BoyMom

Blending cultural criticism, memoir, and reporting from the frontlines of contemporary American boyhood, this is a humorous and heartbreaking deep dive into the complexities of raising boys in our fraught political moment. Evidence of male entitlement and aggression is all around us--from school shooters to incels, campus rapists to the online “manosphere.” In an absolutist climate of culture wars, Ruth Whippman, feminist writer and mother of three boys, can sometimes find herself conflicted and defensive, as though stranded on one side of a symbolic divide with her own children on the other. But as she comes to realize, gender politics aren’t simple. Male privilege and male vulnerability coexist in a complex relationship, and raising boys who can challenge the confines of masculine expectations is more important now than ever. With young men in the grip of a loneliness epidemic and dying by suicide at a rate of nearly four times their female peers, Whippman asks: What are the cultural messages we send boys that leave them anxious, emotionally repressed, and socially isolated? How do we raise our sons to have a healthy sense of self without turning them into entitled assholes? How can we find a feminism that holds boys to a higher standard but still treats them with empathy? And what do we do when our boys won’t cooperate with our plans? In <BoyMom,< Whippman moves beyond simplistic, polarized thinking to uncover the myriad complex and invisible ways that systems of masculinity both harm boys and teach them to harm others. Determined to widen the possibilities for her own sons and subvert the social forces already affecting them, Whippman talks to boys of all types, as well as parents, educators, and other experts, and uncovers surprising and controversial truths about boy socialization. With humor and deep vulnerability, Whippman takes a stark look at her own parenting choices as well as wider narratives about mental health, school, sex, cancel culture, screens, popular culture, friendship, neurodiversity, and loneliness to make sense of how masculinity is constructed and experienced in our culture. In doing so, she charts a new path to help us give boys a healthier, more expansive, and fulfilling story about their lives....

Auteur

Ruth Whippman

Échantillon de lecture
**Chapter 1

Boys Will Be Boys

Off to a Bad Start

About three months after we bring baby Abe home from the hospital, a biblical plague of rage and vengeance befalls our household.

We have had a few weeks’ grace. Abe is the kind of easy newborn that I had envied from afar when the older two were babies. In his early days, he is more like a cute clutch purse than a demanding human infant, lying quietly next to me wherever I put him, an adorable accessory to family life who doesn’t ask for much in return.

Our fridge, the hub for our family photo collection, is now living its best life as a millennial’s Instagram page, proudly displaying a fanatically curated vision board of life as a family of five. There are the two big boys perched on the sofa, their brand-new brother draped across their laps, still scrunchy eyed and burrito-wrapped in the regulation hospital blanket. There is Solly, nose to nose with a three-week-old Abe, staring into his eyes with exquisite tenderness. There is me, caught at an unfeasibly flattering angle on the Santa Cruz boardwalk, a curly haired boy holding each hand, the baby carrier neatly obscuring my bulging postpartum stomach.

But then, at around the three-month mark, Abe’s crumpled little womb eyes pop open, his tiny chalky mouth spreads into a winning gummy grin, and he presents us with his list of demands. Enraged by the sudden reduction in parental attention, his brothers are instantly gripped by a violent, uncontrolled jealousy.

Both Solly and Zephy adore their baby brother and are surprisingly gentle and nurturing with him. But when they realize that the overall pie of attention is now to be divided three ways instead of two, they turn on each other, in a bloody pact to fight to the death for the remaining sliver.

Solly, my sensitive, thoughtful eldest, who had been a model big brother when Zephy was born and who, as far as I could remember, even in deepest toddlerhood had never hit or bitten or pushed another child, now becomes angry and dysregulated.

Zephy, always a good-hearted, rufty-tufty little bundle of energy, now takes on an alter ego he calls Dino Slash, an outlet for his most out-of-control impulses. He can assume the Dino Slash persona without warning, flailing wildly, biting and karate chopping anyone who comes near.

They fight constantly and brutally. If I leave the room for three minutes, at speed, to change the baby’s diaper or go to the bathroom, by the time I race back, still zipping up my jeans, at least one of the older boys is wailing and clutching an injured body part. When I get out of the car, in the time it takes me to walk round to open the back door and unbuckle the baby from his car seat, the other two have locked themselves together in a fevered wrestling match, bones and feelings cracking. When I pick them up from school, the moment they lay eyes on each other, one of them starts pushing or punching the other, while crowds of parents and teachers look on. We are constantly one snatched Lego brick away from a crushed skull.

Their “love language” is light physical violence. So is their hate language. And also their “I’m actually pretty indifferent to this situation, but I might as well just hit you anyway” language. They rarely communicate with each other in words. My sole job as a mother quickly becomes just getting to the end of each day with everyone alive. Any hopes for a higher order of parenting—chores, etiquette, craft projects, how to handle both a fork and a knife during the same meal, let alone teaching them the meaning of consent or the nuances of feminism—quickly fall away.

Now the fridge fantasy photo montage is obscured by a new gallery. The Apology Letter collection.

IM SORREE I HIT U WIV A SHUVL

IM SORREE I BASHD U INTO THE WOL

IM SORREE I KIKD U

IM SORREE I PUNCHT U

IM SORREE I YELD AT U

IM SORREE UR HED IS SMASHT

Not that the letters I make them write after every incident do any good. Nothing does. Not extra attention or clear limits or “special time.” Not “logical consequences” or empathetic listening or sticker charts or time-outs or less screen time or more exercise or an “authoritative voice.” None of the dozens of parenting strategies I try even touch this angry, boisterous mess.

At night, as I spiral deeper into a mental sinkhole of inadequacy, I read parenting books on my Kindle. Positive Parenting Solutions! Negative Parenting Solutions! Be more lenient! Be stricter! Fill their power buckets! Don’t give them too much power! Time-outs are abusive! If you don’t enforce time-outs, you are raising an entitled monster! The only thing they seem to agree on is that I am doing it all wrong.

It isn’t just the hitting. It is the constant wild energy, the complete lack of moments of calm or reflection. During this time, my boys do sometimes seem more animal than human, but they aren’t like dogs. Dogs can be trained to follow commands, walk to heel, rescue children from wells, and perch coquettishly in fancy purses. At times my boys seem more like rabid wolves. And ever present in the back of my mind is the cold dread that it will be a straight line from this grade-school house of horrors to pussy grabbing and school shooting.

I had always pushed back hard against the idea of gender essentialism, the idea that boys are predestined to be rambunctious or aggressive. The only differences between boys and girls are genitals an…