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Saturday, June 11, 2005

Boys in the Balance

A friend and I have talked about a disturbing trend we see in some very conservative homeschooling families (and we are very conservative ourselves). That trend is to raise responsible, diligent, hard-working, service minded daughters, but to permit boys to grow up to be irresponsible slackers who expect to be served by the Universe, and especially their sisters. In these families the girls will do the cooking, the housecleaning, even mow the lawns, and their brothers might take out the trash. The most disobedient and disrepectful behavior is dismissed as boys being boys. The girls learn to cook a three course meal, and the boys don't even make their own sandwiches, or, if they do, they are not expected to clean up their own messes.

I once heard a mother lament that she had tried and tried to serve her son to teach him to have a servant's heart, but that he was self-centered and expected to be served always, that he wouldn't even clear his own plate from the table, but would sit and wait for her to do it. Of course, his mother did clear his plate for him (he was 12, as I recall), which is why he expected her to. Boys, like the rest of us, don't learn to serve others by being given servants. They learn to serve by doing acts of service, by serving others, by being encouraged to think of others ahead of themselves and acting on those thoughts.

It's not sissified for boys to take a turn fixing a meal, and it may mean a lot to your boy to have a few dishes he can cook. He may be a bachelor, his wife may be hospitalized or incapacitated, or he might even become a widower at some point- having to learn to cook at such a time would be incredibly difficult and stressful. Mama's, don't let your babies grow up to be clueless around the house. It's part of life.

Worse, these parents often buy into reading as a girlish activity. They think it's normal for boys to dislike books and literature. Odd, since for the thousands of years that writing and reading have been around, most cultures have considered them strictly male perogatives. This alone ought to tell us that if we are raising boys who hate books, it's not the fault of their testocerone.

OTOH, there are other parents who go to the other extreme. They want their boys so utterly 'domesticated' that the wildest play they engage in is to play paper dolls. They want to raise 'girlie men,' because they mistakenly think this is more civilized. Civilizations are overthrown when their men can no longer defend the city gates. Amanda Witt is all over that:

Now, my boys memorize poetry. They clean up the supper dishes, with a little reminding. They tell their sister that they love her, and they prickle with indignation when other boys talk about girl germs. They're not Neanderthals. They're going to be good men, strong and tender, trustworthy, confident, brave.

They aren't learning this from me (except by my refusal to squelch it). They're learning it from their father, grandfathers, uncles; from the men at church who greet them with outstretched hand and expect them to answer audibly and shake firmly, from the men who lead worship; from the male friends who take them up in cherry-pickers, bulldozers, fire engines, and out in boats, who stop by to show them a new motorcycle, who talk to them with great seriousness about dinosaurs, asteroids, and snakes. Thanks to these men, my boys are going to know how to be men--not bullies, not henpicked eunuchs, but men.


You'll want to read the whole thing.

2 comments:

  1. You know this is so weird because sometimes I just totally miss things like this that are trends.
    My boys have always had to work pretty hard inside and out because we only have 1 daughter. And I we have always used CM methods without it being at all feminine. Still I think maybe if this is a trend then I need to be careful on my blog how I describe our family.

    It is always a struggle to submit to the Holy Spirit and become a servant no matter what the gender. Certainly that particular sin should not be excused in the male species.

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