Moms Love Their Sons — But Raise Their Daughters
Maybe it’s time to look at mothers when it comes to the rise of broken men.
franckreporter | Canva Editor's Note: This is a part of YourTango's Opinion section where individual authors can provide varying perspectives for wide-ranging political, social, and personal commentary on issues.
Recently, I had to revisit a situation that was quite prevalent in my childhood. Back in the day, my mom was friends with a person she met at a local church event — a woman we’ll call Tanya*.
Tanya had two kids around my age, a girl named Sasha* and a boy named Alex*. We all used to hang out while our parents would gossip over their notorious three C’s: coffee, cigarettes, and chocolates.
Even when I was nine years old, I noticed something strange about Tanya’s dynamics with her two kids. Alex, the 12-year-old boy, could do no wrong in her eyes. Sasha, my fellow 9-year-old, was held to as strict a standard as me, if not more so.
Alex, at 12 years old, was a royal terror. He’d beat kids up, steal from his mom’s purse, and also dunk his sister’s hair in maple syrup. Sasha was oddly stoic. If a 9-year-old could sound mature, she fits that bill.
Sasha did two things: study and clean up the messes her brother made. Oh, and she’d occasionally get into very fierce arguments with him. We would quietly hang out in her room, talk about clothing, and what we read, and do art together. For a while, we grew up together.
Tanya was always tougher on her daughter than she was with her son, and it showed by the time we were preteens.
Sasha was abnormally serious for a preteen. She dressed conservatively, even matronly. She had to cook and clean up after Alex when Tanya wasn’t home. Going out as a teenager? Nuh-uh. Not happening.
Meanwhile, Alex was running amok as a teen. Tanya’s father, Eugene*, bought Alex a sports car so he could flirt with girls. We could always tell when he was coming home by the screeching of the tires.
At one point, Alex decided to “impress” a girl by driving very recklessly. A police car followed him for 20 minutes. He ended up with 16 points on his driving license from that night and had his driving suspended for two years. That was the beginning of his criminal career.
Tanya expected Alex to get with every girl he could. She also expected Sasha to remain celibate — to the point that she would not even allow her to have male friends. Like me, Sasha was not a "girly girl." This angered Tanya.
Sasha worked tirelessly. She cooked and cleaned, and she became a serious, if not downright stoic, member of the intelligentsia. Eventually, she became a high-end professional in the hospitality marketing industry and stopped talking to her mom.
Even my bubbly persona couldn’t seem to knock some carefree fun into Sasha. It affected her. And the clear double standards gave her a growling, simmering resentment toward men.
According to research from the National Library of Medicine, the persistence of parenting gender double standards likely contributes to the persistence of separate and distinct gender roles.
As long as substantial double standards remain a part of parental socialization of children, utterly equal gender role attitudes seem unlikely, and the gender gaps in family behaviors are likely to remain.
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The double-standard pattern I saw in Tanya’s parenting was one I saw quite a bit — and it seems to translate into parenting circles, too.
The older I got, the more I saw a plethora of “Sashas” in my life. So many women were told to be the providers, the patient ones, the quasi-parents to their siblings. Meanwhile, the men in their families were applauded for jobs — and were pretty much left to their own devices.
In parenting circles I’d occasionally cross paths with, I’d hear moms discuss different genders. Too often, I’d hear a mom sigh and say, “Boys are so much easier to parent. They need so little.”
A 2018 Gallup poll found that 54% of Americans stated that boys are easier to raise than girls, a consistent sentiment since 1947.
Oddly enough, the older women who said this were also the ones who tended to have sons who weren’t doing too well. They often were constantly unemployed, unwilling to go back to school, unwilling to start their businesses…and at times, they also had criminal issues.
The correlation always sank in. I noticed the double standards parents have on boys and girls. Boys get to do whatever they want. Girls? Not so much. They’re being raised to be a pseudoparent for their siblings more often than not.
I never could figure out what it was that made me so upset about this double standard until I heard someone else say it: “Moms love their sons, but raise their daughters.”
Contrary to what so many boy moms think, parenting a son is not easier than parenting a daughter.
