Ruth Whippman is a journalist and cultural critic and the author of "Boymom, Reimagining Boyhood in the Age of Impossible Masculinity". She is also the mother of three sons.
510: What Boys Need
Ruth Whippman
Do boys have different needs from girls? How do you raise a successful boy in a culture that pushes boys into the constraints of traditional masculinity? Hunter talks to Ruth Whippman, author of BoyMom, about boys’ relative immaturity and how parents can make problems worse (or better) by the way they parent them.
Ep 510- What Boys Need
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*This is an auto-generated transcript*
[00:00:00] Ruth Whippman: I think I went into the idea of parenting with a lot of hubris. A lot of ideas that I think when I was faced with the reality of parenting, became much more complicated.
[00:00:13] Hunter: You're listening to The Mindful Parenting Podcast, episode number 510. Today, we're talking about what boys need with Ruth Whitman.
Welcome to the Mindful Parenting Podcast. Here it's about becoming a less irritable, more joyful parent. At Mindful Parenting, we know that you cannot give what you do not have, and when you have calm and peace within, then you can give it to your children. I'm your host, Hunter Clarke-Fields. I help smart, thoughtful parents stay calm so they can have strong, connected relationships with their children.
I've been practicing mindfulness for over 25 years, I'm the creator of the Mindful Parenting course, and I'm the author of the international bestseller Raising Good Humans and now Raising Good Humans Every Day, 50 Simple Ways to Press Pause, Stay Present, and Connect with Your Kids. Hello, and welcome back to the Mindful Parenting Podcast, so glad that you are here.
I really do appreciate it. It's so great to connect with all the listeners of the podcast, and this is going to be an especially good episode for the parents of boys. So if other parents of boys, go ahead and text this episode to them now so that you can listen together and make sure you're subscribed, of course.
In just a moment I'm going to be sitting down with Ruth Whitman. She's a journalist and a cultural critic and an author of Boy Mom, reimagining boyhood in the age of impossible masculinity. And she's the author of Three Sons. And we talk about boys, all about raising boys and, do boys have different needs from girls?
How do you. raise a successful boy in a culture that pushes boys into these constraints of traditional masculinity. I talked to Ruth about her book, Boy Mom, and about boys relative immaturity, and about how parents can make problems worse or better by the way we parent our boys. I know you're going to love this episode.
Definitely share it with all your boy mom friends and boy dads, too. And before we dive in, I just want to let you know I have good news. Raising Good Humans is a little book that has now sold over 650, 000 copies worldwide and is the number one best gift book for new parents. So grab your copy if you don't have one or give a copy today.
And now, Join me at the table as I talk to Ruth Whitman. Ruth, thank you so much for coming on the Mindful Parenting podcast. Thank you for having me. Yeah, I'm glad you're here. And we're going to talk about raising boys and how boys are. Different, maybe, from girls, and this'll, this'll be good. Actually, it's funny, because we've had a, we had a team member for many years who has four boys.
Wow. And she just recently had a fifth who was a girl. Oh my gosh.
[00:03:09] Ruth Whippman: She got all those comments of, you were just trying for a girl and finally you can stop. I'm sure.
[00:03:15] Hunter: I'm sure she did. I'm sure she did. And, I tell people, like, when I have, I have two teenage girls. And so when I tell people that, they're like, I'll get these people will roll eyes.
I'll get these condolences oh my God, I'm so sorry for you. It's actually toxic, actually, but you've had a similar experience, right? When people found out you were having three boys. Yeah. Yeah. Tell me about that.
[00:03:39] Ruth Whippman: When I was pregnant with my third son, people would say, Oh, I hope this one's a girl.
And then I'd say, Oh no, it's actually a boy. And they would be like, Oh, and they'd give me this look as if, as if I just said, we all have the norovirus or something or we're all, I'm going off to war. It was almost sympathetic. The way that people. Talk to, talk to me about having boys.
And I think it was like the time that it was made a difference as well, because it was like, right as Me Too movement was going crazy online, as this whole conversation about toxic masculinity. So I think. People saw boys as these kind of like harmful things to be feared a little bit.
