To ask how to teach boys how to respect women?

[cadburyegg]

There are lots of messages in the media atm and for good reason.

Educate your sons.
Teach boys to respect women. To accept rejection. To value women’s opinions.
Lift boys up in healthy ways.
Help your boys do better.

i 100% agree with this. I have 2 boys and I am just not sure how I can do my part. How do we change the narrative? What do I tell them? How do I tell them? I guess I’m looking for practical, real life advice.

I raised my 2 boy as a single mum all there life they are both young men now and moved out.
We had our ups and downs and differences but raising boys in to men was hard work and it paid off.
They are the nices men i know.
It was not just about respecting women it was respecting everyone it works both ways.

I’ve said in another thread somewhere that I’m having problems with my 14 year old son.

He has everything people are saying here. Two parents who share the load. Male role models who are respectful to women etc etc. We monitor his phone (but that’s nigh on impossible)

What we're struggling with are his peer role models and societal influences (no matter what we do in the home, toxic masculinity and porn is everywhere).

It's scary how quickly negative peer influences take over. I have three boys (23, 18, 14). There’s a marked change in the world between the influences on my oldest compared to the youngest. I think it’s linked to much to changes in social media and how much phones can do and how they’re used.

Do you think that by age 21 it's too late or can you turn things around?

The most important behaviour you can display is not being a doormat and not allowing any partner treat you badly.

And my biggest pieces of advice for young men (and most work for women too) would be:

‘no problem is too small to bother me with, or too big for me to try to help fix’
’always get consent’
’start saving early - before you need money to live’
’don’t be a dick’
’don’t be a pushover’
’PROTECTION’
’it’s ok to have feelings/emotions’

I’m not sure what the other boys had said but I heard my then 14 year olds DS on his headset while gaming saying no a man can never ever hit a woman. I felt very proud at that moment.

His ex GF said she loved how he had an old fashioned childhood, what she meant was he had decent manners. When she broke up with him last year he was upset but also said he was worried for her as he knows how awful men can be. He likes gaming but has never been in to social media much. He was always made to help round the house and has seen chores shared.

But really it’s peers that influence the most in the teen years. My ex work colleagues DS is a hardcore drug addict that has been in prison more than once. Her other DS is so respectable as to be a little dull. The criminal one fell in with marginally bad kids that did a lot of weed. That was the start of it.

I don't think it's ever too late. Might be harder, but with consistency the message will get though I'm sure.

Have you spoken with your older boys about this? Maybe they have insight or sway with him?

Agree with modelling behaviour. Also I think reading is very under rated for boys. It is the best way to get empathy for others and grow that side of the brain. It feels as though a lot of boys don't seem to understand women have feelings or are real at all, let alone try to understand why they behave a certain way. All part of the reason they don't choose psychology - who cares why people do stuff if it doesn't affect me/I don't need therapy! We all know the guys who say that are the ones who need it the most.

I think books written by women or with lead female characters are good to start early. It's also about showing that expressing feelings is more powerful as a life skill than rage.

I have two (absolutely lovely) little boys. The main thing I do is show them how they should behave.

I'm lucky to have a husband who takes this incredibly seriously, but even without that there are things you can do. For example, both of mine are expected to help around the house in an age appropriate way, and I prompt them to think about what needs to be done too (hmm let's see, is that anything dirty or messy in this room?). I prompt them to think about others in small ways (Granny hasn't been feeling well, I wonder if there's anything we can do to cheer her up? Your brother looks like he's finding that tricky, I wonder if he needs help?).

I make sure that books and tv shows are appropriate and purposefully choose media that inverts gender norms. Tell my boys that I love how kind, helpful, beautiful they are. And make sure they have access to dolls, toy kitchens, and other traditionally 'girly' toys.

I don't ignore how terrible toxic masculinity is for boys either. Emotions are a really big thing in our house. No one is told to stop crying or not to be silly when they are upset. We read books and play games about emotions and have a check in every day. And we model as well as teaching ways to regulate ourselves when we are upset or angry.

At the minute they are small enough to keep them away from negative male role models. As they get older we will incorporate more discussions into what they observe from others in an age appropriate way.

i have this book and still read and refer to it. One or two things quite outdated, but the bulk of it is still very relevant and a very good guide.

There was an interesting episode of The Today Podcast recently called Adolescence and the crisis of masculinity where a woman who’d done interviews with teenage boys was talking about this

I agree with a lot of what pp ate saying about modelling behaviour etc. But did everyone reas the report recently about the extent of rape culture in primary schools? The root of it all is online. Andrew tate and his ilk, degrading porn etc. If they're watching this stuff for hours every day then it's not going to matter how their parents split household talks, frankly.

