A Father’s Role in Raising Men Who Hate Women

Misogynistic men do not simply appear one morning with a podcast microphone, a collection of terrible opinions and an inexplicable hatred for women. They are shaped.

A boy is constantly learning what women are worth and fathers occupy a particularly powerful position in this process because, for many boys, their father is one of their earliest and most influential models of what manhood looks like.

Of course, fathers are not solely responsible for the men their sons eventually become. Schools, friends, religious institutions, social media, pornography, online communities and culture all participate in shaping a boy’s worldview. But a father who is intentional about what he teaches, tolerates and models can give his son something incredibly valuable before the rest of the world starts trying to tell him who women are.

Here are five things fathers can do to raise boys who do not grow into misogynistic men.

1. Respect His Mother, Regardless of Your Relationship With Her

Whether you are still married to his mother, separated from her, preparing for divorce, divorced already, or your son resulted from a relationship that lasted only one night, respect matters. The circumstances that brought two adults together should never determine whether one of them deserves basic human dignity.

Many boys learn a dangerous hierarchy of women from watching the men around them. They learn that some women deserve respect because they are wives, mothers or daughters, while other women can be insulted, sexualised, humiliated or treated carelessly because they occupy a category society has already judged. A father who respects his son’s mother only when she behaves in ways he approves of may unintentionally teach his son that women’s dignity is conditional.

Respecting his mother does not mean pretending that she is perfect or remaining in a relationship that is unhealthy. People can separate, disagree, and can make mistakes. What matters is teaching a boy that conflict does not cancel another person’s humanity. A father can be angry with a woman without humiliating her. He can leave a relationship without destroying her reputation. He can disagree with his son’s mother without turning her into a villain.

When a boy repeatedly sees this kind of behaviour, he learns something that will follow him into adulthood: women do not become less deserving of dignity because a man is disappointed in them.

2. Speak Against Misogyny in His Presence

One of the most powerful lessons fathers can teach their sons is that misogyny is not something good men tolerate. Whenever you hear another man degrading women, making violent jokes about them, celebrating their humiliation or describing them as inferior, speak against it.

This matters because boys are constantly observing what men permit. A father may privately believe that women deserve respect, but if he sits silently while his friends repeatedly degrade women, his son learns that misogyny is socially acceptable among men. He may even learn that being a man means participating in those conversations or remaining silent to avoid appearing weak, overly sensitive or controlled by women.

Fathers should therefore be careful about the friendships they maintain and the behaviour they normalise around their sons. This does not mean a man must become perfect or immediately cut off every person who has ever expressed a sexist idea. It means he should not build a social environment where misogyny is repeatedly rewarded, celebrated and treated as harmless entertainment.

Imagine the difference between a boy hearing his father laugh when another man says something degrading about women and hearing his father respond, “That’s not right.” One reaction teaches him that misogyny earns belonging among men. The other teaches him that masculinity does not require the degradation of women.

Boys need to see men holding other men accountable. Otherwise, they may grow up believing that respect for women is something men perform only when women are watching.

3. Always Speak Beautifully About Women

For many boys, their father becomes one of their earliest windows into how the world sees women. A boy may genuinely love his mother and sisters while still developing contempt for women generally because he has unconsciously learned that the women closest to him are “different” or “special.”

This is one of the strangest contradictions in misogyny. A man can say, “I respect women,” while meaning, “I respect my mother and sisters.” Meanwhile, women outside his personal circle are judged differently. They can be sexualised, insulted, dismissed or treated as less intelligent because they do not belong to the protected category of women he personally knows.

Fathers can interrupt this pattern by speaking about women with the same humanity they would want other people to extend to their own mothers, daughters and sisters. Whenever the subject of a woman comes up, whether she is famous, poor, divorced, sexually expressive, outspoken, unmarried or someone you personally dislike, speak about her with fairness and empathy.

Your son is listening.

He is learning whether a woman’s value depends on whether a man approves of her. He is learning whether women are allowed to make mistakes without becoming objects of public humiliation. He is learning whether a woman can be intelligent without being arrogant, ambitious without being selfish, sexually autonomous without becoming worthless, or outspoken without becoming disrespectful.

A father’s worldview gradually becomes part of the language through which his son interprets women. Speak carelessly about women long enough and your son may eventually inherit your contempt. Speak about them with dignity, however, and you give him a very different foundation.

4. Teach Him About What Women Have Historically Experienced

The world will eventually give your son a thousand reasons to misunderstand women. He will encounter people who insist that feminism has gone too far, that women have always had equal opportunities, that gender inequality is imaginary or that women simply complain too much. Without historical context, many boys will take in these arguments because they have no understanding of what women have actually experienced across generations.

