On raising male children.

I wrote this for my main blog and then figured it would fit in pretty well here, so here it is for your dissection.

I’ve read a lot in the radical feminist blogosphere about how radical feminist women ought to refuse to care for male children (funny how this doesn’t apply to say, Biting Beaver or Heart, both of whom have male children who as far as I am aware, raised/are raising their boys into adulthood and in Heart’s case at least, haven’t disowned them).

Regular readers will know I have a son, who is three and a half years old. I made a choice to continue with my pregnancy, using a choice that feminism gave me. If I hadn’t wanted a child, I could have easily chosen abortion, as I live in the UK and it is (still, so far) legal here. I didn’t choose that, I chose to have a child. The funny thing about conception is there’s no telling what you’re going to get. Without being told by one’s sonographer, it’s pot luck as to whether you get a male or female child. Here in Portsmouth it’s against the rules for them to tell you the sex of your foetus; you have to wait until it’s born. And I don’t know about you, but the women I know don’t have switches in their uteri to decide to only carry female foetuses.

So having made the choice to continue with my pregnancy, and having spent nine months carrying my baby, he was born and pronounced to be Orion (rather than Amidala, isn’t he lucky he wasn’t born female with that name picked out!). What would the anti-boychild feminists have had me do? “No thanks, I wanted a girl one, you can take this one away.” Quite aside from the fact that there are already too many babies and children unwanted in the adoption system as it is, I chose to have this child. I do not believe that raising a boychild in itself is an antifeminist act and I’ll tell you why.

One of the problems with a patriarchy is that we are all born into it. Children (and most adults!) don’t even realise they’re in it, and by the time that realisation is made by the few who do so, it’s often too late to undo all the ingrained thoughts, feelings and actions that have been imprinted since birth. Most parents don’t realise the damage that can be done by gender stereotyping, and go along with it because it’s just so normal to them.

Surely then, the best person to raise a boychild is someone who as a feminist recognises patriarchy and its stereotypes and constructs, and can actively work against it to try to raise the men of tomorrow to be unlike the men of today? I’m not saying they’ll be perfect. It might take a few generations to get it right. But we’re not going to destroy the patriarchy overnight either, that too will take decades or even centuries. The two – destroying patriarchy and raising boys into men who recognise and are active in destroying patriarchy – seem, to me, to go together like… well, two things that go together really well. 😛

None of us is perfect. My son will have all sorts of influences on him, going against the feminist upbringing and education he is receiving at home. But I’m not the only one doing this, there are thousands of feminists raising boys, and this next generation will, with any luck, have a hell of a lot more boys-raised-by-feminists than the current one. And then the next generation will have even more, and even more. I’m not saying it’s women’s job to educate men/boys; of course it isn’t. But those of us who, having been given male children by the luck of the draw, decide to do the best we can to minimise patriarchal impact on our own boys should not be vilified.

I love my son. I had a choice and I chose him, and like many mothers I choose to do the best I bloody well can to raise him into a happy, healthy adult. I also choose to do the best I bloody well can to raise him against, rather than according to, the patriarchal stereotypes of the way that boys must be. Right now he’s too young to know that his penis means he’s meant to dress/play/act/behave in a certain way, and I have no intention of telling him any time soon.

Of course there are, and will be increasingly in the future, forces working against me to push him into a gender mould (my ex, his father, being one of them). Like I said, we won’t get it perfect the first time round. But we might change things just a little bit, and then we can pass the banner onto the next generation for them to carry on moving in the right direction.

Raising boys is very much a feminist issue. Boy children are always going to exist; better to raise them into decent human beings than to pass them on for the patriarchy to do as it will. I am utterly fed up of feminists who tell me it’s all about treating women as adults, turning around and telling me what I should and should not be doing according to their narrow view of what is and isn’t good for women. I think raising men who are aware of their privilege is good for women, because who knows – we might just end up with a neutral, equal society one day.