on being a father; on being male; on PC society culture, and ironic victimization

[chronovore]

OpinionJournal - Taste:

Many academics would consider my lack of manliness a good thing. They regard boys as thugs-in-training, caught up in a patriarchal society that demeans women. In the 1990s the American Association of University Women (among others) positioned boys as the enemies of female progress (something Christina Hoff Sommers exposed in her book, "The War Against Boys"). But the latest trend is to depict boys as themselves victims of a testosterone-infected culture. In their book "Raising Cain," for example, the child psychologists Don Kindlon and Michael Thompson warn parents against a "culture of cruelty" among boys. Forget math, science and throwing a ball, they suggest--what your boy most needs to learn is emotional literacy.

Comments

[nattotastic.livejournal.com]

Great article. My son is still very young, but when he gets to be primary school age I hope I can be the good father he deserves.

[chronovore.livejournal.com]

I'm having a mental disconnect - what about being that dad now? Or is this simply about sharing "activities" between dad and son?

I find that I'm making time for that stuff now; and I think my son has more testosterone than I do...

[nattotastic.livejournal.com]

No, good question. I just wrote that last comment in a hurry (working a lot recently) and didn't really convey what I meant. Actually I saw that the comment was screwed up last night, but I was just hoping you wouldn't notice. I guess you must actually read the stuff I write, eh?

What I meant to say is this:
Great article. My son is still very young and so cares very little for anything beyond Winnie the Pooh, but when he gets to be primary school age I hope I can be the kind of interesting father he deserves.

Actually I try to be an interesting father now, but like the author I too come from a family with no real strong or defined father figure (long story, but my family is pretty dysfunctional). For me, raising my son is a whole lot of guessing as to how a Dad is supposed to do things. Right now, he's at the tender age of nearly 20 months old, and so things are not too challenging right now. I find myself acting more like a second Mom than a Dad sometimes. However when he becomes primary school age, I hope that I can adequately do all the things with him that a Father should do, you know?

Luckily I had an interest in some stereotypically "boy" things when I was a kid-- fishing, building stuff, camping, playing catch, etc. That I either taught myself (via a library card) or asked the Dads of various friends to teach me. I'm happy that, in turn, my son won't have to pursue independent research just to figure out how to have a good time.