[00:04:14] Hunter: Huh. Did you did you have any of that yourself? You or your, I don't know if you have a husband, a wife, or none of the above, but did you guys feel that? I have a husband, but yeah. Did we feel that boys were a fit? And did you have, did you notice any of those thoughts in yourself, or your parents or your family?
[00:04:32] Ruth Whippman: Absolutely. I think on my husband's side, it was all, he was one of two boys and they were all male grandchildren. So I think it was disappointing to them that we hadn't produced a girl. And yeah, I think I had some very conflicted feelings about it. I was really concerned about what it meant to raise sons in this moment.
It felt really unfamiliar. I had I grew up as one of two girls and I went to an all girls school. I was just used to girls and what it meant to be socialized as a girl. So I think I was fearful about it and I had sadness that, that I didn't have, I wouldn't have a daughter and that's very normal,
[00:05:05] Hunter: yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Sure. Did you, when you entered into raising your boys, did you I don't know if you you're, if you're a feminist or not did you feel like, I want to raise my boys differently than the way boys have been raised in the past? What were your thoughts going into this?
[00:05:22] Ruth Whippman: Yeah, absolutely. So I am a feminist and I think particularly in this cultural moment, it was like, yeah. And I thought, I, Yes, I want to do better. I want to raise these like empathetic, kind sons who won't, participate in any of this harm that men have been known for. And I thought, and I think I grew up with this version of feminism that was like, Gender is all socialized anyway.
If I just do all the right things and that will happen, that the only reason that boys behave differently from girls is because we socialize them differently. So I think I went into that idea of parenting with a lot of hubris, a lot of a lot of ideas that I think when I was faced with the reality of parenting, became much more complicated.
[00:06:04] Hunter: Okay. What did you, what was the reality then? What, after three, four years in, what were you noticing with three boys in the house?
[00:06:12] Ruth Whippman: So all of those stereotypes, and I really pushed back against them. I felt like my feminist identity hinged on pushing back against those stereotypes and being like, Oh, boys aren't like this.
And they can be all these, they can be just like and there's no real difference, but my own boys. Conform to all the stereotypes. They were wild, they were physical, they were fighting a lot. It was just this absolute and there was a period of time, especially after my third son was born and for the next sort of two to three years where it was just crazy, it was just, and in a way that was really challenging my older two boys had a lot of very challenging behavior.
They were fighting a lot. I think they felt that. They had a new brother and so there was less attention to go around and it just escalated and escalated. And I remember our fridge, it used to be where we kept all our family photos of us all looking lovely and whatever.
But it became that where we put our apology letter collection. So I made them every time they like hit each other or did something violent to each other, I made them write an apology letter to each other. So it was like, I'm sorry, I hit you with a shovel or whatever. And that entire fridge at one point was just covered in apology letters, and I think it was hard because at that time, with I'm doing this, it's really hard to like, To separate out, are we talking about toxic masculinity?
And if they're like this at age four or six or eight, is this just a straight line to being these kind of toxic men when they're older? Or is this just like normal behavior that they'll grow out of? I think I was doing all this in the shadow of that conversation and that was pretty challenging.
[00:07:44] Hunter: And what did you, I guess those were some of the things that probably led you to do all the research you did for Boyam, I imagine. It's funny, it makes me think about it like the letters on the fridge. When my, when I was growing up, I used to go to my grandparents house where my dad was raised and and he had, it was just him and a brother and they had they had this like little thing that they hung up on one of the doors, which was like, It was like a little sort of relief, wooden relief of a doghouse.
and it had a hook inside and then it had three or four hooks on either side that had a little dog that hung on the hook that had everyone's name on it. And so you could put like, somebody would be in the doghouse for a little while, like if they were in trouble and it was like displayed for everybody that he wants to see.
Oh gosh, public shaming. I was like, you would be in the doghouse. That was like. Not the worst thing that happened in her parents' house, but it was like so indicative of some of the other stuff. Yeah. It was indicative for sure. Yeah, I guess those stereotypes are there, right? Like you, you have the, I you know, it's interesting 'cause when my girls were little, I was like, oh my God, like four year olds are psychotic, they are just so much energy, they're just like going crazy.
And I was like. I don't know. I don't have any experience except raising only girls, so I don't really know, of course is it art?
