“Motherly Love or Something ‘Toxic?”
That’s how the New York Times introduced the #boymom concept to their readers this past weekend.
The Times is, um, kinda behind the times on this one.
In May 2023, the Washington Post published “The Case Against ‘BoyMom’.” In September 2023, Parents published “Why #BoyMom Culture is Darker Than You May Think.” And in December 2023, Psychology Today published “The Potentially Harmful Downside of #BoyMom Culture.” There’s also a bevy of related TikToks and Reels and Instagram posts.
What’s wrong with #boymom?
According to a 35-year-old mom quoted in the NYT article, “This type of relationship tends to not have or allow boundaries, creating an unhealthy relationship.”
Huh. I am most definitely a #boymom; I have 4 children and all of them are male. Our relationships aren’t perfect — because we’re human and we humans are a pretty imperfect bunch — but unhealthy? Because I’m a mom of boy who’s used “#boymom” online (and in my book proposal, for that matter!)
The writer of the Washington Post article (herself the mother of a son) says “The term ‘BoyMom’ is a cutesy, nuance-annihilating addition to parental vocabulary, already laden with infantilizing slang that makes its users nearly as childish as their offspring.”
Ouch. And…methinks she might be annihilating nuance as well.
Parents magazine, the one warning about the dark side of #boymom, claims that “Stereotyping is a major part of the problem with #BoyMom culture.”
I’ll give them that one. Mom often use #boymom to highlight (and normalize) the stereotypically “boy” things their male children do, like playing in the dirt or roughhousing. But then the author of the Parents article (a mom of at least one boy) writes:
While I am disheartened by the stereotyping inherent in #BoyMom culture, that’s not the part that scares me. What scares me is that this trend is steeped in the broth of rape culture.
Um, WHAT?
She then writes about consent:
There is not an ounce of consent in any of the (so many) short videos I watched while researching this article. The children are not consenting to being objectified by their mothers, the mothers are not consenting to being treated poorly by their sons and husbands. The girls aren’t consenting to being princessified by their parents, the boys aren’t consenting to being dudefied by theirs.
Consent is a learned behavior, rooted in the idea of mutual respect for another human. When we do not teach our sons to seek consent, we’re teaching them other people’s bodies are objects that can be used.
I could point out her stereotyped assumption here — that we must teach our sons to seek consent, without also mentioning that our sons need to be taught and reminded that they must GIVE consent also — but I’ll just jump ahead to her conclusion:
If you’re a member of the #ToxicBoyMom club, though, you’re part of a dangerous problem.
The PhD author of the Psychology Today article seems to agree: “…aspects of #boymom culture…are, unfortunately, harmful and set the stage for dysfunctional family relationships.”
People have been criticizing #boymoms for millennia
Is the anti-#boymom trend a modern iteration of our cultural fear of closeness between mothers and sons? It’s 2024, yet the idea that a close, emotional connection between a mom and her son is somehow improper, immoral, and unhealthy is really, really old.
It’s 2024, yet the idea that a close, emotional connection between a mom and her son is somehow improper, immoral, and unhealthy is really, really old.
In 2012, I read a book that’s stayed with me since: The Mama’s Boy Myth: Why Keeping Our Sons Close Makes Them Stronger, by Kate Stone Lombardi, a journalist & #boymom (before hashtags were a thing). As Lombardi shared with me 20 years later, when I interviewed her for my book, Building Boys, she wrote the book after realizing she and a stranger both felt compelled to hide (& apologize for) the close relationship they shared with their sons. Why, she wondered, “did both of us feel that if talked about it openly, our feelings would likely have been misinterpreted and we would have been criticized, perhaps harshly?”
Well, because people DO criticize moms who are close to their sons — and have been doing so since at least the time of the ancient Greeks. After all, as Lombardi notes in Chapter 3 of her book, Oedipus Wrecks, the moral of the Achilles myth (the one that gave us the term “Achilles heel”) is that “if a mother holds her son too close, she will kill him.”
What #boymom critics get wrong
Let me make a list:
Close relationships between moms & sons aren’t harmful. As Michael Reichert (& many others have noted), boys need connection to thrive. (The last sentence of Reichert’s book, How to Raise a Boy: The Power of Connection to Build Good Men, is “Holding boys in relationships where they are known & loved is the best way to build good men.”)
#Boymoms aren’t in love with their sons; they love their sons. Seems quite obvious, but perhaps it needs to be stated bluntly.
Celebrating boys doesn’t make one toxic. There’s been a lot of conversation in recent years about “toxic masculinity.” And while I think we’ve arrived at a point when most people agree that masculinity itself isn’t toxic, the stink of toxicity still lingers over everything male. Some people assume that celebrating or highlighting a boy’s interest in a stereotypically male activity is celebrating stereotypical masculinity, which is then equated with celebrating sexism, misogyny, and the patriarchy. But that’s not necessarily the case! We might just be sharing a cute pic of our kid playing with trucks. And we might be pushing against a society that frequently demonizes boys and men. I personally use the #boymom tag, in part, to normalize behaviors and issues that are typical yet frowned upon — behaviors like, yes, roughhousing.
Some people assume that celebrating or highlighting a boy’s interest in a stereotypically male activity is celebrating stereotypical masculinity, which is then equated with celebrating sexism, misogyny, and the patriarchy.
#BoyMom doesn’t have one definition. #BoyMom is an expansive term! I use #boymom to indicate my role as a mom of boys. I use it to indicate my experience raising boys. And while I and others also use it to mark stereotypically male behaviors and interests, many of us also use it to celebrate and highlight our boys’ involvement in all sorts of activities, from dancing to fingernail painting and anything else you can imagine.