These boy moms I see love to dote on their sons, but it often feels like their daughters can do nothing right. Without fail, I’ve seen moms pick apart their daughters, harass them into cooking, and foist baby brothers into the girls’ arms.
Their sons? These moms don’t do that. They may be nurturing to them. They may give them food and clean up after them. However, they don’t parent them.
Moms who say “boys are easier” love on their sons, but they don’t do any of the following crucial parenting tasks:
- Teach them how to cook and clean. Those are not women’s chores. They are human chores. They are a good way to bond with your son and turn him into a functional adult.
- Teaching them basic hygiene. Yes, facial cleanser is a man’s thing, too.
- Give them responsibilities. I see a lot of privileges but no responsibilities. Why aren’t boys being told to clean the dishes or keep girls safe? Why aren’t sons being told to babysit the toddler in the family?
- Punish them for bad behavior. I never see these moms come down on sons the way they do on girls. It’s often a case of “boys will be boys,” while girls get berated for wearing lipstick too early.
- Listen intently and care when their sons are asking for advice or sympathy. I noticed that while they dote on them, these boy moms don’t guide them. They also don’t teach them basic tenets of emotional maturity.
- Hold their sons to a serious standard of behavior. No, “boys will be boys” is not an excuse. It’s a sign you’re neglecting your son.
- Teach them social skills. Okay, so my parents didn’t do that with me and I think that’s why I am the way I am to a point. But, they also didn’t excuse my behavior when it went off the rails.
- Watch for warning signs and protect them. Maybe it’s just in my circles, but I noticed moms are far more watchful over girls than boys. Just because boys can’t be knocked up at 15 doesn’t mean they can’t be victimized. Why does no one talk about that?
A lot of the women who say “boys are easier” are just coming up with an excuse to emotionally neglect their sons, which leads to angry men.
More and more men are angry at their mothers because they realize they were neglected.
Parents are not doing their kids a favor by mollycoddling them. They are also not doing their kids a favor by letting them do whatever they want while cleaning up the messes they make.
The older I get, the more I hear men waking up and smelling the coffee about their childhoods. They’re sinking into the grim realization that their parents neglected them by not disciplining them. They’re realizing that their neglect also stunted their emotional growth.
And you know what? They’re right to be mad.
Boys aren’t easier. They need just as much care and parenting as girls do. Anyone who tells you otherwise is looking for an easy “out” of basic parenting duties. Boys aren’t “less emotional” than girls, nor are they less likely to be led astray. Parents just assume that boys are okay as long as they bring in good grades. Girls, not so much.
Women are policed more, so is it any surprise that girls are policed more? The policing and critiquing starts the moment the doctor says, “It’s a girl.” However, there’s a flip side to this.
When you’re constantly under a microscope, you get more attention. One has to wonder how many little boys wondered why their parents were too busy scolding their daughters or getting their daughters gussied up for a pageant to bother with them. Somehow, I think they’d be in the minority.
Many people don’t talk about the fact that neglect can look appealing at times.
How many boys look relieved when they hear their sisters have to do the dishes instead of them? How many teenage sons don’t even blink when their once-crusty, stiff socks are softly balled up and fresh in their drawers?
How many young men do you see who still have Mother Dearest doing their laundry at 24? And how many of those young men automatically assume women will always be there to do that stuff for them, only to fall apart when they’re not?
Neglect doesn’t always look like torn clothing. It doesn’t always look like the son who can’t read or the daughter who keeps getting lice in her hair. Sometimes, neglect comes in the form of coddling.
Sometimes, it’s the wild, unhinged outburst of a teenage son who was never taught to regulate his emotions that shows neglect. Other times, it’s the adult man who can’t figure out why cockroaches are in his apartment after leaving the garbage there for a week.
Emotional neglect, social skills neglect, disciplinary neglect, and life skills neglect of our sons are just as damning as educational neglect.
And yet, too often, these types of neglect are just faced with a quaint “boys will be boys” smile.
As long as mommy is ignoring teaching them the skills they need while doing all the things for them, we all pretend mommy is doing right by her boys. Moms love their sons, after all. They really do.
It’s just that, you know, they raise their daughters.
Ossiana Tepfenhart is a writer whose work has been featured in Yahoo, BRIDES, Your Daily Dish, Newtheory Magazine, and others.