How Progressive Mothering Fails Boys--And Moms
For little boys, antisocial misbehavior is not the same as rough play. It should be disciplined and stopped, not accepted or excused.
If you go anywhere that children also go, you know the tone of voice I’m talking about: Female. Sprightly but defeated. A little pleading.
When you turn to see the owner of the voice, you almost always see a mom. She’s usually with a toddler or preschool or early elementary age boy. And almost always, she’s trying to make her son stop it.
Stop crashing into the grocery shelves. Stop splashing water on the littler kid at the pool. Stop kicking the table. Stop refusing to put on a coat and get going.
The boy isn’t listening. He has her attention, but she doesn’t have his.
Progressive parenting experts and their adherents tell us that we should not, in this moment, reach for the old, traditionalist adage that “boys will be boys.” How right they are — but not in the way they think.
Yes, toxic masculinity and the justification that “boys will be boys” is operative on the right, at the online extreme. It excuses the inexcusable among the kinds of misogynistic adult men who idolize and emulate people like Andrew Tate. And yes, there are conservative parents, often deep in today’s countercultural, natalist extremism, who take arrogant comfort in the politicized conviction that “boys will be boys” in order to all but celebrate their sons’ antisocial antics: Little Ambrose is too smart (and too masculine) to be expected to follow the rules that suffice for everyone else.
Still, most of the people who weaponize “boys will be boys” to excuse the pedestrian bad behavior of their young sons are—by their own admission, and much as they hate the saying’s so-called “gender essentialism”—self-professed feminist mothers.
Why?
Because it is most often mothers in thrall to today’s educational and therapeutic establishments and their nonsensical, Rousseauian misunderstanding of human nature who are unwilling or unable to exert the necessary authority to make their little boys behave.
Boys are indeed boys. Nature, not socialization, makes them less agreeable and more aggressive on average than girls. Hence, raising most (not all—that’s why it’s an average) little boys well requires a traditional kind of authority that is not collaborative and does not assume natural willingness to please.
I expect compliance from my sons because I am an adult and they are children, not because they are naturally disposed to compliance. (Like most boys, they aren’t). Yet when I talk, they mostly listen, because they know that obeying mom is just like obeying dad: Required, not optional.
I’ve done seventeen “boy under six” boy-years now, if you add up my four sons. I’m unsure about a lot, but here’s one thing of which I’m certain: The untrendy, not gentle parenting moms and the old-school teachers who are authoritative with young boys aren’t just not doing anything wrong (though that’s true). They are doing something right.
If a boy over the age of two-and-a-half is in the supermarket with his mother and crashing into things despite her remonstration, it’s because he believes that he, not she, is in charge. And he believes that because it’s true. His mom is no doubt performing, when it comes to him, the very docility and meekness that she purports to reject as a female norm.
Ironically enough, when it comes to forming sons, undue focus on women’s empowerment seems to have ushered in the exact opposite of its intent: The same women who worry most about male entitlement are the ones actively inculcating it through their own maternal weakness. After all, raising men who expect to respect women begins with raising boys who are expected to respect their mothers.
When this is accomplished early and thoroughly, there is less need (not no need, but less need) as time goes on for that kind of authoritative command from mom. As the boy grows, there is more room for dialogue and collaboration.
Sure, the boys will still be boys. But, mostly, well-behaved ones.
Editors’ note: An earlier version of this piece was originally published at The Hill.
I agree with a lot here (beyond the usual disagreements over the innateness of various gendered attributes.) Where I would disagree is with the implication that boys are *especially* damaged by so-called gentle parenting relative to girls. I would say, from talking to the many teachers in my life, that girls are equally damaged by this sort of parenting, but that the issues girls develop tend to be less obvious but are equally or perhaps even more malignant.
Low-performing boys do obviously disruptive things in the classroom (loudly playing videos on their phones during lessons, for example.) Low-performing girls are more likely to weaponize their (extreme) emotional fragility when facing any sort of challenge. For example, low-performing girls will do things like write, "I'm sorry Miss ___. I tried my best, but I don't know how to do anything on the test. :( :( " on an exam. Then they will turn in a blank test. When the test is returned with a low grade, they will burst into tears, sometimes threatening self-harm or suicide until comforted and offered "accommodations" on a retake of the exam.
My teacher friends note that these piteous breakdowns, where the girls say things like, "I'm so stupid. I hate myself. I'm worthless. I want to die" are essentially 100% effective at pushing terrified "gentle" parents and administrators into getting advanced "accommodations" for their daughters that essentially remove any sort of challenge or difficulty from the girls' schoolwork. Thus gentle parenting teaches girls to utilize all the worst weapons in women's emotional arsenal - passive-aggressiveness, emotional manipulation, martyr complexes, and so on- as an extremely effective means to remove any sort of challenge or difficulty from their lives.
“His mom is no doubt performing, when it comes to him, the very docility and meekness that she purports to reject as a female norm” - 🔥 yessss yes, Ive noticed this as well, in not just parenting roles but life! Really good.