It’s time to stop the #boymom bashing. The collective criticism might generate clicks, but it’s not helping moms and it’s not helping boys.
Here’s to building boys!
Jennifer
P.S. Quick reminder — Boost Boys’ Motivation starts tomorrow! Have you registered yet?
IN THE NEWS
Shareece Wright Hopes Speaking Out Changes Narratives About Boys Who Are Sexually Abused
Highlights:
“Too often, teenage boys who are sexually abused by women are treated as if their pain isn’t real.”
“If the roles were reversed the story would be very different. Nobody would be questioning whether this was an assault. There would be people in jail”
“Wright says he talked to adults about what was happening to him while he was still in high school, and they were dismissive.”
“…the experience of being taken advantage of by an adult woman when he was still a child has had lingering effects on his ability to maintain relationships.”
The Answer to Our Crisis of Young Men? Boy Scouts
Highlights:
“Massive social and cultural shifts have left many boys dumbfounded as to what it means to be a good man in 2024.”
“Some of these young men feel ignored by a system that makes them feel ashamed about who they are. So, they turn to men who acknowledge and celebrate them, regardless of how ‘toxic’ they may be. Some fixate on their phones and explore the ‘manosphere’”
“These boys need to know that they are not singular beings floating aimlessly through the world. They have roots.”
“The history of Scouts of course has its scars. Sick criminals have sought out our movement and abused it and sexually abused its youth…. It is stomach churning that a program meant to enrich the lives of boys has ruined some boys’ lives.”
Anorexia Nervosa in Adolescent Males
Highlights:
“Anorexia nervosa affects males as well as females, and affected males have a sixfold higher mortality rate than males in the general population.”
Up to 0.3% of males will be diagnosed with anorexia nervosa.
Why I Admire Video Game Speedrunning & SethBling
Highlights:
“Considering the rejection that some receive when video games are their passion, I found it very uplifting to see Seth’s loved ones deliver those expressions of acceptance and moral support for him.”
“The amount of ingenuity speedrunners demonstrate as they discover new methods for beating the game faster is extremely impressive.”
“If you know someone who likes video games, ask them if they know about speedrunning.”
Is Gaming the New Rock & Roll?
Highlights:
“When it comes to gaming, think of yourself as the student, not the hall monitor. If your child is playing one particular game with passion, get curious about it and ask them to teach you how to play.”
“If our children are interacting with peers face-to-face, doing well in school, enjoying extracurricular activities or sports, engaging in conversations with us, getting sleep and physical exercise, well…then gaming isn’t our enemy.”
“If we don’t see that our children are engaging outside of gaming, or notice any signs or symptoms of depression, anxiety, isolation, or changes in weight, sleep, exercise or hygiene, then of course more serious intervention may be necessary.”
Highlights:
“While discrimination against women in traditionally male-dominated jobs has seen a significant decrease, biases against men applying for roles typically viewed as female-dominated persist stubbornly.”
“Both laypeople and academics appear to overestimate the current extent of discrimination against female applicants, indicating a gap between societal perceptions and the realities of gender bias in the workplace.”
“For jobs typically done by women, men had a harder time getting a callback. But for jobs usually done by men or for gender-neutral jobs, the chances were almost the same for both men and women.”
Dramatic Drop in Men from Mental Health Positions Bad for Everyone
Highlights:
“The disappearance of males from psychology, social work, school counselling and other so-called helping professions is not only hurting vulnerable men and boys. It’s hurting the women and girls who love them and wish the best for them.”
“The disappearing-male-therapist phenomenon goes against the grain of a culture that purports to be devoted to gender diversity and equality of opportunity.”
“Just as it makes sense to try to get more people of colour into therapy roles, gender diversity is also needed since ‘males and females, either through nature or nurture, often view the world differently’”
“Letting men [and boys] know there are jobs for them in the growing field can be useful, as can male role models.
ON BOYS Podcast
Debt Free Mom Discusses Family Finances
On Building Boys
Thoughts on Mama’s Boys — a post from 2012!
…Mothers who stay emotionally close to their sons for “too long” are seen as those smothering moms who won’t let their boys grow up. Instead of pushing them out of the nest to make their way in the rough-and-tumble world, these moms hold their sons too tightly….
there are definitely still people who believe that a mother’s continued influence over her sons is somehow a bad thing….
Yikes. As a mom of four boys with whom I have close, loving, and decidedly not-creepy relationships with plenty of space for boundaries and nuance, my mind is blown by the aggressively salacious language quoted from those #boymom articles. "The term ‘BoyMom’ is a cutesy, nuance-annihilating addition to parental vocabulary, already laden with infantilizing slang that makes its users nearly as childish as their offspring"???? I bet that author is fun at parties. Also, I know it's de rigueur to bring rape culture into every conversation, and of course, it's a real thing, but it helps nobody (boys OR girls) to casually toss it into conversations where there's not a strong case it belongs.
Admittedly, I do know people whose social posts and general attitudes about their young adult sons make me cringe a bit. It's not really about the fact that they are "boymoms", though; it's more that they seem unable to separate themselves from their children as they grow. It reads more as dependence than love, and it does trip a "something ain't right here" trigger in my head. On the other hand, it could happen with children of any gender; I think we're just more conditioned to see it when it's a mom-son than when it's a mom-daughter. Thank you for the reminder that this bias goes way, wayyy back!
No offense to the author of that article but that was such a useless piece of clickbait. Turning a few Tiktok conversations into a "trend" is dumb. Of course there will always be weirdo parents of every stripe who are intense and inappropriate. Boymom can just be a shorthand for those of us who do what we do and doesn't have to automatically refer to those moms who think of their sons as their boyfriends as whatever.
I'm crabby today/always.