Emasculating our children in the name of safety

I have been thinking about children and how far we have come in recent years.  Once upon a time, children were expected to become adults, and spent their childhood training for adulthood.  Now, children are expected to be children and continue to be children well into what would traditionally be considered adulthood.  What have we done to our children?  Are we raising them to be children or productive, functioning members of adult society?  I think the unfortunate answer is obvious.  We are raising them to be full grown children, unable to make mature decisions, take adult responsibility or lead future generations into the great unknown.  And society at large is helping us.  "They" expect children to be helpless, incapable and defenseless.  "They" think they know better how to raise our children than we do.  "They" are emasculating their children and trying to do the same to mine.

When my mom was a little girl, she lived in West Seattle.  By the time she was five, she was making breakfast for her family (mother, father, sister and two brothers) including making bacon in the broiler and frying eggs.  She also rode the public bus downtown Seattle to meet her Grandmother at The Bon Marche for an afternoon lunch and nobody thought twice.  My dad, having grown up in the then wild spaces of Vashon Island was hunting by himself by age ten (yes, he actually used a real gun!).  When my husband was five, he walked himself to school about 1/2 a mile away after having gotten himself ready and out the door (his mother was a widow and worked - so she was away from home in the mornings).  When he was seven he was riding the bus to the shopping mall where he would spend the day looking around and playing in the park.  This was in Bellevue, Washington, - no small town, but rather a bustling metropolis.  When I was a child, I rode my Honda Trail 50 two miles on dirt roads to go swimming in the swimming hole.  I was eight.

And you can look back even further than a couple of generations.  David (as in King David of the Old Testament) killed Goliath at about age 17 and had killed lions and bears threatening his father's flock when he was much younger than that.  Joan of Arc went into battle when she was 15 and in 237 BC, 10 year-old Hannibal (the Carthagian) said to his father before he left to the war in Spain, "I want to go with you". Hamilcar, Hannibal's father, without a word, took the child with him to Spain and went to battle!  Even Alexander the Great, although 20 when he took the throne, had obviously not been coddled as a child, but rather had been raised to be a man.

Now, we have children who must be buckled in car seats until they are 13, whose food has to be cut up for them until they are 10 and who can't carry a pocket knife because they are "unsafe".  What are we thinking?  Have our children somehow lost brain capacity over the last few hundred years - or is it the adults who no longer understand that our children require challenges, hard work and a little responsibility in order to become viable adults.

Well, I for one do not believe our children are any less intelligent than their predecessors.  I think that we as a society have emasculated our young men and dumbed down our young ladies.  I think our children are every bit as capable as David when he slew Goliath and Hannibal when he lead his vast armies.  I think we need to train them to be competent and expect them to be capable.  I think we need to teach them to do the "dangerous" things (Hand Grenade uses the chainsaw and Miss Calamity hunts - with a real rifle) and then let them do them.  I think we ought to teach them to stand up against injustice and live lives of character when they are young so they can battle injustice and live lives of character when they are older.  I think we need to stop coddling and start expecting and then - watch out!  We will have a generation of exceptional leaders - not another generation of wimpy, spineless, emasculated drones.

Angry Young Men

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Angry Young Men

We live in a society of angry young men. You see them everywhere - slouching, defiant, rebellious. Is this just a natural "stage" of development, or are we creating these malcontents?

As our sons have gotten older, my husband and I have given these questions a lot of thought. We have witnessed many friends sons grow from being sweet, fun-loving ruddy little boys into being angry, rude, disrespectful "teenagers". We have watched godly parents lose their sons in fits of rebellion, leaving mangled remnants of families to stagger onward. Is there any hope for us? Will our sweet sons be fodder for an angry world?

As we were watching a movie one evening, I had an epiphany. It was not a great movie, in fact, we turned it off shortly after watching this one, life-changing scene. The movie was Alexander the Great, and the scene was around the time Alexander was 12 years old. His father was watching his men trying to break and "unbreakable" stallion. The stallion was truly rogue. He would wildly strike at any person within striking distance. He lounged, kicked, bit. Alexander's father issued a decree that any man who could tame the horse, could have him. None of the soldiers came forward to claim the prize. No man came forward. No man but Alexander himself. At 12 years old, he said "Father, I can tame him!". At this statement, Alexander's mother moved to stop her young son, but his father, with one look, warned his mother to remain silent. Was this the action of a controlling man? Or was it the action of a man, who knows what men in the making require? Alexander brought that horse out of the shadows (he fought for fear of the shadows) and rode him admirably. That horse became the stead, Bucephalus, that Alexander the Great rode into battle when he conquered the mighty Persian Empire.

I believe that was the moment that Alexander the Great became a man. Would he have become the man that he was, had his mother been successful in her attempt to "protect" him? I do not think that he would have. His father knew what was needed. Although it makes no sense to women, men need defining moments of manhood.
Back to angry young men. The epiphany I had while watching that movie was this - mothers need to step out of the way. When boys get to the age of "young men", we moms need to examine the way that we interact with our sons. I believe that we have angry young men because men were designed to be the "head". They were not designed to be directed by women. They were designed to lead, not to be led. Little boys require direction from their mom. Young men require direction from the men in their lives. When mothers continue to dictate everything to their young man, they either become milquetoast and weak, or angry and rebellious. You see both of those extremes every day. One marries a woman that will dominate him. She will rule their home with an iron fist, and he will let her. She will complain that her husband never "leads", but believe me, she won't "let" him, and he won't take the reins. The other get angry. He marries the woman his mother despises the most. He does it to prove a point - that HE is in control. He cuts ties with his family, either partially or completely. He then either become a control freak, or becomes what he hates - a "yes man" to his wife.

What then? I want more for my sons. I don't want them to marry women who tell them what to do. I don't want them to be angry, spiteful and unhappy. I want sons who take up their God-given mantle of priest, provider, prophet and protector of their homes. I want them to lead their families in love, humility and with what the Marines call "servant leadership".

The answer, in my humble opinion, lies with we mothers. As moms, we need to "let" our husbands lead. We need to step out of our comfort zone and let our husbands deal with our boys as men. This often is contrary to what we think is right. In practice, that has meant me "asking" my older son to do things, not "telling" him to do them. If he chooses not to, he deals with his dad. I take myself out of the equation. It means that when our son asked for a motorcycle, I swallowed my "mom" reaction and didn't say a thing. It means that when it is getting dark, and my son and his motorcycle "Vera" aren't home yet, I don't call to remind him that he needs to be home, but let him face the consequences of not being responsible.

This theory is still a work in progress. The philosophy seems to line up with scripture. It is the practical application that needs refining. This is new territory for me. I have to ask my husband frequently for guidance. It seems there is a battle on all fronts for our sons. Their own sinful natures, generations of mixed up gender roles, the modern church and many other forces all play a part in defining our young men. Men and women are both vying for superiority, not realizing God's plan for our roles is perfect. The modern church is trying to replace parents authority with "youth group" and society, in general, is apathetic in regards to fathers - they don't honor men or the irreplaceable role of fatherhood.

My challenge is this....lets examine our roles as mothers with regards to our emerging young men. Lets reverence our husbands, especially in front of our sons. Lets embrace our role as wives and mothers. Lets let our boys become men.