[00:09:05] Ruth Whippman: Yeah. And like, all of these things are we're talking about group levels. So there are like girls who are extremely high energy and there are boys who are really calm and, all of these things.
It differs by the individual of course, but I think there's quite a lot of data to show that at young ages, boys do have a higher level of physical activity as a group.
[00:09:24] Hunter: Okay. All right. And do you think that might be part of like there are some of these stereotypes for boys like cis, cisgender?
Boys growing up and they're they're hard to break down. It's interesting to say I do see a lot of that Oh, you have that many boys. Oh, boys have so much energy. And I always be like, we girls have a lot of energy, like this a lot of energy too. And I just get so annoyed at that, but because these things are like research shows, it is something that kind of carries over through the group that, and that may be why these stereotypes are existing because they're
[00:09:58] Ruth Whippman: So I think a lot of stereotypes often have some like grain of truth to them, they don't come out of nowhere.
So I think that the thing that I was found really challenging and absolutely, I can imagine it's really frustrating for mothers of girls. They're like, Hey, I'm, my kids are mild too. And this is there's nothing special about your experience. But, I think. I did often find that a lot of moms of boys do say that, that they will look at same age girls and see that they're much better able to like self regulate.
We had neighbors who were girls, three girls who were very similar ages to our boys, and they would. The difference was extraordinary that the girls would get up and they would cook their parents breakfast. I think they were extreme the other way, they were like, I think we were extreme in one direction and they were extreme in the other direction.
But it was like, and every day I would feel like such a failure. I'd be like, I'd see these same age kids doing all this stuff and being so good and like I remember going to a restaurant with my friend and my kids weren't there, but her girls were there and they just colored and they talked and they, they played quietly.
Whereas I was like, if my boys were here for one second, this place would be, and so some of it has to do with gender. Some of it has to do with individuals, and I think some of it is to do with parenting that like the stereotypes become self reinforcing and then we expect different things of them and we socialize them in different ways.
I think it becomes a loop.
[00:11:22] Hunter: Stay tuned for more Mindful Mama podcasts right after this break.
[00:13:39] Hunter: Yeah. I could see how it could circle in on itself. I wonder if some of it has to do with the maturity level, right? Because I remember It, and I don't know if there is research about this. Maybe you can tell me about like that. I remember thinking about it, especially now that my girls are, I have a daughter who just graduated eighth grade.
So yeah, the boys are like in seventh and eighth grade are just like light years behind the girls seemingly as far as like maturity levels go. And I wonder if that's maybe the, there's are there developmental differences along the way that are playing into all of this?
[00:14:11] Ruth Whippman: Absolutely. And they start what was really interesting. And one of the most interesting things that I found in my research was that this starts at birth. It actually starts before birth, but a baby boy is born about a month to six weeks it's easy behind a baby girl in terms of right brain development.
Oh, my right brain. So broadly, look, it's easy to oversimplify, but broadly, this is the area that deals with emotions, emotional self regulation, attachment, relationship building, it's the emotional center of the brain. And because a baby boy is, their brain is immature compared to with a girl, it means that their brains are more vulnerable to disruption.
And you see this in the data. So all adverse events that could happen to a baby, like neglect or poverty or abuse or, postpartum depression in the mother. All of these things like have been shown to have a greater impact on boys at a group level than they do on girls. And you can see those outcomes like down the line.
And I think that, and this goes on. Through childhood, there's like relative immaturity. And I think what ends up happening is it's a nature, nurture mix. So because the baby boy's brain is relatively immature, he needs more kind of support and nurture than a baby girl in terms of regulating his emotions, he needs more of that kind of hands on care and a baby girl can be.
On average, again, these are averages, but more resilient and more. Independent, but because of the way we masculinize boys and we think of them as like tougher and sturdier and we handle them differently and we rough house with them more, but we give them less of that, like emotional nurture in general throughout childhood, it becomes this like double self reinforcing thing.
So it's they need more, but they get less and it compounds to, to cause some of these problems, I think.
[00:15:56] Hunter: Oh, wow. Yeah. And you, you said that like that boys are actually like, they're more fragile than girls. They're more fragile. Definitely don't think about boys that way. For sure. We don't think about boys
[00:16:08] Ruth Whippman: that them as tougher and sturdier.
