Building Boys Bulletin 3-20-23

Give parents of boys a break already!

What a mom of boys wrote: My boys “pummel each other with terms like scrub, dummy and stupe…[and] delight in sharing ‘Yo Mama’ jokes’” and experts told me “Insults act like glue for boys, bonding them together.”

What the internet says:

…another indicator of what is very wrong about the way we raise males.

“Boys will be boys” is not an acceptable answer for lazy parenting…Mothers of boys need to do better.

Mothers of sons are a big part of our patriarchal problems.

Those, actually, are the tamer responses to Amy Paturel’s recent Washington Post article, “Let Your Boys Be a Little Foul-Mouthed. It Might Help Them Bond.” (Full disclosure: I’m quoted in the article.)

Others implied that there’s a straight line from potty jokes and insults to rape culture and mass shootings. (For real. One commenter wrote: “Do better in raising your boys and perhaps we won't have rapists, mass shooters".)

I have so many things to say.