We all want our man to be able to cook and clean the apartment, take an active part in raising children and dance divinely, but sometimes we ourselves do absolutely nothing to make our sons grow up like that. Here’s how to fix it.
Anything that can be considered girly very remotely is prohibited: dance lessons, playing with dolls, increased emotionality and empathy. Then how can we demand from men those character traits that we do not allow to develop in childhood, raises the question of a study published on .
Society generally discourages sensitivity and caring in boys, although they are as natural for most as they are for girls. Boys are living beings with ordinary feelings: they will cry if they are in pain or their heart is broken, until they are told that “they are not behaving like a man.” We do this for them because we are afraid that they will be offended if they go beyond the norms of traditional masculinity.
But what’s the use if you don’t give them the chance to grow into the versatile people they deserve? Maybe traditional masculinity should be rethought so that society broadens its definition to include pleasant, calm, caring men?
We spend our time educating men as breadwinners. Leadership and business skills are important to us, which is fine as long as they don’t rule out everything else they could learn. We forget or simply ignore the fact that in addition to employees and bosses, they will also be husbands and fathers. They will spend no less time on interpersonal relationships than on negotiating contracts, but we prepare them for one, but not for another. They are ready to make a career, but their emotional growth is artificially slowed down, and then we wonder why our men cannot be a little nobler and more attentive.
In our culture, boys are taught that feminine qualities are a weakness, and then they expect a man to treat women as equals. We harm our sons and our daughters, future women who will have to endure the consequences of the mistakes of our upbringing.
We read smart books to our kids and download apps to their iPhones so that they have an edge when they go to school. We must give our sons the same advantage if we want them to have the qualities of the very best boyfriends, husbands and fathers, and not press these qualities in the beginning, hoping that they will develop themselves somewhere halfway.
We’re not just growing a workforce. We are raising human children who will one day become adults, with all the associated difficulties and responsibilities.