustLyra · 05/10/2022 19:44

I'm not a fan of rom-coms but a lot of them (and other films/TV perpetuate this 'thing' where men will prevail. Even when a woman starts out hating a guy, he will invariably win if he grinds her down enough. I suspect this does not reflect reality but does seem to lead men into harassment as they don't take no for an answer.

I had a work colleague once who used to talk about her husband’s attempts to “woo” her like he was a great romantic. Everyone else used to think he sounded as creepy as fuck.

He asked her out. She said no because she was dating someone already. So for the next six months he would send her a card inviting her out on a date. She ignored it. He would then call her house when she was at work the day after the date and describe what the date would have been like on her answer machine.
A day or two later he’d send her flowers with a note thanking her for the lovely date.

Every week. For six months. If he saw her in the supermarket or around town he’d leave a message on her answering machine waxing lyrical about how pretty she looked and how much he liked her hair/top.

She eventually realised he was - in her words - much sweeter than her boyfriend so dumped him and finally agreed to one of his dates. She genuinely thinks he’s the worlds greatest romantic

New posts on this thread. Refresh page