Why Do Boys Have to Be Taught How To Respect Women?
I’m glad that my dad modeled it for me
I am one of the leaders of our church youth ministry. A couple of weeks ago a dad of one of our youth approached me with a concern.
His son was being disrespectful to his mother, i.e the dad’s wife. The son was talking back, delaying obedience if doing it at all, and just being rude. He would hear about it upon coming home from work and has had a few talks with his son.
This has not happened with him. His son is obedient, does what he’s told quickly, and hardly ever talks back.
He wanted to know if I would talk to his son. Maybe coming from someone else he respected it might have more of an impact. He wanted his son to know that his actions were troubling and deeply saddened his mother. This was not how they raised him.
I said I would.
It took me back to when I was growing up and how I treated my mother. There were times when I did talk back and regretted it. Growing up in Africa in the ’70s and ’80s, the backhand or the switch were common disciplinary measures.
I was mostly obedient and civil because I feared my dad. I wasn’t frightened of him. My dad was kind and gentle. But don’t mess with his woman. I feared being the object of his discipline.
I don’t remember having any kind of sit down lesson with my dad on how to respect women. I just watched what he did and knew what to do. I watched what he did at home with my mother, or when their friends came over I watched how he treated other women. I also watched how he acted around women who were strangers, like letting them sit if there weren’t enough chairs. He was courteous and respectful and I wanted to be just like him.
It is natural that boys want to be like their dads or another male person in their life that they respect.
Is it natural that they respect their mothers?
I never asked the concerned dad why he thought his son was being disrespectful. I haven’t had a chance to talk to the 14-year-old yet but having passed by that age 40 years ago I can imagine what he’s feeling.
He’s frustrated. She’s still treating him like a nine-year-old, having him go to bed at a certain time, or not allowing him to stay out later, or go places with his friends. She still checks that his homework is done and doesn’t allow him to play video games until it is.
He just wants to be treated like a man.
That was me. Minus the video games.
Now that’s no excuse for disrespecting his mom.
Just for giving him life does she deserve his respect and gratitude. She packs a healthy lunch for school. She makes sure he wears clean underwear. She kisses his every boo-boo. She works hard and sacrifices a lot.
They say girls mature faster than boys. It may be true but I also think that girls are allowed to grow up faster than boys. Moms like to coddle their sons a little longer than their daughters. I don’t have any psychological literature on it. Just my own experience.
Thankfully, I had my dad who showed me how to be a man. When I got my traditional rite of passage by being circumcised at 16 years old, I was ready. I’m glad I had him and other men who treated women like queens as my role-models.
Teaching boys to respect women leads to less domestic violence, sexual assault, bullying, etc. This results in fewer suicides, mental disorders, sheltered women and kids, and men in prisons. There’s more information here.
There’s a great article in psychologytoday.com about this that you can read here. It explains three ways men can change the culture of how women are thought of and treated. I will highlight them here:
- Learning respect for women starts at home when boys watch how their mothers, sisters, and other women are treated and talked about by men.
- Parents can address sexism with their middle school and older kids. Kids need to know all the negative consequences of treating people badly due to their sex or gender.
- The third thing parents can do to raise boys who respect women is to show they believe that men and women are equal.
Websters defines respect as ‘to view or consider with some degree of reverence; to esteem as possessed of real worth.’
What’s more worthy than the Mothers in our lives?