As a mom of boys, does your opinion of women shape how your son views women?
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I know a mom who frequently says how much she doesn’t like women or girls. She believes that her way of thinking is fine because she has raised boys. Unfortunately, she has also raised misogynists. What she failed to realize is that in all her years of making negative comments about women and creating an environment of distrust and disrespect for women, she has conditioned her sons to share in her belief.
A misogynist is a person who hates, dislikes, mistrusts, or mistreats women. Despite your best efforts to teach your son to respect, like and trust women, you may inadvertently be conditioning him to have misogynistic views of women. We often forget that children don’t remember so much what we say, but what we do. Boys learn as much from their mothers as they do their fathers. As moms, we are as responsible as fathers for influencing our son’s views on the opposite sex. If you’re thinking, “There’s no way, I’m raising my son to be a misogynist”, see if you behave in the following ways:
1. You use derogatory terms in reference to other women
Before you say, “I’m just joking when I say that” or “All women say that”, let me correct you, not all women do it. If the word “bitch” seems to fly off your tongue for any minor infraction from another women, you are showing your son that it is fine to disrespect women when they piss you off. Don’t be surprised when your 7 year old calls his sister a “bitch” for breaking his toy.
2. You send him mixed messages about respect
You reprimand your son about respecting you but he witnesses men disrespecting you and you accepting it. If you’re being unauthentic in how you present yourself to your son, he will see through it. You are your son’s teacher and mentor. How you conduct yourself teaches him what he should think about women. By giving men permission to disrespect or mistreat you, you’re also giving your son permission to do the same to women. If you want your son to respect women, he needs to see mutual respect in the relationships with other males in your life.
3. You don’t value your own and other women’s contribution
There’s nothing noble or honorable about playing small in the world. When your son sees you downplaying your greatness or your hard work, he learns to believe that what women contribute is insignificant or unimportant. Expose him to nontraditional activities so that he has a better understanding of the different roles we have in the world as women.
4. You teach him to have an overinflated sense of entitlement
You can’t teach your son that he is entitled to respect and love without having to be respectful or loving. As moms, we are often consumed by the need to provide our sons with “perfect love”. What we fail to realize is that in offering “perfect love”, we are conditioning our sons to believe they are entitled to this kind of love. He has to learn that in life what he puts out into the world, he gets back. He won’t be able to engage in meaningful, loving and mutually respectful relationship with women, if he is so self-centered, that he can not give of himself.
5. You’re intolerant of other women
If you dismiss women who do not behave or think like you, you are presently a narrow view of women to your son. If you’re highly critical of other women, your son will be too. I’m not saying that you have to surround yourself with women who you clearly have nothing in common with, but do not feed into the negative stereotypes of women. We have different experiences in life, so it’s important to not be quick to judge other women based on a limited perspective.
Your son will be exposed to various messages about women through media, music and other boys and men in his community. It is imperative that we as mothers do our best to dispel many of the myths about women our sons are learning. Instead of teaching gender differences at an early age, we need to teach gender acceptance and tolerance.
Originally appeared at Raising Great Men.com
Photo: Frank Mango/Flickr
I would like to add a twist to people theory. We cannot blame mother for some men because until the last 2-3 years, I have started to dislike women. and my mother passed in 1997. My issue is some women have been trying to force their ways in my life and I have no attraction to those women. They follow me all over the job which really piss me off because I like to be alone quite a bit. I do not like people always sneaking up on me. The issue is some are upset with me because I will… Read more »
I had a look but couldn’t find the companion article about girls being brought up to respect men. Any links to it anywhere?
J
lol. cute.
The word you’re looking for is “subservient” and its been everywhere for the past 2000 years. How hard did you look? Please, direct me to the article where men are being raped by women in astronomical numbers. How many men have had acid poured on their face for turning down a date? How many ‘groom burnings’ have there been, the same as ‘bride burnings’ of India? How many women have broken their husbands bones for leaving the house or not having dinner cooked on time? I’d like to see these articles. Oh, wait. I forgot. The same people who claim… Read more »
I’ll second that, I like to see that too….
Kind of like asking whites to examine their racist ways then asking blacks to take the same steps. THE effects of racism is more pronounced on the lives of people of color as misogynist ways of men can really have a negative impact on women’s lives. Why men focus on training women rather than treating women with the same respect they expect is beyond me.
