Bias against boys?

I am privileged to have grown up after many of the advances of feminism were ingrained in our society. I have been given every opportunity in life that my brothers had. Situations where I have felt a slight due to my gender and few and far between and can be chalked up to the ignorance of isolated individuals. I feel confident that the world is my daughter’s oyster and she will be able to achieve anything she wants to achieve.

While I celebrate the advances of feminism, I worry about a backlash against our boys. I keep coming across more and more situations where our boys are being discriminated against in society, which in turn limits their potential to succeed and be happy. I have seen many examples of this recently, but a letter to the editor in today’s newspaper by Brian Cooke and Leigh-Anne King sparked me to research and write this post.

No day care will take our boy

In the last month, we have been rejected by every day-care provider we’ve contacted once they discovered that we were parents of a boy. They made this decision without meeting us or meeting him. Either by phone or e-mail, each provider welcomed us to an available spot, only to change their mind once we filled them in on his sex.

When I discuss this with other parents and co-workers, they tell us that they have experienced the same prejudice. I call it prejudice because that is what it must be called.

Where might this prejudice be coming from? Is it warranted? If so, how can parents help their boys to be better citizens and people?

Our boys as hyperactive

An increasing number of children, especially boys, are being diagnosed with ADHD and put on drugs to get them to sit still and pay attention in class. But is it really our boys’ fault that they can’t sit still?

First, a classroom environment is not necessarily the best place for boys to learn. They enjoy being active and moving around. Perhaps teachers should be taking the class outdoors more often or including more gym time into the curriculum (which is needed to fight obesity too).

Second, there is increasing evidence that our diet and lifestyle is to blame. A recent Reader’s Digest article highlights the importance of Omega-3 nutrients in fighting ADHD. A WebMD research article speaks to the importance of prenatal health for the mother and nurturing in early years as a preventative measure for avoiding ADHD. Other studies point to the importance of changes in diet to combat ADHD. It is also important to underscore that the drugs that are given for ADHD just treat the symptoms. They do not treat the underlying problems that led to ADHD to begin with.

Third, classrooms are larger than ever. And teachers are having trouble coping. While having one or two hyperactive children in a class of 15 kids would not be that difficult, having 5 of them in a class of 30 kids can be debilitating and keep the teacher from being able to work. Being active is a normal part of being a kid, but we are setting ourselves up for disaster when we expect children to be docile. Our schools need to be set up to harness our children’s energy and not to send any child with ants in his pants off to the doctor for a prescription.

Our boys as sexual predators

Sexual abuse used to be taboo. That didn’t mean that it didn’t happen. It just means that we didn’t talk about it. Now we do talk about it, but in talking about it and in trying to prevent our children from getting hurt, we are perhaps unfairly accusing our boys and men of crimes that they are not guilty of.

It is true that most sexual abuse is at the hands of men (75%). But, 86% of the time children that reported being sexually abused by women were not believed, so the extent of abuse by women (as compared to men) might be underestimated. What most people do not realize is that boys are more likely to be sexually abused by a woman than by a man (while girls are more likely to be abused by a man). Also, many male sexual predators are that way as a result of abuse that they suffered at the hands of women abusers. The Canadian Children’s Right Council pulled together these and other interesting findings on women as sexual predators.

So when people say that they are not going to risk having a teenage boy as a babysitter or when they worry about an older boy playing with their child when they wouldn’t worry about an older girl, they are unfairly accusing a whole gender of something it didn’t do.

Another factor we need to consider here is the role that society plays in giving our boys a sometimes unhealthy view of sexuality. The way that sex is portrayed on television and in movies often glamorizes rape and prostitution. It shows men getting their own way and being rewarded for it. It isn’t our boys that are inherently sexual predators, it is the media that they are exposed to. As parents, we need to be vigilant about limiting their exposure to this type of media, but also counteracting it with positive images of sexuality so that when they do come across this smut (and they will), that they already know that it isn’t right.

Our boys as violent

People perceive boys as being violent. They like to push and shove each other. They like to play with guns. They play war games. They blow things up.

People have a need to feel confident. Confidence is power and boys are told that they should be confident and powerful, but they are not taught appropriate ways to express confidence and gain power, will use physical force to gain power. Also, boys need to be able to engage in physical activity and play and if they are not taught the right way to do this, then they will seek it out through fights.

Our boys as uncaring

Unfortunately, boys are also seen as uncaring. They do not display empathy in the same way that girls do. They avoid expressing emotions and put down other boys when they show their emotions. This is very much a societal issue. To quote Lawrence Cohen in Playful Parenting:

Look at the insults a boy hears if he is connected instead of disconnected. If he has a close relationship with his mother, he’s a mama’s boy. If he likes to play with girls, he’s a sissy. If he wants to hug or hold hands with a boy, he’s a fag. If he wants an equal, respectful relationship with his girlfriend, he’s henpecked. If he likes school, he’s a nerd.

It is disheartening that our society continues to tell men that they cannot be caring individuals and that they need to have a thick skin. If we want our boys to live up to their full potential, we need to create a strong attachment right from birth and not let them slip away from us. I think that the suggestions of Gordon Neufeld in Hold on To Your Kids will be useful to parents in creating more connected boys.

Are boys are girls really that different?

There are two camps when it comes to gender differences. There are those that insist that the differences between boys and girls are biologically hard-wired. And there are those that insist that the differences are learned. Lawrence Cohen, author of Playful Parenting, summarizes existing research on the subject by saying that while inborn differences do exist, they are quite small but they are then nurtured and exacerbated by the way we treat girls or boys. The small difference that does exist is that boys are slightly more likely to seek out power and girls slightly more likely to seek out connection. And then society takes over and reinforces these differences rather than minimizing them. Generally, despite being a girl, I think I have tended more to seek out power than connection. But becoming a mother changed that and I have become very nurturing with my kids. I believe that each human being has the capacity to be powerful and connected and I challenge parents to help their children, both boys and girls, become confident and caring individuals.

How can we help our boys?

Hyperactive, violent, uncaring sexual predators. That is a horrible rap for boys to have. There must be a way that we, as parents, as teachers, as role models, can help our boys to be boys without living up to that prejudice.

I think we need to:

• Teach our boys to be nurturing – give them the power of emotional intelligence.
• Give them a healthy diet, to avoid excess hyperactivity
• Give them opportunities to roughhouse and wrestle in a safe environment by engaging in physical play with their parents
• Give them plenty of opportunities to play outside, run around, to explore and to use their energy
• Limit access to television and Internet and ensure that materials are age appropriate and do not include images of violence or unhealthy sexuality
• Teach them about healthy sexuality and encourage them to ask questions
• Encourage them to express their emotions and rather than keeping them bottled up inside
• Teach them to respect people, including teachers, women and girls, those that are weaker than them, those that are different from them

I don’t want my boy to be held back from anything he wants to do based on society’s bias towards boys. So I’ll try to do my part in raising my boy to be the type of person that I hope all boys and men can become.