Mums of sons (your son, someone's future husband)

[BillyBusStop]

If you have a son, how do you think your parenting is going? I ask because there are SO many threads on here about women leaving abusive or coercive dh's. 70% or so of divorces are initiated by females. Tomorrow's dh's are sons right now & often on here wives & partners blame the dh's mother for the job she did bringing him up. I know we all try our best. I find it so disheartening that so many men don't want to hear about their wives discontent.

Wow that's some serious woman-blaming shit right there.

Tell me, are MEN ever responsible for their own violence to women, in your worldview? Or for their sons' attitude to women?

And yes, thank you, my son is perfectly delightful, very considerate to his girlfriends and completely anti-violence. Which is to his credit and his responsibility.

My son is 2 but I already think about this stuff. I think we are doing some things well:

Both DH and I work 4 days a week and share domestic labour so he sees that

I try to get him books with female main characters so he can see that women aren't automatically supporting cast

I encourage him to talk about feelings and be nurturing

I try to make tidying up a natural part of his day (not always perfect at this and I am trying really hard to stop saying "help mummy"

I think it is fucked up and misogynistic to blame mothers (as in OP) for sons' future behaviour.

Kids do as they see, not as they are told.

A lot of boys' behaviour will be modelled on the male role models in their lives.

So how the dad behaves towards the mum is a bigger factor than how poor old mum tells her sons to behave iyswim

My son is 5, we are both trying to bring him up to be an excellent husband. My dh is fab so a good role model! As he gets older he won't be able to date lots of girls, we will teach him how women's minds work and that their hearts are precious so that if you go out with them that is a large commitment. We will teach him to respect women (and everybody). On the same lines we will teach our dd to respect herself and not give herself away too easily, she is precious and deserves the best (not in a princess way) I think we have lost this is in our society when sex is treated casually and as a selfish thing. We have forgotten that it's intimate and used wrongly causes pain and damage.

Agree with posters about this being both parents modelling good behaviour and team work.

However this is also about raising our girls to understand that they need to recognise wifework and not fall into a pattern of veing responsible for everything early on. This includes recognising that puttung the bins out and plumbing and decorating can be done by both men and women as xan washing, cleaning and cooking. Its also about knowing that ad a woman the state if your house is not just your responsibility.

If your partner can't remember his family birthdays, leaves his pants on the floor and thinks he's great because he puts the bins out once a week then he isn't really much of a partner.

Lastly it also seems to me that PIL expect alot from their DIL, attitudes neef ti change all round.

I agree with solitude

Raising DC is a task for both sexes.

My 14 year old just made me a proper coffee with the shiny Italian machine I don't know how to work, because DH is away for a few days. He has a dad who does most of shopping and cooking so I hope that will seem normal to him. He does occasionally spout some weird anti feminist stats that he has heard at school but his 2 sisters sort him out pretty quickly or get him to check his sources and to be honest, at 12,14 and 16, I am glad they are debating these things. I actually look at him and think he will make a lovely husband for someone one day but I know I might just be biased!! He is also very kind and patient with small children.

Mine is 12. He gets treated in the same way as the 17 dd. They get on well. He is a better cook.
We have lots of discussions about relationships at home and how to treat people, boundaries etc. It helps that his dad is not a knob (well most of the time).

Billy, I would say that the number of complaints about men on this forum is directly linearly related to the proportion of women doing the posting. In real life I have met just as many women that are hard to live with (or worse).

As a woman I find it pretty hard to be a good partner myself. I certainly did not have a lot of strong, confident, open and kind female role models in my life, growing up. But I was fortunate enough to get a good education and some decent chances in life. Not everyone is that lucky.

I do my best to be decent - and I think my son will do his best, too. But he's not a robot and I don't have a remote control.

Mummaofmytribe
Spot on.

I think it's a fair question though, "how do abusive people get to that place and what common factors are there in childhood?"

Hmmm I think some of it might be because you're more likely to post for advice from a crappy relationship. Over the years I've posted for help and advice with my abusive dangerous ex. I posted once when I finally managed to end it as a hopefully motivational message for anyone still stuck.

In the years since I don't think I've posted once about by wonderful d fiancé
He's wonderful and kind and respectful, I also find him funny and sexy and a great team member. He's good around the house and an enthusiastic if not very talented cook I'm grateful to his parents for raising such a man that I would happily spend the rest of my days with. I've just never posted about it I suppose.

This is your second post in a couple of days, @BillyBusStop, that seems to be based on a strong dislike for men, or an assumption that a majority of men behave in a negative way. That isn't true. Men are people, just like women. When you make assumptions based on a false belief that all or a majority of men behave a particular way, you're starting your interactions with your son from a negative place.

oooooo look! a MAN HAS COME ON TO EXPLAIN HOW WOMEN ARE WRONG.

