Our society is a paradox. In a time in which the majority pays good money to look young, our culture works hard creating a feeling of inferiority in those who are actually young. And while those who work with young men bemoan the loss of strong male role models, many columnists are recognizing the fact that our young men are being emasculated in mass (http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-06-20/32-facts-show-how-men-are-being-systematically-emasculated-america-today).
How do we do that? I’ve watched many families struggle with rearing young men. Except for the truly psychotic, no one thinks, “I think I’m going to work really hard to mess up my kid and limit his future options.” All of them want to do their bests. Here’s the problems I see. Below are the top ten unintentional actions I’ve seen weaken the young men in their development. Consider these a formula for failure.
- Make all decisions for him. When he refuses to make life choices, don’t let him fail. Take action for him. After all, he can live with you for as long as he wants.
- Allow him to make all decisions. Let him choose where he goes to school. Let him choose what the rules of the house should be. Let him decide what to eat before dinner. Let him choose his own belief system with no intervention from you. Teach him that he is so special that no one else really matters.
- Don’t let him deal with teachers directly. Go in and argue on his behalf. Let him realize that he should have no fear of authority and that authority is against him. Always believe his side of the story in a conflict. Don’t show him possible errors in his logic, or flaws in his character.
- Expect him to tell you everything that is hurting and upsetting him. If he says he doesn’t want to talk about it, keep hounding him until he doesn’t want to ever share anything with you again. Ignore the fact that we men, with our weak corpus callosums, take longer to figure out what’s bugging us. Don’t give space. See #5.
- Don’t allow him to have space to grow. Talk to him constantly. Demand that he tells you every aspect of their day. Go into his room regularly and search through his things.
- Never look into what he’s doing. Never ask to see his texts or watch who his friends are. He can think through this alone.
- Let your life revolve around him. This will increase his dependence on you (refer to #1 and get the basement ready). It will also give you an increased sense of being needed, and that feels good.
- Mother should spend double the amount of time with him than Father to totally emasculate him. This will teach him that the female problem solving dynamic is the only problem solving dynamic and that if he uses male problem solving tactics, he’s wrong.
- Never allow him to change his mind. If he doesn’t like something today, don’t teach him to hang in there and honor commitment. He needs to learn at a young age that others should react to him.
- Skip praying for him. You have a lot on your plate. Parenting is hard. Let the folks at school do the rearing. That’s what they get paid for.
...And then I woke up... 