Kinda telling that you state that YOU raised your son to be a decent person and that your husband was his mother’s job. Where was his dad and your husband in all this, shouldn’t they have been taking on a greater role in socializing a boy? That’s rather my point–women are automatically assumed to be the ones responsible for socializing kids and the ones who get the blame if the kid turns out wrong. How come dad doesn’t rate the opprobrium for poorly socialized boys?
His Dad, and his Grandfather were both there.
There are somethings only a Mom can teach you.
Especially if the men in their lives are old school. I intended to disavow my son of some of their notions.
It seems to have been successful.
(Gotta go look that one word up)
I suspect you meant disabuse.
to cause someone no longer to have a wrong idea : He thought that all women liked children, but she soon disabused him of that (idea/notion).
Probably. I’ve been know to do that lots
Disavow- to deny support for.
Cromulent? Maybe.
It’s so hard to raise kids now. Because of the elephant in the room. The Internet.
I think it’s just so important now to limit that unsupervised time online.
So so important.
Nope. There is nothing intrinsic to your gender that qualifies you or anyone else to be the only one who can teach something. Yes, due to different types of early socialization and indoctrination there are tasks and behaviors that come more easily to one gender than another but that is 100% cultural, not at all biological.
Good example is that girls are taught from git go to “act like a lady” and mind where their clothes are and not be “too” boisterous or loud and are encouraged to self soothe and listen and pay attention to adults and learn to amuse themselves and keep other kids engaged as well because “helping mama” is a thing most girls get taught from babyhood. There’s nothing inherent in being female that inclines girls toward these behaviors, they are learned and can just as easily be learned by boys if they’re being taught that way. Just so happens that all those lessons also fit girls out to be way more successful in school and now that higher education is highly prized and equally available to both genders, girls are outperforming the boys and everyone’s acting like it’s A) impossible for boys to be socialized the same way and B) isn’t fair to boys. Well, it wasn’t fair to girls when we weren’t allowed to go to school no matter our abilities but there wasn’t a big uproar about it because “everyone knows” that girls are inferior and can’t handle school. Joke’s on society though because it turns out that girl style socialization is way more useful in today’s society than boy style socialization and so long as the men keep on kicking about how they want to go back to the days when men were men it isn’t likely to happen. Guys need to get with the program and learn some stuff they’re uncomfortable learning–we can do it, they can too. They just don’t WANT to. C’est la vie, I suppose.
I don’t know if I would go so far as to say 100% cultural. Humans have a biological basis for a lot of of our behavior, and hormones seem to factor into that. I don’t know exactly what’s cultural and what’s biological, but it doesn’t matter because women and men and people of all genders are saying they want a different, more empowering path, and that’s sufficient reason to support it.
I will say as a mother that I felt like I didn’t have a maternal bone in my body even though I really wanted to be a Mom. I had no experience with other children growing up, no idea what was developmentally appropriate, and no attachment to babies. I despised pregnancy. And somewhat unsurprisingly I wasn’t particularly attached to my own baby until he started developing his wonderful personality and I started gaining confidence as a mother. Now I’m that big goopy Mom loving on my kid all the time and doing motherly things. So I learned to do it. And I still don’t really like kids in general, just the one.
Whatever my biological orientation may have been, I figured out how to be a Mom anyway, so yes, we are all capable of learning how to do things differently. There aren’t any magic gender secrets here, just consistency of effort.
Right. I agree.
I directly link my parenting style to my Daddy.
He was widowed early with a houseful of children.
I remember lining up for ponytails for the girls and combing for the boys every school morning.
He did it all. Cooking, cleaning, school visits, he took me to every doctor appointment. He was a great father.
We had help, certainly. Because he had a job.
But he was the Parent, always.
I think…no, I know I have raised good kids. They all have some greatness in them. They are not perfect at all. They are functioning adults now. Smart, funny and my best accomplishment.
Like I said directly related to how my Daddy raised us.
My kids Father is a good, decent man. He’s OG, but his values are sound.
I think men are getting better at nurturing.
I see my son doing things with his young children, two generations ago were considered un-manly.
He don’t care. He has to help, there are 4 of them.
Men need to get used to it. A 2 job family has to pull together. Not roles reversed, but roles shared.
IF there is a father figure available in their lives, that is a big plus, IF. But many children grow up without.
A single mom, working hard, doing her best to provide a shitty little apartment. It is not enough. Never enough for the kids or for mom. They drop out of school and sit alone in an appartment with no future. Eventually they have to get out of this dead-end life, into a dead-end future.
I retired from working at Job Corps, a government program that tries to help dis-advantaged kids complete their education and get some job training.
The life stories of these broken children would curl your hair. Some make it, some just end up in the criminal justice system, which once you are there is almost impossible to get out of.
Depends on the father figure. Now I’m not dissing my dad, but dad was largely absent from my life. But that’s the way it was in the 60’s and 70’s. That was ok.
I had an older brother, and we both taught each other stuff. I can do all the manly man stuff like framing a house or what not. But also understand the subtleties between the genders. I have more female friends than male friends 
Don’t care.
I don’t think anybody’s arguing that it isn’t hard to raise kids on your own; or that it doesn’t all too often happen that people wind up screwed financially because they’re living in a society that requires two wage earners per family in order to have even half a chance.
But I don’t see that that’s an argument for women or for men doing the parenting. It’s an argument for having at least two adults doing it, if possible; and it’s a hell of a lot easier if more than that are available.
It’s good for growing children to be around adults of more than one gender who are doing a reasonable job of adulting; just like it’s good for them to be around other children. But they don’t need to all be the parents, any more than every family needs to have six kids so the kids will have other children to play with. Uncles and aunts, teachers, close family friends can all step in.