How exciting.

If we concentrated on people as humans instead of constantly highlighting differences/stereotypes and have expectations of behaviours due to gender we would have fewer issues.

My ex was abusive, I don't blame his mother at all, she was an amazing woman who did her best under very difficult circumstances, but she didn't want to stop him having a relationship with his misogynist father who has been horrifically abusive in every relationship he's ever had. ex therefore witnessed violence as a young child. He also imparted his views to ex and they stuck despite his mothers best efforts. It is men who need to take responsibility for passing on their negative behaviours and views, not the job of mothers to counteract all the toxic masculinity and male entitlement.

oooooo look! a MAN HAS COME ON TO EXPLAIN HOW WOMEN ARE WRONG. How exciting.

That's as may be, but he's not wrong. Or are men not allowed to express opinions now?

a MAN HAS COME ON TO EXPLAIN HOW WOMEN ARE WRONG.
Er no, a man has come on to politely discuss an individual user's point of view. The OP is not "women".

I worry all the time, I have 2 ds, I do try an impress it on my dh aswell.

My son is a kind, gentle human being and so is his dad who also, surprise, surprise, played a fairly major part in his upbringing.

My husband was abusive, I don’t blame his mother.
My son is kind and caring, which is all I can hope for right now. I want him to be a perfect husband, and as it’s just me and him now he will share the practical stuff with me, he understands at 11 that it’s unfair to not share the work

I do teach my sons to help around the house, and how to do various chores. Also to buy me and each other thoughtful gifts (because how often does that come up on threads?) I do worry though what my exes model to them, as I don’t think they’re great role models (although as dads they love their dc). It is hard. We can only do our best. And I do hope I’ll welcome any gf’s / dw’s and be the kind of mil I would have wanted.

I have one DD and one DS, and am expecting another baby - don’t know the sex yet.
But I am trying really hard to raise them in a house where treating other people with respect, kindness and respecting their space is key.
My DH is very much on board with everything too. We try very hard not to let our tempers flare in front of the DCs - I want them to know that healthy debate and disagreement between a couple is very normal and healthy - but shouting and screaming and aggression etc isn’t.
My DH was raised by a single mother, and she did a wonderful job of instilling into him values of respecting a partner in ever sense of the word - he genuinely worships the ground that I walk on! He will happily tell me when I’m being an utter dickhead etc, and he’s definitely not a doormat, but I can count on one hand the amount of times in 7 years he’s so much as raised his voice in front/at of me. I see my DH as a wonderful example to our DS on how to treat a future partner.
I’m hoping that our combined efforts will be effective in teaching both our DCs what a healthy relationship looks like. That’s all any of us can do as parents isn’t it? Try our best and hope it works!

Crikey, there's some real stereotyping going on here. The most abusive man I've known is also fiercely independent, he's always done his own washing, cooking etc, to be more in control.

I have a son and a daughter and we raise them to be decent humans to whoever they meet.
Women can be abusive too, what's passed off as a bossy little girl can become a controlling, manipulative and emotionally abusive woman.

However, once adults I don't believe it's the parents fault what happens, and this blame needs to stop too. As an adult you need to become responsible for your own behaviour.
I've dealt with parents wracked with terrible guilt over the crimes that their adult children committed that they couldn't have prevented or seen happening, but society looks back to the parents and firmly believes it must have been something they did.

I hope my sons will grow up happy, healthy and fulfilled. I hope they will show respect for everyone they engage with, male or female.

I have no idea if my parenting will achieve this but I hope so.

Well, DS is useless around the house, has very little consideration for anyone else's needs and until recently he considered feeding him to be women's work. He is 10 months, though, so I think we have time to work on these things...

In all seriousness, I do think a lot about how to raise a boy in what I see as a very difficult environment. I worry about him growing up to hold the misogynistic views that are so present in the world around him; I also worry about the suicide statistics and the fact we seem to be raising so many men to hurt both themselves and others.

DH isn't perfect (though probably closer to it than me!) but he's pretty good. We both work full time (me a bit more flexibly than him) and are fairly equal parents; we did shared parental leave so DH has been home with him more recently than me. DH will also do more childcare going forward because he'll be doing all school holidays (no prizes for guessing what DH does). Will any of this help? I hope so, but who knows.

I think one of the hardest things about having children is accepting that no matter how stellar a job you do they will have issues that can be traced back to childhood. They might (hopefully) be minor, but they'll be there. I was reading an attachment parenting blog (basically to torture myself with guilt) the other day, and the woman writing it genuinely thought her children would have no psychological hang ups or issues at all because they all come from 'western parenting'. She's going to have a shock. We're going to try our best with DS, but he will have issues around gender, because so does every other adult. My hope is to keep them minor, and to have an open dialogue around them. We'll see how that goes.