I Did NOT Raise You to be Like This!

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I believe that our species is in the midst of an evolutionary moment. There are many lines of faith, schools of thought, and ancient sources of wisdom that suggest we are coming to a turning point, a tipping.

For over 2000 years the human race has been intent on banishing, confining, and eradicating the energies, capabilities and inherent qualities of women. Scholars including Jean Houston and Deepak Chopra believe the teachings of the ancient Mayans tell us this is finally passing. We are seeing the beginning of a new cycle of being for our species, a true rise of the feminine. We see evidence of this with the first female nominee of a major party for the office of President of The United States.

These energies are bubbling up into our collective consciousness. As American women and men, we have been experiencing significant backlash since women began to challenge their second class status and began demanding education, equal rights, equal pay, entry into the workforce, and a sharing of the duties of family and home.

At the same time that we have been making such strides forward in these arenas, there has been an upsurge of domestic violence including rape, now reaching epidemic proportions in the recently integrated military and on college and university campuses across America.

Even as women can now enjoy mastery over their own finances, sign their own mortgages, and run their own companies, they— we—have to keep looking over our shoulders and remain alert for the rage of those men who feel disenfranchised, whose male privilege is being eroded.

It shows up in the catcalls on the streets and more subtle acts of degradation in the boardroom. It shows up in the sadly-now-cliche beatings doled out by star athletes in elevators, and it shows up in the slap-on-the-wrist fines they receive. It shows up in the attitudes of law enforcement and the courts during rape trials, in the reinforcement provided to rapists by the light sentences doled out, by judges more concerned with upholding the life and living of the rapist, than by providing justice for the raped.

Most recently, it shows up in my own home.

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As I newly bear witness to my own adult son taking on the role of reluctant father—in his eyes, forced—I see this misogyny rearing it’s ugly head, even in my own, carefully-reared-and-lectured offspring.

I watch him with his daughters, as he barks, threatens and sends them scurrying. It makes me cringe inside, with fear for what his harshness is creating in them. I wish so much for those two little girls to learn that they can and should expect gentleness, kindness, tenderness, and respect from men.

In conversations with women friends, the phrase just falls out of my mouth: “I did NOT raise him to be like this!” I shake my head, mystified at how I could possibly have created this frustrated and angry man with two unasked-for children, in a relationship with their mother that he will not define. All of us living under my roof as we struggle to sort this out and find some happiness as a family.

I swear to GOD, I did NOT raise him to be like this!

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I can freely admit I was no perfect parent. As a single mother, I felt the challenges in supporting him, not only financially, but also in my efforts to guide him to be a happy kid and a kind human. I had long conversations about the rejections from other kids in his classes, about his body, about his choices. I used non-corporal punishments, time-outs, suspended privileges, removal of toys and gaming time, whenever I could, and I always included long, LONG explanations intended to help him make sense of whatever went wrong. When he and I sometimes burned through all the non-corporal punishment options, I went ahead and spanked, always making sure that I was doing so to teach him to do better, and never as a way to vent anger. I really believed that he and I had a relationship based upon respect.

And I, myself, am a lifelong devotee to all things feminist. I divorced myself from my father when my mother did. I marched in my first rape rally at the early age of twelve, and then took the stage before that huge crowd of hundreds of university women, to speak out against the ways that victims were traditionally blamed. I proudly defended my sister’s right to be gay, and advocated for equality and women’s right to choose in letters to local newspapers and speeches in my schools.

But I think that maybe, with all of that courageous estrogen activated, I didn’t see, or wouldn’t see, this side of him that shows up now, this pissed-off and lashing-out anger for all these women he is surrounded with, all four of us recipients of his aggravations in one way or another. I wonder if it is even possible for a parent to see or catch some of their biggest parenting mistakes, until they see how that adult they raised, chooses to parent their own offspring.

So I thought about all of those long lectures and conversations, all those deliberate and conscious efforts I’d made, and I kept wondering where in the world his present-day attitudes and ideas came from. My comprehension came recently while I was arguing with him, that, yes, he truly does need to contribute child support to his daughters.

“She should be earning her own keep, and providing for the girls, like you did with me, Mom,” he complained to me, “After all, it was HER choice to keep them.” The words hit hard. He’s right. I did that. Why wouldn’t he think she should strike out on her own and raise her girls without his help? That’s exactly what I had done. I called it strong, independent. I chose to suffer the economic hardship of raising him completely on my own, without any support from his father. I told myself I was being strong for my son, but from this other point of view, I chose to disrespect myself—and my son, too—by never going after the child support that he and I deserved to receive. I let his father off, Scot-free. Growing up knowing that we never got support from his own father, how could he fail to believe that he shouldn’t have to support the children he helped to create?

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As this new perspective dawned on me, I started looking for other ways I could have conveyed the messages of disrespect for women. I didn’t have to look very far. As a single mother, I worked to find a man to become my son’s father, or at least act like one. The desperation I felt led me through a series of unhealthy and sometimes damaging relationships, with my son in a front row seat. As he watched me being tolerant their neglect, making excuses for their unkindness and allowing their lack of commitment or support, how could he avoid absorbing it?

I’m still shaking my head. I’m still astonished, only now, I shake my head at my own blindness, at my failure to acknowledge how powerfully these experiences of his childhood taught him what it was supposed to look like, being a man, in a relationship with a woman, with children. I’m shaking my head at how misguided I was in thinking that I could erase those ideas from his head, and wash those images out of his heart, with lengthy conversations and carefully worded explanations.

And so now, I write it all down. I write it in the hope that women who are raising sons will understand that it isn’t enough to have those conversations about respect and consent and equality. It isn’t enough to make sure your sons listen to you or obey you. My son does listen to me, but that hasn’t been sufficient for him to listen to and respect the mother of his own daughters. You’ll have to show your sons what that looks like. You’ll need to demand and insist on respect from their father, on support for you and for them.

Men and women—fathers and mothers—need to work together whenever and wherever possible, to embody and exhibit kindness, tenderness and courtesy. And women, when you have men in your life who are showing your sons dangerous and damaging examples, you will need to do more than just talk to your boys about it, you will need to uproot those men from your life, and allow your boys to see that women don’t tolerate mistreatment. Come to think of it, you’ll be doing your daughters a huge favor, too.

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I am fortunate, my son is not terrible or monstrous. He is still young, and he skirts the edges of verbal abuse and harmful behavior with his daughters and their mother. He chooses to attend therapy, and he is working to do better. He’s succeeding in being kinder. Gradually, with time and maturity, I see that he will likely be able to reclaim the tenderness that I know also lives in his heart, because even though I did show him this model of misogynistic behavior, I also gave him great love, showed him caring, nurtured him. Meanwhile, I am blessed to be present in my granddaughters’ lives, to help them connect with the softer side of their father, to help forge bridges between their hearts and his.

But that phrase will never fall out of my mouth again, “I did NOT raise him to be like this.” Because I have come to realize that I did. Through my choices; by all the ways I once allowed mistreatment, I did. I did it. I really DID raise him, to be exactly like this.
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Photo credit:Flickr/Ally Aubry