Managing access to smart phones, managing access to content, checking what they are accessing, and then when they're old enough to not have this managed for them, discussions about various types of content eg why porn is so damaging to real relationships, is probably going to have the biggest impact (on top of modelling behaviour etc)

Of course, but the oldest is 'boring' and old (🙄) and doesn’t understand (he isn’t, but has a totally different set of peers, but is at a different life stage. The middle is 'boring' and doesn’t understand.

It's scary how much influence his friends have. His moral compass seems to have totally changed. I hope the nice boy underneath is still listening.

This

An not matter how much the phone is monitored or locked down, they can access this stuff anywhere (on other people's devices, for example…)

You see, I can’t comprehend that as a single mother to a 14-year-old boy. He’s never looked at porn. He’s never had access to social media that’s not monitored.
how much time is he spending with his friends and can that be reigned back in so that you’re spending more time with the family?

Both boys and girls need valuing and I think one of the biggest causes of misogyny is low self esteem amongst both boys and girls.

There’s a few things which need addressing, the first being that caring roles have been so badly devalued that women feel they need to prove their worth by earning money out of the house- we all need to start valuing and respecting the unpaid carers of the world.

We need to stop trying to pretend that men and women are the same. They arent, their bodies and physiology are completely different, and they are both equally important. Men are physically stronger to women, that doesn’t make women inferior, nor does it make women superior.

I think another huge problem is the access to cosmetic procedures and modern fashion trends - instead of teaching young people (and adults) to love the skin their in society says change it - tweak this, remove that - we should be teaching kids to value themselves and their own faces!

When he walks to school with them. When he takes the school bus in winter. On the way home.

He had a couple of sleepovers, where things were awful, I found out. These have stopped.

Short of forcing him never to see his friends (which is something we talk about, but…) when they meet up for activities.

When they talk together at school. When they are at clubs - before or after, or any downtime. Never looking at porn doesn’t mean they’ve never seen, or been shown it.

You can’t cut your children off.

Do you monitor his friends social media? Do you stop him from being shown things?

I divorced my sons father for lots of reasons but I see now the damage that was done over the years.
Despite my positive influence and modelling behaviour of what I expected from my sons, and daughters, I see toxic masculinity in both of my boys, and I also see my daughters accepting these behaviours from the partners in their lives.
Interestingly, my soon to be 18 year old daughter calls my 21 year old son out on his behaviour but puts up with similar but different behaviours from her bf.
It's a minefield.

It doesn’t sound as though it would be worse to cut them off then to spend time with these people that you don’t like the influence of

I drive my son to school and back every day precisely because I don’t want this nonsense going on that I see on the buses and the stuff getting past round. That’s a sacrifice. I’m prepared to make to keep him safe.
Activities are with out of school friends sohe has different unrelated friendship groups.

Don’t know if it’ll work forever, but it’s working now.

I have a dilemma that when I grew up we were quite isolated (20 minute rural drive to school). This meant I missed out on some social friendships when I grew up and this I suffered because of this. Personally I’m struggling to find the balance between not cutting hime off (like my parents did when they moved into the countryside) and not letting him have too much freedom.

I wonder also if there is a need for children to see role models of their own sex i.e girls are outdoing boys at school now because there are many more positive role models of women achieving but maybe boys are not doing as well as they could be because they don’t have as many positive role models and there are more people telling them what not to be then what to be as a modern man

Good for you, but if I drive him to work, I lose my job. Dh leaves even earlier than me. Due to where we live, the clubs have more of less the same people.

I find it very concerning that we are in an era where toxic masculinity in society seems more dangerous than the misogyny of yore.

Growing up in the 70s and 80s my Dad was a great role model. Equality was a thing in our household and my DHs too. The 90s workplace did have some awful colleagues. But in none of these scenarios was there a prevailing toxicity or views expressed aloud that was anything like what's happening now on social media etc.

Our son is very aware of the boundaries of what's acceptable. He's 19 and never been part of fiend groups influenced by toxic masculinity narratives. I did notice that some swear words that have meanings best avoided have become more commonplace. Not just those relating to toxic masculinity. 'Retard' was sometimes used to taunt my son who has dyspraxia, for example. The school went down very hard on anything like this. I remember my father explaining to me that 'Spastic' was never an acceptable insult to use. I don't think I ever said it, but do remember the swearing lecture as a companion to the 'Birds and the bees'