RAISE ’EM ‘RIGHT’
Mom’s ideology fears mask boys’ real risks
‘CAN we keep our sons from conservative politics?” That’s the question writer Kathryn Jezer-Morton posed in a recent column for New York Magazine’s The Cut.
“In her son’s case, I wouldn’t bet on it,” New York Times columnist Ross Douthat shot back on X. He’s right.
Jezer-Morton is facing an ageold conundrum of parenthood: Kids rebel against their parents’ politics. Except, in 2024, the classic trend is being inverted. Progressive parents are desperately trying to keep their boys from becoming conservative, rather than the other way around.
Teens go against the grain, and the most rebellious thing a young person coming up in this ultra-progressive era can do today — when left-wing politics are shoved down their throats by their schools, marketing campaigns and celebrities — is swing right.
While Jezer-Morton’s concern that her 10- and 13-yearold sons are becoming “oppressors” before her eyes might be hyperbolic, she’s right that Zoomer boys are moving right.
A 2023 survey of 12th-graders by the University of Michigan found that, while American girls are headed left, male counterparts are twice as likely to identify as conservative than liberal, as they tack toward a new, edgy kind of anti-woke politics.
Is it any wonder Jezer-Morton’s kids might be doing the same, considering she admits to political finger-wagging? As she writes, “My voice raises as I start lecturing a teen about why he needs to recognize the importance of the history of Indigenous people.”
But, rather than open her mind to the possibility that her boys and other young men like them might have legitimate disagreements with her worldview, Jezer-Morton chalks their concerns up to an irrational victim mindset.
“For young men to experience the . . . narrative of success, they feel they need to start from a position of disempowerment,” she writes. “Blaming women for their troubles is an easy route to that position.”
Jezer-Morton, author of columns headlined “Does Anyone Feel Like an Actual Adult?” and “My Mom Is Selfish. Do I still Have to be a ‘Good Daughter’?” laments that her son is using terms like “sigma” and “looksmaxxing” — controversial slang thrown around in incel forums on the likes of Reddit and 4Chan.
She also says her boys present “TikTok-based information” at the dinner table. Sounds like being overly online might be the real enemy here, not conservative politics.
Noxious e-fluencers
The author’s best bet in her shadow-boxing fight would be to get her kids off social media, where unknown influences — as well as toxic influencers like Andrew Tate — can take hold.
Jezer-Morton admitted seven years ago, in a column for The Cut, that her then-3-year-old son would say “show me your eyes” when she was scrolling on her phone rather than being present with her toddler.
Call me crazy, but it seems like it might be her own addiction to social media that’s causing her to demonize her kids.
She also flatly dismisses the possibility that boys could be reacting to some legitimate concerns.
Brookings Institute senior fellow Richard Reeves tactfully points out in his 2022 book, “Of Boys and Men,” that men are facing unprecedented challenges — including falling behind in standardized testing and prematurely leaving the workforce in droves. Saying as much isn’t reactionary. In fact, men account for seven in 10 opioid deaths and four in five suicides.
Perhaps hearing out some grievances, rather than waving them away as “reactionary and unformed pseudo-ideologies” would allow parents and sons to learn from one another. Respect is a two-way street.
To Jezer-Morton’s credit, she is correct about one thing: Continuing to push her own politics on her kids is only going to make matters worse.
“Coming down too hard risks playing right into the paranoid hands of masculinist discourses of male disempowerment,” she warns. “It might feel dangerous to let a teenager argue that sexism works both ways, but it’s far more consequential to make him feel like that position is forbidden.”
She’s right that parents should let kids explore ideas, even those that offend their sensibilities. The more shrilly that woke parents plead, the further right their offspring will go.
But, whatever their politics, any parent truly concerned about their child being swept up in ideology should be questioning whether the real enemy is competing viewpoints — or allowing their children to construct a worldview on TikTok and YouTube.