#4: Yup yup… we broke up with some long time friends….one of the issues was how the young adolescent son was treating his mother…he would just yell at her far from another room and give her an order…a lot of yelling back and forth in that house…and a lot of disrespect…
In the long run, I knew this would have an effect on my son…for his sake, we cut things off…it was too confusing and aggravating being exposed to that kind of bad behavior…..
Since this is the Raising Boys section, I write about raising boys from a mom’s perspective.
“As a mom of boys, does your opinion of women shape how your son views women?” This is a much bigger question then meets the eye. I’ve been asking this for a real long time. Given the fact that so many boys are primarily raised by women, at what point are women going to step up and take responsibility for the attitude many of these boys have? So many parents blame “external” influences, the “street mentality” etc. Back when I was growing up, the first person someone looked at when we were acting up were my parents. Seems that many… Read more »
It took me several years to deprogram myself of the hatred of men instilled in me by my mother.
Its kind of a theme around these parts. No one ever writes about how they want their daughters to treat men but it seems like there are whole hordes of boys being raised with the sole goal of treating women well. We hear about Daughters being raised for their own value and sons being raised for the benefit of the women around them.
And CW to make it worse. This is the oldest gender stereotype / gender role in history. Men (boys) are valued for their utility.
Why does it seem that all advice to parents of Boys is fundamentally different than parents of girls
Parents of Boys —> Raise your sons to respect women (which is a good thing).
Parents of Girls –> Raise your daughters to respect themselves and other women (also a good thing).
But I have never seen advise for parents of boys that tells them to raise their sons to respect other boys and men.
AND I HAVE NEVER
Seen advice to parents to girls that their girls should be taught to respect boys and men.
How strange this world.
I think respect for other people is a good start in all ways. Absolutely. But the world generally teaches boys and girls(!) to respect men. Men are in positions of power in church, school, business and government and men are often treated as the “head of the household”. Girls are often also socialized to be nice above speaking up for themselves. So frequently girls have different issues they are working against. Women on the other hand are portrayed as sexual objects in tv and movies most of the time, not as well rounded people and young boys grow up hearing… Read more »
The world (at least in the west) does not teach anyone RESPECT for men, the world (in the west) denigrates men (and boys) at every single turn, at least they have in my lifetime (50+). The world teaches respect for women and most importantly women issues.
You take about movies and TV as a teacher, those mediums almost universally show men (and especially fathers) as incompetent fools who couldn’t tie their own shoes with his wife’s help.
Boys are taught by everyone in society from a young age that they are the lowest forms of life on the planet.
80% of the lawmakers, even more than that of the CEOs and church leaders. You would think that all of those men in real world positions of respected authority could protect the poor boys of the world from being treated so badly. Being harassed on the street from young teenagehood, raped in much greater numbers, and killed by their partners in astronomical numbers comparitively. Oh wait, that’s women. Yes boys have issues in our society, and they are struggling in higher education etc. They are victims of crime and land in prison in large numbers.Without a doubt. However, it is… Read more »
“If women are so respected, why are rape and death threats overwhelmingly common for women bloggers and much much less so for male bloggers?”
Prove it.
No, seriously, prove it. Not with some blog post or op ed article. I want to see actual scientific data. Because I don’t think this is true *at all.* I think anybody with any sort of outspoken opinion on the internet gets death threats. *I’ve* gotten death threats. I don’t think it really has anything to do with being male or female. I think we as society only *care* when it happens to women.
“80% of the lawmakers, even more than that of the CEOs and church leaders. You would think that all of those men in real world positions of respected authority could protect the poor boys of the world from being treated so badly” In a “patriarchy” that might be so. But we don’t really live in a patriarchy do we. “If women are so respected, why are rape and death threats overwhelmingly common for women bloggers and much much less so for male bloggers? Is that how one shows respect these days?” The only study I’ve seen on this matter –… Read more »
I agree I have NEVER EVER SEEN ANYBODY coming forward telling or teaching people to respect men, EVER. For me it’s actually a alien concept. Never seen that never heard of that. And im not talking about individuals im talking about men as group. Never seen that. And the point that somebody makes that men are blabla on top of the society is pure bull. FACT nobody teaches to respect men. FACT everybody teach how to respect women.
Solution? teach how to respect MEN and WOMEN, everything else is pure ******