(And the presence of an adult who’s doing a terrible job of adulting can make matters worse, not better; depending on what kind of terrible job they’re doing.)
How about we back this up a stage.
All parents should be involved in educating and raising their children to be good people, responsible for themselves and their actions, to the (reasonable) limits of their ability and circumstances.
Wait you say, what you mean about limits of their ability and circumstances?
Well, there are parents who are poorly equipped emotionally, financially, and intellectually to raise kids. Of all genders. There are parents whose ideas of “raising a children” would be societies definitions of abuse. Ideally, in those circumstances, extended family, friends of family, and friends get those kids the socialization and help it needs.
But, and back to the OP, yes modern American society frequently puts a heavy responsibility on the female parent (in a binary gender household) to train, socialize, all children of the household while often simultaneously having their own jobs, additional household responsibilities (cooking, cleaning, etc) and that’s brutally unfair.
I’m not saying that there is a good fix. Making a parent (or biological contributor in the case of an absent one) do a fair share against their will is ALSO going to result in a subpar result, because kids can and do pick up on it.
If I were an evil overlord, I’d probably be the sort that required a parenting class prior to unlocking everyone’s fertility implant, but I don’t think that would ever happen and I’m not seriously suggesting it should be. But free, government counseling (screw me sideways, even a government approved series of “what to expect when I’m expecting / raising a toddler / pre schooler / elementary schooler / teen” of videos) would be helpful, but large segments of modern society consider that interference in the parents roles.
The same group that in general, also wants to lock said kids into traditional roles, and heap responsibility on the mother.
Excuse me. Need to stop posting before I once again start longingly considering a world sans humans.
I don’t know what’s typical these days but my husband is 100% hands on, and I don’t just mean he does half the changings and feedings and leaves the emotional labor to me, I mean he coordinates field trips, doctor’s appointments, whatever needs doing. When we were trying to get services for my son he was in charge of arguing with the insurance company for about ten hours a week, and I was in charge of coordinating school services. He has more stamina for playing with our son, too. I take more frequent play breaks than he does (my husband has always had more stamina than me, period. He’s like a machine. A very slow machine, but rarely breaks down.) When we’re on vacation he reverts to default parent, I think because more parenting falls on me during the regular weekdays. At times I’m a little humbled by him and have to check myself and make sure I’m putting in my time. That’s how engaged he is.
He told me a long time ago that he didn’t want to just be a “weekend Dad” and let me tell you, he stuck to that. He had the privilege to do that because he can set his own schedule.
I know some couples with young children my age and a lot of other Dads seem to be similar, maybe not quite as engaged due to work obligations but much, much more engaged than Dads of yore.
More to the point of this thread, my husband doesn’t really treat my son differently because of his gender. When he’s hurt or upset he comforts him, usually with “sweetie” or “honey.” Gives him lots of hugs and kisses. Speaks to him very kindly. As I mentioned in the other thread my son, who is four, doesn’t yet understand the difference between “he” and “she.” I asked my husband the best gender-affirming way to teach that (you know, being inclusive of trans identity) and he laughed and said let’s just worry about getting the basics down first. Yes, we are trying to teach him how to identify men vs. women, but I also kind of love that he doesn’t care. Looking down the road, if my kid doesn’t end up caring about gender all that much, maybe he will be more gender-affirming of everyone and just treat everyone the same. But we are not leaving that to chance, either.
But that also raises the question - will my son by default consider his Dad to be the most important role model, if he doesn’t really identify himself or his father as male? That usual “I want to be like Daddy” thing is absent. My son is just neutrally oriented to all things gender. Maybe that will change with time.
My twin grandsons age 3 barely understand gender.
I saw one of them with a Barbie doll holding it like a baby and cooing at it. (They say “babby”, “mama” , “poppy”, I’m “nam” at the moment, and other simple words, their speech is delayed, apparently this is in the so-called normal range and they are twins, they have their own chatter language)
Anywhoo, I thought it so cute.
It told me he doesn’t differentiate Man or Woman, as nurturing. They know they have boy parts. They like to show them alot. We’re working on it. I don’t think they understand girl or boy. At least not that they can verbalize.
Their Poppy has them as much as, or more than Mama. The older kids are in school and he drags the twins everywhere he goes.
He did the same with the older two girls.
My mid-dau is divorced and her two boys are exclusively with her, save Vacations.
It’s sad, but her Brother and Father are taking up the slack nicely with the boys. I have no concerns we’ll get good young men from them.
She worries about it and tries to encourage more visits from their Father. He is just so into his career. I told her to tell him his kids should come first. But, well, ya know? What you gonna do?
You can’t force a man to do it.
this is wonderful! I hope it’s going on all over but suspect it continues to be… not typical.
Raising daughters shouldn’t be (and isn’t) just the mother’s job either.
Single, full-time Dad, I am defacto 100% the only official parent (of the two of us responsible) of Vaderling. Mother just isn’t suited to the parenting style that works with him and they have angrily parted ways. I had to learn how to be a GOOD Dad with Vaderling. I had some experience part-time fathering with my older three boys, so that helped. But it’s a life plan, I decided before he was even born, how I wanted to parent. Discussed it with Mother, she seemed onboard, guess not.
I look back now, a little sadly, wishing I could have had a daughter too.
Parenting, good or bad is not a gender thing, per se, it’s a personality thing. It’s complex and complicated.
And now I gotta go, Vaderling wants dinner and is feeling and acting stereotypically teenagerish about it.
I don’t think anyone disputes that, really. This thread was spun off from another one and that happened to be the jumping off point.
Agree. They are different to raise tho’.
Dad’s involvement is so so necessary. It benefits both parties.