Introduction

What is the role of a parent? In my opinion the role you take on as a parent is to nurture, to guide, to meet their child’s physical, spiritual and emotional needs and give their child tools for them to develop into a self-actualised individual able to make informed decisions based on their own value system. Easy Peasy right? If you are a parent reading this with adult children, this probably sounds unfamiliar, strange, perhaps makes you feel insecure looking back at your parenting experience – I was meant to do all that? Really? What happened to just giving your child food, shelter, warmth, and an education.

Research into child development and psychology have shown us that meeting a child’s emotional needs is as important as their physical needs. It’s not enough to just meet your child’s physical needs if you are neglecting their emotional needs. There has been plenty of work on attachment theory and attachment styles explaining how the attachment a child has to their parent as a baby impacts their ability to form relationships as an adult. Harlowe’s initial experiments on attachment theory have been built on by Mary Ainsworth and John Bowlby, resulting in attachment styles becoming something we refer to main mainstream conversations as we discuss our needs in key relationships today. If you are interested in this, I suggest you read Attached by Amir Levine and Rachel Heller.

I have discussed this in my blogpost on What is Adequate Parenting in reference to the book Toxic Parents by Susan Forward. This addresses what is adequate parenting or good enough parenting – the very basics of parenting to meet your requirements as a parent. Let’s take that a step further and think what good parenting looks like - about how we raise children who are conscious and aware of their privilege, of gender, consent, and bodily autonomy? How do we raise children who are empathetic and kind? These are qualities that historically have been associated with being feminine and nurtured more in female children, and in fact, discouraged in male children – to our detriment and theirs. Today we have a culture in which masculinity is so rigid and prescribed – where toxic masculinity is doing a disservice to our boys and the women in their lives. How do we go about changing this? I recently read the book Raising Feminist Boys by Bobbi Wegner that examines these very questions.  The book explores how to talk with your child about gender, consent and empathy.

Child Development and Psychology

Firstly, in order to parent a child who is brought up with the values that we believe we have, we need to be aware of our implicit and explicit bias. The book provides a series of questions to work through on relationships with family, our parents, childhood value systems, gendered roles modelled to us – to help us identify our own bias and be conscious of it so as to try to parent our children without letting these biases affect our judgement. The book states that ‘research shows that it is not what happened to you that matters most in determining how you raise your children but how you have come to make sense of your early experiences.” For those of us who have had a childhood where our needs were not met – through self-understanding you can parent from a more conscious and informed perspective.

Once you are aware of your own bias you can try to parent from a more conscious place, being aware of your child’s developmental stages and strategies to teach awareness, empty, and foster the values that you believe in. Bobbi refers to the work of Cognitive Developmental theorist Jean Piaget who believed that children make observations, test new ideas and absorb information learning as they go. From the age of birth to 2 years old this is through movement and sensation. They begin to understand cause and effect, that they are separate from the people around them, and object permanence or object constancy. Age 2 – 7 years old is Pre-operational stage when children learn by looking and listening, develop symbolic thinking, focus on self mastery, think without logical rules or concrete thoughts, they have egocentric thoughts, and do not understand conservation yet. Language development is still occurring.

From the ages of 7 – 11 we are at a concrete Operational stage. At this point children develop sophisticated logical ways to sort out abstract thoughts, they learn that people can have other views than they have, they are aware of reversibility, they begin to understand conservation and they can hold many different parts of a problem at once. From age 12 to adulthood they are in the formal operational stage and develop the ability to think abstractly, hold multiple points of view, solve problems, and think with more sophistication. They begin to use deductive reasoning, logic and organised planning processes.

Jean Piaget’s cognitive theory is a good place to start to understand his theory of moral development – how do children think about morality? He suggests in this theory that children’s ideas regarding moral judgements, ethical dilemmas, punishments, rules etc, change over time and that there are two types of morality – moral realism and moral relativism. From approximately age 5 – 9 children will have moral realism – they see morality through the eyes of others like parents, teachers etc and they accept that breaking these rules leads to punishment. They accept the rules as absolute. At this age you have a captive audience to talk about sex, consent and relationships and it is a great time to have these conversations before your child is potentially awkward about having these conversations.

However, from age 9 – 10 years old they develop moral relativism which is when they base morality on their own rules. Moving away from only thinking about themselves, they can see that morality varies across people, it is not fixed and it is flexible and changes. Based on where your child is currently at in their development, you can tailor how you speak to them about these issues. While your child is still in a stage of moral realism, it is important for a parent to be clear and intentional about the moral values they want to establish in their children as they see these as absolute. When your child is in moral relativism, it is a time for you to engage with your child as an active participant in building their own morality – you are engaging with them like you would a friend and assist them by asking questions about moral decision making, understanding that your perspective is simply a perspective and ultimately they will see it through their own value system. Your view is no longer absolute.

How do I raise a feminist boy?

In order to raise boys who are allies, boys who understand consent, and feel empathy – it is important to be attuned to your child, which will then create attachment and help them develop self esteem and healthy relationships in the long term.