That is why fathers should deliberately teach their sons about women’s history.

Talk to them about the periods when women were legally excluded from voting, owning property, accessing education and participating equally in public life. Teach them about the enormous amount of domestic and care work women have performed without recognition or payment. Help them understand financial inequality, workplace discrimination, maternal health disparities, sexual violence and the historical tendency to dismiss women’s pain and experiences.

Teach them about women whose ideas, inventions and labour were ignored, stolen or credited to men. Teach them why women were repeatedly described as too emotional to lead while men who displayed aggression were often considered strong. Teach them why a society that historically limited women’s access to wealth cannot simply turn around and mock women for being financially dependent on men.

The goal is not to make your son feel guilty for being male. Historical education should never be about transferring guilt from one person to another. The goal is to give him context. A boy who understands history is less likely to interpret every discussion about women’s rights as a personal attack against him. He can understand that recognising injustice does not mean hating men. It simply means being honest about the world we inherited.

Fathers can share books, documentaries, articles and conversations with their sons. More importantly, they can make these discussions normal. A boy should not reach adulthood believing that women’s history is a niche subject for women. Half of humanity’s experience should concern everyone.

5. Humanize Women to Him

For many boys, something strange happens as they approach puberty. Women gradually stop being understood as ordinary human beings and begin to be interpreted through categories. Some become sexual bodies. Others become potential wives. Others become trophies, domestic workers, status symbols, temptations or prizes that will supposedly arrive once a man becomes successful.

This is one of the foundations of misogyny because it becomes much easier to mistreat someone once you stop seeing them as fully human.

A father can constantly interrupt this process by reinforcing a simple truth: every woman is a complete human being.

She has fears, ambitions, insecurities, dreams, intelligence, contradictions and experiences just as your son does. She is somebody’s daughter, perhaps, but more importantly, she is herself. She does not need to be related to a man before she deserves dignity.

If your son understands that his mother is human, then the woman living next door is human too. If his sister deserves respect, then the woman he disagrees with online deserves basic dignity too. If he would not want someone humiliating his mother publicly, he should understand why humiliating another woman is equally wrong.

This does not mean your son must agree with every woman or admire every woman he encounters.

Women, like men, are capable of being wrong, difficult, selfish and harmful. Humanizing women is not idealizing them. It is recognizing that their humanity remains intact even when they disappoint him.

That distinction is crucial because misogyny often thrives on conditional respect. A woman is respected when she behaves correctly, remains attractive, agrees with a man, serves him or fits neatly into his expectations. The moment she becomes inconvenient, the respect disappears. A father who teaches his son to recognise women’s humanity gives him a much stronger moral foundation than conditional respect ever could.

6. Finally, Do Not Shame Him for His Femininity

Most misogynistic men were not explicitly taught by their parents to hate women. Many were taught something more subtle: to hate everything society associated with women.

A boy cries and is told he is behaving like a girl. He is gentle and someone tells him to stop being soft. He is compassionate, affectionate, quiet or emotionally expressive and he is mocked for being feminine. Over time, he learns that certain human qualities are shameful because they are associated with girls and women.

That is one of the earliest and most overlooked pathways into misogyny.

A boy who learns to despise everything considered feminine may eventually struggle to respect the people society associates most strongly with femininity. If compassion is weak, then compassionate women become weak. If emotional expression is embarrassing, then emotional women become embarrassing. If gentleness is inferior, then the people associated with gentleness become inferior too.

Boys should be allowed to be compassionate without being mocked. They should be allowed to cry without having their masculinity questioned. They should be allowed to be affectionate, gentle, emotionally expressive and caring without being told that they are becoming less male.

These qualities do not belong to women. They belong to human beings.

A father who raises his son this way is not weakening him, he is giving him access to the full range of his humanity. A boy who can recognise his own emotions is more likely to recognise those of others. A boy who does not hate vulnerability is less likely to despise it in women. A boy who is not ashamed of compassion is less likely to interpret cruelty as strength.

Raising a non-misogynistic son is ultimately about much more than teaching him to be polite to women. It means raising a boy who understands that women are not a separate species whose value must be determined by their usefulness to men. They are complete human beings with the same right to dignity, autonomy, safety, ambition and self-determination.

And perhaps fathers should remember that the lesson is never delivered only through speeches. Your son is watching how you speak, who you defend, what you laugh at, what you tolerate and how your behaviour changes when a woman is no longer useful to you.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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Photo credit: Ante Hamersmit on Unsplash