NO BOY INPUT NEEDED
My mom always worked full time at a challenging, on her feet job, did everything around the house, and did everything logistically for my sister and me. My dad worked a desk job making twice as much and couldn’t correctly spell my name or name my current teacher.
I just ordered her a giant bouquet of flowers delivered for Mother’s Day and was thinking how great it is she constantly gets fresh flowers, lavish gifts, house cleaning (my sister and I set up and split), her grandchildren all adore her and constantly draw her pictures, and things like that.
Then I realized…it’s because she had two girls. Who saw the bullshit the center of our world put up with and were like…uh no, she’s a girl and girls deserve flowers, massages, dinners, jewelry, and so on, and made it happen for her when we were financially independent enough.
I work with kids and am in a lot of groups with moms of young kids and wonder if most boys ever just “get it” in this way. It seems no. They just double down they want an indentured servant like they saw their dad get. The empathy for their mom never comes.
I have a son, and my greatest wish is he doesn’t turn out to be as selfish and lazy as his dad is (lack of male modeling was a bitch for me as well….thankfully I’m getting out soon). He naturally has a very short fuse and low discomfort tolerance, and I fear every day despite my constant work he’s going to grow into a man who still can’t respect boundaries and regulate his emotions. EDIT TO CLARIFY my son is 3yos and I work tirelessly as the default primary parent to raise him to be a gentle, thoughtful, and respectful person. This post is not gender essentialism but social conditioning essentialism. If you think a mom not doing enough is the reason men turn out to be POS, it just solidifies the social machine I’m up against. I love my son and do everything I can but also understand how patriarchal hellscapes function and have basic pattern recognition.