Attunement is how reactive we are to another person – this will be different for your child at different ages. For a baby attunement is responding to the baby’s crying and meeting its needs for cuddles, milk, nappy change, etc. For an older child it might be picking up on cues that they are upset and being present with them and holding the space until they feel ready to share what they are upset about with you. It is knowing what is important to your child, noticing it and naming it. Attachment is the emotional bond between two people and generally refers to the child and parent relationship. If you have a secure attachment to your primary caregivers, and feel that your needs are met because they are attuned to your needs, you are more likely to develop self-esteem and empathy and have good meaningful relationships as an adult.

In short, attunement and secure attachment will lead to healthy emotional development – being able to ‘understand who you are, notice and understand what you are feeling, express these feelings effectively to others, sustain positive relationships with people’. The five elements of emotional intelligence are self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, and social skills. It is important to cultivate Emotional Intelligence in your son by modelling it, demonstrating unconditional love, showing authenticity, demonstrate emotional availability, be a secure safe base – and many other ways. I encourage you to read the chapter on Building Inner resources to raise allies for more on this.

Bobbi goes on to explain in the following chapters how to talk openly about gender, sex and identity, teach physical respect and consent, use media to discuss equality and justice, and expand your son’s worldview to cultivate empathy.

What are age appropriate conversations?

You might be thinking – what are actually age appropriate conversations? I have been debating this with my partner as we consider how to have conversations with our future children as toddlers, young children, pre-teens and teenagers. How would we talk about s, consent, mastur, po…, etc. Whilst we both agreed that we would use the right names for body parts from the very beginning to empower our children to name their body parts and feel confident to call out peoples behaviour relating to their body that is inappropriate – we couldn’t begin to define what would be age appropriate and when do these conversations begin. I am truly grateful that I came across this book because it breaks it down so very nicely of what is age appropriate for a 0-4 year old vs a 5 - 10 year old, vs, 11 – 15, and older. What might surprise you is that these conversations begin earlier than you might think – a lot earlier.

If you baulk at the idea of having a conversation with your toddler about masturbation, know that sitting with your own uncomfortableness and awkwardness is the cost benefit ustification to protect your child from the risk of making them feel shame about their body and their sexuality.

Here are some examples from the ‘cheat sheet’ section at the back of the book to give you an idea of all the fun conversations to come. And I only really mean that half sarcastically. How lucky would you be as a parent to have a child who wonders about these things and comes to you as a trusted adult to ask you, rather than going to the internet or to their peers. I know I for one aspire to be a parent who is always open and accepting and hope that as my children get older, they will come to me when they have questions no matter what the topic is.

Here are a few excerpts from the cheat sheet section:

My 0- 4 year old is wanting to touch others. What do I say?

“I know you are so curious about other people’s bodies now. And that is okay. You just have to ask first. And we don’t touch other people’s private parts.”

My 0 – 4 year old is touching their genitals with hands and objects, “humping”. What do I do? Manage your own internal freak out and nonchalantly say, “I know it feels nice to rub your penis, honey. And that is something we do in private – in the bathroom or your bedroom.”

My 4 – 6 year old is trying to see people naked. What do I do to address this behaviour? “I see you watching me. My body is different than yours is. I am a woman and have breasts and a vagina. You are a boy and have a penis. Interesting, huh? Do you have any questions?”

My 6 – 12 year old is looking at naked pictures or sending naked pictures. What do I do?

Talk about the importance of never sending naked pictures. Ask your child to let you know if he receives any naked pictures.

“Sometimes kids think it is funny to send or receive naked pictures. The thing is, that is actually against the law and can get you in big trouble. Plus, you never know who will see those pictures. Once you put them out there, you have no control of them anymore. Imagine if someone sent one to your teacher or someone in class? Yikes!”

My 12 – 18 year old watches porn in private but sometimes with friends. What should I do?

Talk with him about the kinds of porn, how people are viewed in them, and how it affects how he feels about how it affects how he feels about and sees himself and others.

“It is so normal for boys to be curious about sex. Watching pornography can both feel good and help you learn about sexuality. Do you ever watch porn? What have you seen? How do you feel while you are watching it and after? Do you think what you have seen is representative of real-life sex and relationships? Much of what we see in porn is like watching any other type of movie – it is fiction, staged, and made to portray a specific experience. Real-life sex is often different. What do you think?”

I am concerned about my 12 – 18 year old’s understanding of language around boundaries, consent and saying no. What can I say to them?

“How do you think about consent and boundaries? How do you know if you know if you are hooking up with someone who wants to be hooking up? What if you don’t want to hook up with someone? How do you say no? What are your options?”

Here are just some examples. There are many more in the book – I encourage you to read it and save this as a resource.  

What do I say when my kid says things that are not aligned with the values I am trying to teach them?

Our children are only human, as are we. And just like us, they can make mistakes and say things or do things that are racist or sexist, racist and lack empathy.

Bobbi suggests when you slip up and say something that might be a microaggression e.g call a woman a bitch, reinforcing sexist stereotypes, you should call it out, apologise, and correct your statement. Similarly, when your child does this you can do the same – question what they are saying and ask them to reflect on what they have said – they example she gives is when she hears her son call his sister a tomboy. And calmly state that these behaviours are inherently ungendered. It is okay to make mistakes and we will make many of them. It is okay for our sons to make mistakes, they will make plenty of their own. The important thing is owning up to them – noticing them, calling them out, and correcting what you have said or done in order to apologise.

All the best in your parenting journey – I hope we raise a generation of thoughtful, empathetic, self-aware young men.