A woman I know told me once that her partner said that feminists need to be careful to not abandon their sons to patriarchy. I certainly agree, but I wondered what this man meant by ‘abandonment’. Because to me, as a mother of sons, their growing up feels to me like like being left behind.

There is the physical aspect of feeling left behind. My oldest son has begun puberty including hair under his arms, growth spurts, anger and other emotional outbursts. He is less affectionate toward me, meaning he doesn’t hug me much and avoids other contact with me, like sitting close to me on the couch. I understand puberty from a female perspective of course, and when my daughter I-bop went through it I totally understood her emotional outbursts and other things happening with her.

But she didn’t turn away from me, she turned toward me, so that made it easier for me to help her and understand what she was going though. S-bop is so mannish acting lately, it is sometimes hard for me to empathize with him. My husband seems to know exactly how he feels and the right thing to say to him.

Then there is the emotional aspect of feeling left behind. Sometimes in talking with my sons I feel like they have acres of man thoughts and feelings, stuff I don’t have access to and they can only vaguely articulate. Then there are the privileges and freedom men have…my sons already have access to these things and they are still just children. For example, S-bop at age 13 can pretty much go where he wants. My husband, my dad, my brothers, my uncles, my male cousins, they all say a boy needs freedom to roam and I can’t keep him close to home or restrict his freedom without it hurting him, his very maleness, in some deep emotional way. But when my daughter was 13, no one felt it strange or crippling to her emotional integrity that we limited her freedom because after all, a girl has to be kept safe from all the males who will prey on her.

I feel I am not doing a good job explaining what I mean…here’s an analogy. I feel like my sons and I are in a huge house, right, and there are rooms I am not allowed in and rooms I just can’t ‘see’ or understand because I am female. And my sons are at the threshold of going into these rooms, and they won’t come back very often to visit me or understand me. Because the man rooms are so much better than the woman rooms. My biggest fear in this, is that my sons will become men who have no idea that the men’s rooms are better than the women’s rooms in part because of sexism, because so many men in this culture take and take and take from and oppress women. I fear that they will go right into those rooms, settle in, and become ‘typical’ men. Does that mean I abandoned them? How can I stop them? and if they do indeed become ‘typical’ men, how can I pull them out of these rooms I can’t even cross the threshold to? and if I could, well, as grown men can’t they make the choice on their own? I would never abandon my sons. But there will come a point where they will have to take on responsibility for themselves and make the right choices themselves in regard to patriarchy and defining what it means to be a man. I can’t do that for them.

Is the turning away from mother inevitable? In a patriarchal, sexist culture, it is inevitable. Because in this culture maleness is largely defined as not being female, with female attributes or characteristics being seen as anathema to men. Boys process all this from infancy and when puberty hits them physically, they have to work through it mentally what it means to be a man.

But I sometimes think this is a natural process that would happen in a non-sexist culture. Most boys are different than most girls so it makes sense that they would react to puberty in different ways, as profoundly different things happen to boys at puberty than to girls.

Boys may feel like they can’t turn toward their mother for help and often may not feel able to turn to their dad or even have a father around to turn to. My husband, various male family members, our male friends, all say that their dads or step-dads didn’t say much to them and they felt they couldn’t talk to them about the changes they were going through, so they had to work it out on their own. Puberty was a very lonely time for them in the home. As fathers now themselves of sons they are breaking the silence and talking to their sons about growing up.

So on the one hand I am not troubled so much by my sons turning away from me because they have a father who is willing to talk to them about puberty and be a guide for responsible manhood. But on the other hand, it hurts my heart. But then I think, if they did turn toward me, what would I say? I don’t know what going through puberty as a male feels like. I don’t know what being a man feels like. I got S-bop this book about it and he’s been talking about the book with my husband, but he won’t discuss it much with me. And that’s ok, I understand.

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