Feminist Advice Friday: How can I raise a son who does his fair share?

A reader is pregnant with a boy, and worried about the man he will become.

This summer, I’m taking some down time and revisiting some prior Feminist Advice Friday letters—and, in some cases, updating them. Here’s one of the very first letters I ever got.

A reader asks:

I’m pregnant with my first child. I just found out I’m having a son, and to be honest, I’m scared. I don’t know how to raise a good man, and don’t know how to make his generation the first that doesn’t exploit a partner’s labor. Do you have any advice?

My answer:

Don’t panic. He is just a baby—born into the world without all the baggage of hundreds of years of patriarchy. He’s not the embodiment of male privilege or male violence. He’s just a person who is going to look to you to guide him into personhood.

Men are not born lazy or entitled or buying into patriarchy. They are socialized into it. And just as you can socialize a boy into entitlement, you can socialize him to use his privilege as a feminist tool, to respect his partner(s), and to stop the cycle of abuse in marriage.

One of the scariest and loveliest things about parenthood is how our children show us who we are. Your baby will mimic what you do. He will use your exact words. And he will also mimic the things you say without words—your household norms, your fears, your implicit beliefs and biases.

So start by looking at how you live. Is the division of household labor in your home fair and equitable? If it’s not, then you need to fix it now. Not only will it get worse when the baby arrives; it will also show him that using women as live-in servants is totally fine. Whatever children grow up with becomes their norm, the comfortable default to which they compare everything. Make household labor inequality feel uncomfortable and abnormal by ensuring it’s not happening in his home.

Consider other ways you might model gender inequality. Do you have lots of ideas about how boys and men behave, about what he’ll grow up to be? Did you buy a bunch of onesies saying, “lock up your girls?” Or are you exposing him to a healthier range of masculine ideals?

Gender socialization begins from the moment your baby is born. Research shows that when adults think a child is a boy, they are less likely to comfort and talk to him. They attribute his crying to anger, while they view a girl’s crying as fearful and worthy of comfort. One of my favorite studies gives parents and their babies a number of slides and inclines they can reposition. Parents are asked how far off the incline they think their babies will go, how steep the incline should be. Mothers of sons overestimate, thinking their children braver than they are. Mothers of girls underestimate, thinking their children less brave. Oh, and by the way, guess who on average goes closer to the edge?

It’s the girls.

Don’t be one of these mothers. Your son is an individual, not a gender.

Don’t distance yourself from him either. Mothers of boys worry about making their sons soft, about smothering them, about being overbearing. Love him. Show him what tenderness looks like so he can master it in his own life.

Encourage him to participate in family life from day one. Give him age-appropriate chores. Tell him that everyone plays a role, and everyone must pull their weight.

And when he gets older, talk to him about household labor inequity. While he’s young, talk to him about feminism. Expose him to diverse, strong women. Talk to him about the joys of marriage and children just like you would a girl. Encourage his connected side, not just his independent one.

He will be ok, and so will you. You can do this.

I publish #feministadvicefriday every Thursday here and every Friday on Facebook. You can submit your own question to zawn.villines@gmail.com, by messaging my Facebook page, or anonymously by using my site’s contact form.