Sweet Son
Hours after I gave
birth to my first child, my husband cradled all five pounds of our boy and
said, gently, “Hi, Sweetpea.” Not “Buddy” or “Little Man.” Sweetpea. The
word filled me with unanticipated comfort. Like most parents, we knew what we’d
name our son but never discussed how we’d speak to him. I was witnessing my
husband’s commitment to raising a sweet boy. Because this is what
the world needs now, urgently: sweet boys and people
who grow them.
There are so many
angry men among us. There are angry women, too, but they’re only beginning to
claim this emotion that has long been denied them. Women’s public anger
delivers deliberate messages—it’s pussy hats, reclaiming our time, and #MeToo.
It’s the kind of anger that gives girls voices. Men’s anger tries to shut down
the voices of others. Today’s angriest women galvanize; today’s angriest men
murder.
Peter Cade—Getty Images
A man uses his car to
assassinate an
anti-Nazi protestor. A man shoots a
congressmanat his baseball practice. A man commits mass murder at
a Vegas concert. A man massacres worshippers
in their church. A police officer slaughters
his own family. The headlines blur, but they invariably seem to feature men
whom the media informs us felt lonely or powerless. And a significant number of
American men who actually possess power — but are not murderously angry —
are pridefully
aggressive. The President tweets
furiously, with violently bad syntax, spastic punctuation and apoplectic
capitalization, venially attacking not only swaths of people but individual
citizens of the country he has vowed to protect and defend.
The world has turned
so upside down that the most public displays of masculine vulnerability have
come lately from late-night comedy host Jimmy Kimmel,
who’s shed tears talking about children’s healthcare and gun control. It feels
like another century when President Obama wept while remembering the victims
of Sandy Hook —
a Brigadoon of political empathy not to return during the current
administration.
My son is now 5, and
I’m also the mother of a 3-year-old girl. I’m thrilled that my daughter is
growing up in a time where American girls are encouraged to be both fierce and
kind, simultaneously strong and compassionate. The t-shirts that declare “Girls
Rule the World” offer an empirical falsehood, but at least the aspiration is
there. My daughter recently delighted me when she deemed her makeshift “kite” —
a rainbow scarf tied to a stick — a fencing foil and ran about the woods
parrying and proclaiming, “En garde!” But I delighted even more in my
son when, at a birthday party where the balloon artist presumptuously twisted
pneumatic swords for all the boys, my boy asked for a balloon heart.
Boys have always known
they could do anything; all they had to do was look around at
their presidents, religious leaders, professional athletes, at the statues that
stand erect in big cities and small. Girls have always known they were allowed
to feel anything — except anger. Now girls, led by women, are
being told they can own righteous
anger.Now they can feel what they want and be what they
want.
There’s no
commensurate lesson for boys in our culture. While girls are encouraged to be
not just ballerinas, but astronauts and coders, boys—who already know they can
walk on the moon and dominate Silicon Valley—don’t receive explicit
encouragement to fully access their emotions. Boys are still snips and snails
and puppy dog tails. We leave them behind from birth. Walk into any baby store,
and you’re greeted immediately in the boys’ department by brown and neon green
layettes festooned with sharks, trucks, and footballs. Onesies for newborns
declare, “TOUGH LIKE DADDY.” The boy taught from infancy to be tough is
emotionally doomed. (Mind you, I’m all for a onesie for any gender that
announces, “RESILIENT LIKE MOMMY.”)
The clothes marketed
to my daughter feature unicorns, rainbows, rockets, dinosaurs, and sequins in
every color imaginable. They are whimsical and sparkly. My son recently asked
me, “Mom, why are girls’ clothes more interesting and beautiful than boys’
clothes, and was the person who decided that a man or a woman?” I didn’t have a good
answer. Yes, they’re merely
clothes, but they’re the material in which we wrap our children. A society
bombarding boys with symbolism about being tough, self-contained, non-sparkly
and unmagical says, “Boys will be boys, but girls can be anything.” Our boys absorb
messages about what they cannot be or do or feel.
The message comes from
the man in the lobby of our building who says to my son, upon seeing him
joyfully pushing his play baby stroller, “What are you doing? That’s supposed
to be your sister’s!” The message: Caregiving is for girls, not boys.
It’s served by the waitress who presents my kids with pictures to color — a
dinosaur for my son and a butterfly for my daughter — before the kids
wordlessly switch pictures. Message: big/scary is for boys;
fragile/beautiful is for girls. It’s delivered by the dad in the elevator
whom I watch chastise his 4-year-old son with, “Stop crying! Do you want your
friends to think you’re a little baby?” Despite your lack of executive
function, shut down your feelings, because kids make fun of a boy who cries.
It’s emailed from the mother in my daughter’s nursery school class organizing a
book swap, asking for “gender-neutral books” because some 3-year-old boys
“wouldn’t be crazy about princess books.” All books aren’t for
everyone; boys don’t like stories that might involve an XX protagonist. The
message is loud and clear from the couple who ask my son to switch trucks at an
amusement park, because they don’t want to take a photo of their 2-year-old boy
in a magenta truck. Boys are blue. (No matter that, until the
mid-20th century, the color conventionally associated with baby boys was, in
fact, pink - signaling the muted vitality of red -while girls were clad in the
placid blue of the Virgin Mary’s robes.)
We don’t need to raise
kids with gender neutrality or deny intrinsic differences between boys and
girls. We do need to recognize that children, regardless of gender, harbor
innate sweetness that we, as a society, would do well to foster and preserve. Sweet boys grow up to
be men who recognize the strength in being vulnerable and empathetic. Men who
aren’t threatened by criticism or perceived competition from people whom they
deem “Other” — be it skin color or sexual orientation or religion or education
or whatever. Sweet boys are children who’ve been given, by their parents and
wider society, the permission to feel everything and to express those emotions
without shame.
At a young age, this
should be done explicitly, in organized forums for discussions at school. It
must be done relentlessly and organically, in our family homes. Parents must
invite their sons to be sad, afraid, hurt, silly and affectionate, and must
embrace them as often as they snuggle their daughters. Sweet boys learn early
on that they can defend themselves against loneliness by reaching out and
asking for support rather than turning into people who, literally, grab for
power. Sweet boys evolve into open-hearted men who aren’t confused about
consent and sexual boundaries, because they experience women as equals. A man
raised with access to the same gamut of emotions and choices as women does not say,
“Women are special,”
as Donald Trump recently averred after disbelieving Roy Moore’s accusers; he
does not delegate sugar and spice and humility and gentleness to the ladies,
while defining himself through anger, lust, and pride. Boys will not be merely
boys. If we let them, boys will be human.
Nearly a century ago,
the poet Louis Untermeyer painted a powerful portrait of the “large and quiet
kindness” of his father with:
Your sweetness was
your strength, your strength a sweetness
That drew all men,
and made reluctant hands
Rest long upon your
shoulder.
Firm, but never
proud…
It was, like
victory rising from defeat,
The world made well
again and strong—and sweet.
If we’re lucky, the
sweet boys and the fierce girls will grow up to save us all.
