We know the counterpart to the title of this blog, starting with sugar but enough is said about the Spice and Nice. About twenty years ago, I learned the counterpoint regarding boys from a book titled, Bringing Up Boys. I have three.
Variously known as “the mother of those three” and “so you’re the one responsible for those three,” I had a requirement for some backup to my theory that boys are different and the school system, though designed by men was made for girls.
“They always have to be first” was the constant cry from beleaguered schoolmarms. “They get into everything.” “They cannot sit quietly.” “They have to win.” My response to all of which was then and still is “Your point being?”
Lately, I have met an increasing number of women who are in the same position I was twenty years ago. I tell them to enjoy every wild moment. Boys are wonderful. Teenage boys are nut-cases but still wonderful. Young men are fragile and wonderful. Grown men, raised from the start as uniquely boys, are the best there can ever be of the male. They make good husbands and fathers, prepared to take on the hard work of raising their own sons and daughters.
Besides my own good husband and the good father who showed me everything I ever needed to know about men, I had help from a colleague, Liz Brady – a child psychologist with whom I worked while serving on the Community Health Council for Carmarthenshire. Herself a mother of two sons and a daughter, her special interest was in the development and mental health of adolescents. One aspect of her field of study was the extreme suicide rate of boys and men between the ages of 14 and 35.
I took notice.
Brady’s research revealed that young men engage in dangerous behavior and activities that result in death far more frequently than do any other sex or age group. They are four times as likely to commit suicide—intentional or unintentional. During my eldest son’s teenage years, he attended the funerals of four of his schoolmates, all of whom were under the age of twenty.
One hung himself in the garage of his parents’ home, driven to desperation by his drug addiction. One slammed his head into a cast iron drain pipe while speeding on his motorcycle—without a helmet—through the shopping district early one morning. The third was hurled through the roof of a car because he did not wear a seatbelt—the driver fell asleep and ran up the tail end of a cattle truck. And the fourth jumped in front of a train in a neighboring town, overcome by depression.
All were young men with aspirations and talent, families that loved them.
Keeping my sons alive became my raison d’etre.
How do you do that in a society that vilifies masculinity, and yet, will not allow men to embrace their fragility either? When social media hacks rant about a tacky shirt to the detriment of a great scientific achievement?
Yes, little boys are naughty and rough, they torment little girls and test the fire extinguishers in the swank hotels. Give them any encouragement, they demand even more. They try our patience and go out of their way to annoy and challenge any restriction.
They also explore fearlessly. Boys are the reason our species crawled from the mud and went to the moon—most probably because a girl said she wanted a chunk of rock. Boys are hard-wired to achieve, largely at the behest of sugar & spice dishes they want to impress. Why? Instinct. Survival of the species.
The smartest girls choose the male most likely to provide a safe environment for offspring and that means he already owns a house or has “prospects” or “status” likely to enable him to achieve some or all of these.
Except when they want or have to impress, men don’t care how they dress—one pair of shoes is enough for some. Rightly, they figure their achievements count for a lot more than a Hawaiian shirt. We can understand their thinking when creepy 70 year old men are snapping up the prettiest girls in the twenty-something age group.
My father & my eldest brother c1940
My sons are not out of the dark days yet. What gives me hope for their survival is their choice of wives and girl friends. Or more likely, the women who have liked what they’ve seen when these three young men are on their best behavior (and occasionally, their worst).
After all, has your heart ever not melted when you see a big guy holding a child for whom he has accepted responsibility?
To all the parents who are raising boys, I strongly recommend Dobson’s work in Bringing Up Boys. You’ll enjoy your male children more, accept they are a challenge and understand the important service you are providing to the women of the future. And, by all means, teach them to iron shirts and soft-boil eggs.
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another, causing each to question things she thought were certain, and setting each on a path neither could have imagined.
MSM & Women’s Rights Advocates Ignore These Facts
Posted in Political Activism, Reviews, Women, tagged AdiosAmerica, Ann Coulter, Audrie Pott, book reviews, civil rights of Americans, illegal immigration, Kate Steinle, political commentary, Richmond CA gang rape on July 5, 2015|
A few days ago, Kate Steinle was murdered at a popular tourist location less than six miles from my home. Her killer was a five-times deported, recently released felon awaiting another deportation hearing. (http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Pier-shooting-suspect-had-been-released-from-S-F-6365228.php).
A young woman, living just 20 miles from my home, was brutally raped and beaten by a gang of young men and so horribly injured that she will never fully recover (https://www.baycitizen.org/news/crime/hearing-reveals-horrific-details-crime/). Prior to this, not far away, another girl was sexually abused and her humiliation made public, causing her to commit suicide (http://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/calif-teen-commits-suicide-after-alleged-rape/).
Women and girls who are trafficked into my state are raped as they cross the border, their underwear hung on ‘rape trees’ in a neighboring state(http://www.latina.com/lifestyle/news-politics/rape-trees-found-along-southern-us-border) as trophies by the ‘coyotes’ who tattoo them with bar codes to facilitate their sale into sex slavery and subsequent rental for sexual services (http://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/branded-by-a-pimp-sex-trafficking-victim-speaks-out/).
There are several unifying details in all of these stories (the very tip of the gory pile of crimes committed within the past few months).
Immigrants are people who chose to leave their homeland to make a new life in another country, embrace the traditions and laws of their chosen country, enrich their new country with their energy and talents, and make an effort to assimilate into the civic life of their new home.
Many of my family emigrated to the US before it became a country. More recently, members of my family emigrated legally, standing in line, paying their fees, submitting to medical examinations, providing stacks of legal documents, waiting for appointments, waiting for letters, waiting for interviews, waiting for approval, giving their word that they will never become a burden on the public purse.
Illegal Aliens have already broken the laws of the country they have invaded, are already a burden on the public purse, too many of them are here to steal, sell their drugs, provide the dregs of society with gross services at the expense of their trafficked victims.
Their presence drives down the wages of American workers, displaces Americans from low-skilled jobs, and the MSM repeats the absolute lie that they do the work Americans won’t do.
I have cleaned houses. My mother cooked school meals. My father picked potatoes. My husband has waited on tables. My sons have scrubbed hospital floors, flipped hamburgers and stocked shelves.
I consider Ann Coulter a hero. She tells the truths that sycophantic politicians, so-called civil rights advocates and lily-livered news outlets refuse to tell.
We have to ask, “Why?”
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