Let’s not forget to celebrate boys, too
IS today a good day to be a man? It depends on who you ask, amid the cut and thrust of gender wars rearing on International Women’s Day.
But be grateful you are not a little boy, who has just arrived squish-eyed and screaming into this mixed-up world because, according to a new study, it might have been better if you’d been born a girl.
A recent piece in The New York Times highlights a report that says Americans might no longer prefer sons over daughters. How delightful. Before they’re barely a blip on an ultrasound screen, boys are “an issue”.
That’s because, according to the report Is There Still Preference In The United States? by the National Bureau of Economic Research, would-be parents are panic stricken by a “subtle fear of boys and the trouble they might bring”. The report used fertility data from 2008-2013 that suggests having a daughter first “did not encourage additional births”.
Job done, in other words, so no need to keep breeding to produce a male heir. Or as one of the paper’s authors said: “We were surprised to find that it was not true anymore that having a girl encouraged additional births. There could be a daughter preference.”
Never has the phrase: “Mr Smith, you have a son” been so doom-laden. When I was pregnant, all I wanted was a healthy child.
A teen psychologist, Michael Thompson, also stuck his oar in: “Parents think: My son might have ADHD, might not fit in well at school, there might be no jobs for him. Life is going to be a little tougher for him as a boy.”
Sure, it should be celebrated that we nurture astute and emotionally robust young women but isn’t the goal to raise whole people not stereotypes?
Sit down and be quiet. That’s what we’re telling boys if they make it out of the womb.
All this rhetoric reminded me of a column in 2016 by Polly Dunning, who proudly declared herself to be a third generation feminist.
Dunning was pregnant with her first child and while she conceded motherhood had been a “confronting experience for my feminism so far”, her rollercoaster of emotions and “reconciling my biology with my ideology” hit a major hurdle when she discovered her unborn child was, in fact, a boy.
The horror of it.
“I had never wanted a son,” she moaned. “I wanted daughters, probably because I am one of two daughters and six granddaughters, no sons or grandsons. This seemed altogether to fit in with my feminism better.
“But when the sonographer pointed out my son’s dangly bits in our 19-week scan, it was clear that I was going to raise a son. The anxious feeling I had about this daunting prospect lasted a few weeks as I came to terms with why I felt the way I did and how I could let it go.”
And then this: “There were dark moments in the middle of the night when I felt sick with worry thinking about how I would go about raising a son.”
Dunning’s diatribe rightly caused outrage and I still feel revolted when I read it, as any mother of a son reasonably would. Dunning then declared her intention to crush any traits in her son that might have the whiff of sexism.
Her mission – she would raise a “feminist boy”.
But two years on, the poisonous movement to isolate and denigrate boys continues unabated and will unless we speak out to defend them. Yet society needs good men and the majority of men are good. Testosterone is not an assault rifle.
Oh, wait – I’ve been strung up as a sexist for saying this before. Have we forgotten the outrage we felt on learning how devalued female infants have been and remain in some less developed countries around the world?
Are we really approaching the blessing of a son with this twisted and cruel mindset: I am raising someone who is going to get in trouble and will fail at school.
With a girl, you can open a global door and say: Look all this is yours and more.
But for every inspirational woman out there, there is a man who is just as aweinspiring. A pal of mine has a dear friend whose wife literally walked out the door eight years ago, leaving him with five children aged from four to 16. She never came back, saw the children for brief and entirely unsatisfying (for them) visits where she had nothing much to say to them. Slowly she drifted away and now lives in another country.
So the father of these children has become mother and father. Three are now at university, and two at high school. None of them have veered off the rails in search of teenage sex, drugs, or alcohol. This father is doing what any responsible parent should do.
We should not be telling our boys: Life is easy for you because you are part of the patriarchy or make them own some kind of inherent defectiveness.
I thought we wanted healthy children who grow up to be functioning adults rather than focusing on how girls are disadvantaged and victims who can rise up and overcome hurdles. A boy, meanwhile, who “rises up” is a threat.
International Women’s Day? Great, let’s mark women’s achievements and struggles. But let’s not forget to celebrate our boys, too. @whatlouthinks
THE POISONOUS MOVEMENT TO ISOLATE AND DENIGRATE BOYS CONTINUES UNABATED