To think primary schools now days are more misogynistic amongst the boys, than in the past?

[Thatcastlethere]

I hate to be all 'back in the good old days' and tbh I don't even think it was that great in the past... I think I just expected it to be better now days.
But am I wrong for feeling like there's been a massive upsurge in misogynistic feeling amongst primary age boys?
My two eldest are at primary school. It's a state school but it's regarded as a good school in a very middle class area. It's also considered a faintly hippy/alternative place.
Yet some of the things I've seen and heard regarding my 9yo son and my 6yo daughters experiences at school have really shocked me.
My son for example uses all this language 'sigma' 'alpha' etc... well he did until I explained to him that it was harmful macho nonsense. He's also asked me about andrew tate and trump etc as these people seem to be hero's for some of his male friends. These boys are 9!!
My son doesn't have unsupervised access to the Internet. And the access he does have is limited to one hour on his tablet in the living room on weekend days. During which he just plays roblox and Minecraft. We have disabled YouTube from the TV and he is not allowed YouTube on his tablet.. yet he still seems to come across endless misogynistic content at school somehow.
My son is a sweet boy imo and he forms his own opinions.. he was telling me how he disliked andrew tate for example, without me even having said anything
So it's not that I'm worried about him absorbing these ideas.. it's just a bit concerning that it's so prevalent!
I've also overheard some of his friends in the park sating horrific things about girls and women. Once I even heard one of them threatening to punch a girl. I did step in at this and told him it was disgusting and the boy did look faintly ashamed at least.
Has anyone else noticed this?
Also my 6yo has been subject to comments on her appearance by boys! Already at 6!
I'm sure it wasn't quite this bad wen I was at school or perhaps I just didn't notice?
My husband is a fair bit older than me and was also remarking that he never knew anything like this at school..
Altho obviously misogyny was alive and well when we were kids.. you just never really heard this so directly

This is incredibly depressing as a boy mum

*At my children’s primary school there’s a rhyme the boys proudly chant -
Boys are strong, like King Kong
Girls are weak, throw them in the creek
This is from reception age. No idea where it’s come from. It deeply disturbs me.

We used to say GIrls win, boys in the bin. Its normal for boys and girls to dislike each other at some points in primary.

Bluey episode

The internet. 🤢

Although society is generally more educated and less sexist in lots of ways, horrendous stuff is creeping through. How depressing. Hopefully you can have open conversations with your children about this all.
Also it’s always sort of cool to say things your parents obviously hate so some of these kids may be trying to be ‘different’.

seriously? I’m guessing this ends better!

Conservative accurately describes my 22yo son. Not like me, he has his own mind.

I don't know if it depends on the schools but my son's school is light years more right-on and the children less savage than when I was a child. It is true that they sing "Seven, eight, Andrew Tate" but I am sorry to say we used to sing pro IRA versions of hymns because we found it funny. Children are stupid and pick up snippets of culture they don't fully understand.

It is not that I think we live in an idyll but it is easy to forget that the past wasn't always great either.

Conservative views of women? In what way?

No, with the exception that he thinks women are bad drivers. Conservative as is in greed is good. The problems of other countries aren’t our problems. Not views learnt from me.

I’m a financially successful and independent woman who mostly raised him solo from the age of 10. But I am a shockingly bad driver.

I find this whole debate fascinating and depressing in equal measure. I have a sort of academic interest in it, as a teacher and having studied a lot of gender and childhood-related topics as part of an MA a few years ago, but also more recently a personal interest as parent to a 6-year-old DD.

In part the current issues surrounding boys and young men undoubtedly stem from access to porn and excessive internet use. But the conditioning runs far deeper than that and starts much earlier. Parenting has changed dramatically since my own childhood; as a primary teacher a decade or so ago I was surprised at how gender stereotypes were becoming more rather than less ingrained among the small children I was teaching - clothing was coded pink or blue; Disney princesses for girls were everywhere and I had several worried Dads at parents' evening fretting that their sons would never be 'proper men' because they disliked football and enjoyed Lego and drawing. At the time online campaigns like 'Pink Stinks' and 'Let Toys Be Toys' were sounding the alarm about this stuff, but their concerns sound really pretty quaint now. I remember at the time there was also a spate of TV documentaries about how gender stereotypes played out in parenting/educatjon, so it was clearly part of the zeitgeist.

Roll on a few years, and by the time my own daughter was born the gender conditioning had ramped up considerably, starting with the gender reveal party trend and progressing through to highly stereotyped birthday parties (dinosaurs, football and Pokémon for boys; princesses, mermaids and unicorns for girls) and separate preschool activities for boys (football) and ballet (girls) - for four years now my daughter has been the lone girl in her Saturday football class, and we're in supposedly liberal north London.

While it was a fairly standard thing, when I was teaching, for at least a few of the boys in my classes to prefer to play with the girls, in my DD's school the sexes have been strictly delineated from the outset and exist almost in two separate bubbles, seldom interacting. 'Boys will be boys' prevails, and lazy gender stereotypes about boys being better at maths and girls being more docile are thrown about constantly by parents. It's all incredibly different from my own experience of growing up in the '80s and '90s, and it feels like we've regressed in a lot of ways.

