Real Reasons Why Facing Your Son’s Evolution to Manhood Matters
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In a recent conversation on a social platform I had an opportunity to discuss raising boys. If you’ve read my writings over the years, you’d see I love chatting with people and helping to re-frame perspectives. I got into a very passionate debate with a woman about her son “just being a baby.” Her baby was 14, just 4 years away from legally being a man and 7 years away from being able to drink. A dad even chimed in and told me that we were putting too much pressure on boys to grow up too fast in support of this mom. He felt the boy needed to “find himself.”
My thoughts were that this momma’s boy may find his way into a jail cell from being too naive, find his way into HIV/Aids from not being taught about sexually transmitted diseases, find his way into an unplanned pregnancy complaining about child support payments from not knowing his primal urges can make babies or find his way depressed trying to fix broken relationships due to his being a half raised man or find his way to drugs/alcohol because the pressures of being a man are too much.
I know I’ll step on a lot of toes but it is what it is. This is not about alpha men vs stay at home men but simply raising boys into the realm of manhood. As a single, divorced mom, I know my job is tough. It is even tougher because there is not a consistent male role model with my son every single day. Some moms will argue we can do the job just as good as any man. Well, we can do a great job but there are men for a reason. To say they have no value that is different to that a woman can add to a child’s life is to negate the value of their presence in society and that is WRONG! The opposite is true as it relates to the role of women in children’s lives. By having both people we add the one thing all kids need…..a balanced perspective.
It isn’t always easy to get mentors for our sons although there is so much push on what we need to do as single women for our sons. Some days I wish I could tell well-meaning people to simply shut the hell up because if there were enough QUALIFIED mentors for our children we wouldn’t be in the state we are in now. There simply aren’t enough. There aren’t enough men standing in the gap for the boys without dads. For those who are doing the job without a hidden agenda to fluff their own egos about “how much I do for the kids” I give big ups to you and find men like you amazing! There are those who get involved and all they can tell you is about events they went to but not what they did to help a child change their own life. Not that THEY changed a child’s life but what they did to HELP a child change it. If this statement doesn’t apply to you, there’s no need to get upset but if it does, I’m sure I’ll get the comments about my jaded perspective.
So for parent’s raising boys I have some important thoughts. YOU ARE RAISING SOMEONE’S MATE!!!!! YOU ARE RAISING SOMEONE’S EMPLOYEE, BOSS, WORKER, FRIEND, PARENT, ETC. So what does that really look like when we put it into perspective? In the case of this woman who had a 14 year old son. I asked one question that stopped the debate. It was “would you want to marry a man that acts like your son currently does at his age?” She immediately replied “no.” So my response was “why are you refusing to let go of the boy and let him evolve into the young man he is? Why would you want to keep him in a space that only you can love him and when he seeks love from another he can’t accept it because he has no idea how to since he will have no identity as a man and only as a boy?” Once I brought out these questions, the man who was in her defense immediately flip flopped sides and said that I was right. He said he was talking about other parts of manhood. Ummmm no! He really wasn’t but was not comfortable in saying with the new intel he received via my commentary he realized he needed to retract earlier statements. Hey if the government can use statements like that, why can’t we? The mom on the other hand had her “aha moment.” The light bulb turned on and she felt horrible. My intent was not to make her own the feeling of being a horrible mom but instead realize that as parents we sometimes have tunnel vision. We can’t see outside of what is in front of us. She saw that she was responsible for raising someone she could be proud to let out into the world who was prepared to be in the world without her.
It’s inevitable our kids will grow up. For many of us, married or not, it’s hard to let go of our baby boy. He was and still is so cute. He is so full of potential. But he will never fully reach that potential if we as parents don’t’ begin letting go in stages. Let them make mistakes and face some consequences while they are still under our care where there is a safety net. The real truth is the world does not have a safety net and it doesn’t give a damn about your baby boy because to them he will be a man. I heard TD Jakes say it best. “Don’t’ send your son into a man’s war with women’s armor.” The same is true about our daughters. Most daughters will one day want to become mothers. Sending them into a woman’s world with male armor will do nothing but cause them great heartache. This is not to say that we negate gender equality issues (so please let’s not go there) but instead we embrace differences and work accordingly with our children to help them develop the best lives they can.
Photo: AngelWings/Flickr