{"id":4374,"date":"2016-05-13T09:36:07","date_gmt":"2016-05-13T16:36:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/?p=4374"},"modified":"2016-05-11T09:59:11","modified_gmt":"2016-05-11T16:59:11","slug":"big-birthday-memory-16","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/2016\/05\/13\/big-birthday-memory-16\/","title":{"rendered":"Big Birthday Memory #18: Want a Feminist Son? Tips From a Veteran"},"content":{"rendered":"

NOTE: As I approach my 70th birthday, I\u2019ll reprise a milestone post here each day until the end of May. This one appeared on BlogHer on\u00a0January 19, 2011<\/em><\/p>\n

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\"Running<\/p>\n

“So Dan,” says I, \u201cWhat would you think if the woman you wanted to marry decided to keep her name?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWell mom,\u201d says he, \u201cI don\u2019t think I\u2019d want to marry a woman who didn\u2019t<\/em> want to keep her name.\u201d<\/p>\n

He was around ten then (he\u2019s 30 now), in the car with us, listening to his dad tease me, as he has for years, that he \u201cwouldn\u2019t have let me\u201d have his name if I did<\/em> want it.\u00a0 Not a serious discussion of male oppression exactly, but humor teaches lessons too.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Someone asked me how we raised feminist sons.\u00a0 I don\u2019t have a checklist.\u00a0 And if I were to respond seriously, I\u2019d start with something really corny: teach them to respect people \u2013 all <\/em>people. \u00a0The elevator man.\u00a0 The bus driver.\u00a0 Their best friend\u2019s mom.\u00a0 The guy at the candy counter.\u00a0 Their friends.\u00a0 Their parents\u2019 friends. Their baby sitter.\u00a0 They were Manhattan kids, but they were raised to think of the feelings of every person they met.\u00a0 Of course, that meant all women, too.\u00a0 That was an advantage.<\/p>\n

Oh, and we respected the two of them right back.<\/p>\n

In the families they knew, most of the moms worked as hard as the dads.\u00a0 Since moms at home were an exception, they were used to two-income families.\u00a0 The daughters of these moms, the girls they went to school with, wouldn\u2019t put up with much nonsense, either.\u00a0 That also helped.<\/p>\n

We preferred offering choices over fiats.\u00a0 Most boys go through a Playboy <\/em>phase.\u00a0 Call it curiosity.\u00a0 When the magazines began to stack up behind the old-fashioned radiator in our bathroom, we didn\u2019t seize them. \u00a0We talked about what it must have been like for the women in the pictures and how their parents might feel.\u00a0 I may have said (of course I said) that it offended me, but if they wanted to keep buying Playboy<\/em>, they\u2019d have to pay for it from their allowance and keep them all put away.\u00a0\u00a0 Eventually the fever broke and the magazines disappeared.<\/p>\n

\"Boys<\/div>\n

I also changed the endings of a lot of stories I read to them when they were really little.\u00a0 \u00a0No princess was given by her father to the guy who solved the riddle or won the quest in our versions. (I also had to change stories like Mr. Poppers Penguins<\/em> because of terrible racial stereotypes, by the way)\u00a0 We read Harriet the Spy<\/em> and Otherwise Known as Sheila the Great<\/em> as well as Encyclopedia Brown <\/em>and\u00a0Superfudge.<\/em><\/p>\n

Also, back then when it was new, we listened to Free to Be, You and Me<\/em> \u00a0until the tape wore out.\u00a0 When we did come across unpleasant images of women on TV or at a movie, we talked about them.Those movie moments were also \u201cteachable moments.\u201d\u00a0 As any parent knows, those scenes can enable a dialogue that might otherwise be impossible, whether it\u2019s about smoking and drugs, bullies, sex, or the partnership between women and men. They\u2019re always popping up; not just in entertainment but also on the street, with family and friends, and in easy conversations.\u00a0 We made the most of those, too.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve sort of written things down here as I thought of them and now as I reread this, I realize how much I\u2019ve focused on image and media.\u00a0 I guess that\u2019s because those sorts of opportunities were overt and therefore highly productive tools.<\/p>\n

The modeling that went on at home was also critical of course.\u00a0 We were nowhere near as exemplary as couples are now in their parenting and household equity.\u00a0 It was the 70\u2019s and 80s.\u00a0 Even so, we were very aware of the issues we needed to pass on and both worked to do it. (For a more contemporary look , try The Feminist Breeder, who, in a consciously egalitarian marriage, describes her own thoughts on raising feminist boys.\u00a0\u00a0or Penguin Unearthed as she offers her own perspective.)<\/p>\n

Our boys, from when they were little, learned to cook, iron (that was our babysitter, not us), do their laundry and clean the kitchen.\u00a0 They made their beds (mostly) and helped out at our parties.\u00a0\u00a0 Each has always had close friends who were girls, and later, women.\u00a0 They still do.<\/p>\n

\"Boys<\/div>\n

As I conclude though, \u00a0I return too to the concept of respect.\u00a0 If you are steeped in a respect for all people \u2013 not as a political habit but a deep, personal value, it\u2019s a lot tougher to use your maleness to seize control of a household, a family or a workplace.<\/p>\n

Finally, beyond all the values and logistical and modeling issues lies a fundamental fact.\u00a0 A child who is well-loved and respected is far more likely to accept the values we choose to pass on, and that underlies everything else.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NOTE: As I approach my 70th birthday, I\u2019ll reprise a milestone post here each day until the end of May. This one appeared on BlogHer on\u00a0January 19, 2011 “So Dan,” says I, \u201cWhat would you think if the woman you wanted to marry decided to keep her name?\u201d \u201cWell mom,\u201d says he, \u201cI don\u2019t think … Continue reading Big Birthday Memory #18: Want a Feminist Son? Tips From a Veteran<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3799,3800,3,4,3798,3801,2736,42,7,29],"tags":[198,1766,48,3843,3842,379,204,205,970,646],"class_list":["post-4374","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-3799","category-3800","category-aging","category-baby-boom","category-big-birthday","category-big-birthday-70-1946-2016","category-blogher-2","category-family","category-life","category-women","tag-blogher","tag-boys","tag-feminism","tag-feminist-sons","tag-manhattan-kids","tag-mom","tag-mother","tag-parent","tag-respect","tag-sons"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4gBq8-18y","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4374","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4374"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4374\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4419,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4374\/revisions\/4419"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}