I spend a lot of time working with children at the upper end of the primary age range, and can confirm several PP's reports of boys making sexual noises and porn/Andrew Tate-related 'banter' even in Year 6. The upshot of all of this is that we've decided we'll be sending DD to a girls' school for secondary.

They sing that at my dd school. She was constantly telling me how horrible the boys are to the girls. I raise it with the teacher to be told she can't be everywhere she knows the boys are like that but there really is nothing she can do!

There were other contributing factors but this was a part of my decision to home educate. My dd is absolutely much happier in herself now I hadn't realised how bad her mental health was due to school I just thought I had a whiny child

I have a 4 yo DD, she already comes home from school (reception) and says things like “girls can’t be friends with boys, I can’t play with X because girls don’t play with boys” “why is that lady wearing boys clothes

Seems pretty standard unfortunately. My other bugbear is boys taking over the entire playground for football and refusing to either let the girls join in or give them space for their own games. I raised this with DD's school in Reception and again last year ( I have a bit of leverage as I'm a governor) and although initially I got the 'boys will be boys' brush off, they now provide a dedicated area for girls' football/ball games, which means the girls can finally get a bit of exercise if they so wish, rather than standing around the perimeter watching the boys.

This kind of stuff all sounds so trivial on its own, but it all feeds in to an overall climate of toxic masculinity and males taking precedence, even in early childhood.

for four years now my daughter has been the lone girl in her Saturday football class, and we're in supposedly liberal north London

I’m north west where football is religion. Tons of girls play here. But no attitudes have changed. They're girls playing footy, good for them. It doesn’t equate to equality here.

The upshot of all of this is that we've decided we'll be sending DD to a girls' school for secondary

I would have done the same if I’d had a daughter. But once she leaves she’ll be dealing with boys and men day to day. You can’t insulate her from that, and she won’t change the world despite her single sex education

Mikes 7, made the odd comment, asking me who trump was but nothing overtly misogynistic. More of an exploration of the things that have been said at school and then asking me about it - which I'm happy to discuss and just think it gives me an opportunity to educate.
I think it's mainly been sexist tbh, pinks not for boys, boys and girls games etc but I would say 99% is from home, older siblings and shite they get to watch on TV (others at school). I can't stop that but I can give him enough nounce to question everything that will see him through.

Not sure why it matters that the school is very good in a middle class area as if it's shocking that this would make a difference to this behaviour. Misogyny unfortunately crosses all classes, whether the education is great or not, and I've seen the worst happen from boys from very wealthy backgrounds idolising Tate and the like.

Yes, definitely too much exposure to social media. I haven't heard all this sigma, alpha stuff, but I've heard 5, 6 and 7 years olds saying things like "Hashtag [insert own name]! Like and subscribe!" after doing a cartwheel or a handstand or something. I'm not sure if they know what it means or if they are parroting it back because they have watched clips on social media of people doing a cartwheel or trick and saying that at the end of their video. It's very odd.

I have several friends who are teachers who are still having to deal with primary kids using "gay", "girl", or "retard" to insult each other. It isn't just picking things up from parents or social media - kids get these things from other kids in the playground too and these insults rattle around playgrounds being passed down from older kids to newer ones year in, year out.

I’m north west where football is religion. Tons of girls play here. But no attitudes have changed. They're girls playing footy, good for them. It doesn’t equate to equality here

Oh no, @CCreasty, I absolutely agree that girls playing football (or boys doing ballet) doesn't change much in itself. It's more that I was taken aback by how anxious other parents were to get their kids into very gendered activities from a very early age, with very little crossover. It was like all the boys had to play football from the age of two, and the girls had to do ballet, or something bad would happen. I was expecting, in 2019 (when my daughter started her football classes) that there'd be at least a couple of other girls, but nothing. Meanwhile she's the only one of 15 girls in her class who doesn't do ballet and gymnastics.

Trump boasted about sexually assaulting women. He tried to remain in power against the wishes of the electorate when he was voted out of office.

My 14 year old boy is currently reading of mice and men at school. Is there not anything better for a teenager to read since the 1930s. Life is progressing, but sitting teenagers in a classroom listening to boring old fashioned stories that they hate isn't exactly molding positivity. I can't see a single benefit for a child to study Shakespeare anymore

Apparently, rape is OK and to teach boys that it's disgusting and shameful is to "control" them according to a PP.

If taught well and with proper discussion of mice and men could be good for discussion on gender inequality, race and disability. If not then it's just perpetuating the problems

@OneBlackHeart I'd hope it's taught well. I just think there must be so many better, modern options these days that kids could enjoy or relate too, but we can't move on from the old classics. Everything needs to change. X

Oh absolutely I agree

State schools have to supply the text books, so I would think much depends on what's in the stock cupboards of English department in cash-strapped schools.
When I taught in the UK there was scramble when a text came off GCSE to have it placed in lower school, usually much-repaired with sticky tape.