# Raising sons shouldn't be and isn't just the mother's job

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/raising-sons-shouldnt-be-and-isnt-just-the-mothers-job/1001652>\
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion\
**Created:** [May 16, 2024, 9:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/raising-sons-shouldnt-be-and-isnt-just-the-mothers-job/1001652 "2024-05-16T21:00:02Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 8

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**Author:** ![Spice\_Weasel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spice_weasel/32/5435_2.png) [@Spice\_Weasel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spice_Weasel)\
**Post date:** [May 16, 2024, 9:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/raising-sons-shouldnt-be-and-isnt-just-the-mothers-job/1001652/8 "2024-05-16T21:58:21Z")

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> [@Men Choosing to Disengage from Emotional Involvement with Women (... and Bears)](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/men-choosing-to-disengage-from-emotional-involvement-with-women-and-bears/1001627/106):
>
> 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.

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.

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