And there's all this research, that, classic studies that show that when people are handed a baby Boy who cries, they tend to perceive him as angry, whereas when they are shown a baby girl crying, they see her as sad or distressed and, and that they handle them slightly differently, that they do more roughhousing with boys.
They like throw them up in the air and a lot of there you go, little man and, this sort of masculinizing behavior. And it goes on through childhood. We talk to girls more about their feelings. We engage with them more verbally. And so it becomes this kind of feedback loop. That's
[00:16:41] Hunter: fascinating.
I wonder, like, where you were in parenting. Because I can imagine whatever the, your timeline was as far as starting to do this research, having three boys, starting to do this research as a journalist learning all these things. Like, where were you as you started to learn about this relative immaturity and the way it affects boys?
Like, how old were your boys? Did you have, did you end up having to change things? Yes. And talk to maybe other people about changing
[00:17:07] Ruth Whippman: things. Yeah, absolutely. So I was, I probably started looking into this when my youngest was about a year old and our boys behavior was really challenging. And a lot of it was, to do with the fact that their life had been very disrupted.
They had this new brother, they were having trouble regulating. I think they, they meant to do well, they have good hearted boys. They have this good like core to them. And. But I think they found it really hard to regulate themselves. And I think I started doing this research and when I, and, and I think my response to it before had been like, this is a behavior problem.
We need to control their behavior. And so it would be like, either, whether that was like in terms of Harsher sort of disciplines are like timeouts and apology letters or, in the punishment sort of sphere of things, or in the rewards things, we tried a lot of rewards programs where it's like sticker charts and, you get this and you get this incentive if you do that.
And I think once I saw these problems as primarily grounded in emotions and what the response needed to be was like more nurture and more emotional engagement. It helped me to orient my relationship to them a little differently, I think. And it was actually, it did have better results for us, for our family.
It worked in that way. So when I was like, actually, let's not see these as behavior problems, but let's see them as kind of emotional problems and try to talk to them on the level of their feelings and for me to see it in that way, then they responded really well to that. And
[00:18:33] Hunter: probably you were, when you saw it that way as my kids are dysregulated, they need help instead of their being mad your energy was probably more nurturing too, right?
Like they, the same way like that we, kids need adults to help them regulate, right? They need our help to regulate their feelings because they can't really do it by themselves. So then you were also then, at that point, then giving off of more. I'm here to help you energy rather than yes, I'm angry at you
[00:19:02] Ruth Whippman: 100 percent and it's like something that it's really subtle and I think people, I do interviews and people ask me, what are your five tips for, and it's not really about a script that you can say, say these things and then you'll fix it.
It's about a like whole orientation towards that child, I think, and just like a way of seeing them, a way of seeing what they need and a way of seeing your own role in it and what your role as a parent is. to provide for them. And I think you're right. It does. Yeah. I think energy. I see what you're saying, because it's like a whole way of being with that child, so it's not exactly about what you say or do precisely, but just like your, yes, the way you show up in relationship. Yeah.
[00:19:41] Hunter: I say like 70, when they talk about communication, right? Like how much of it is verbal, how much of it is physical and emotional, all those things. And it's like something like only 30 percent of what we're getting from some, another person is actually from what they're actually saying.
They're saying.
[00:19:58] Ruth Whippman: Yeah. And I think especially in this, like the wider culture was really feeding into this because we were, I was doing this in the shadow of this whole conversation about toxic masculinity and harmful men. It came so freighted, it was so loaded with I've got to fix this.
I've got to make them do better. I've got to control them. I've got to make them not turn out as these bad men. And I think once I could slow down and just see them as these vulnerable kids who. needed my help and needed me to be on their side and needed me to help them with all of this. Then, it, it really changed the way that they were.
And I think as they've gotten older, you have to adapt what that means in practice, but it's been, yeah, that's been the biggest learning curve for me, I think.
[00:20:40] Hunter: Yeah, that's great. Yeah, I think it's such an eye opening thing to realize yeah, fight, flight, or freeze means like kicking, hitting, spitting, pushing trying to get away or like those are all fight, flight, or freeze behaviors and just so one of the things that I do is I talk to people about how to stop yelling and how we regulate our emotions.
And one of the things I say to people all the time is it's not your fault. fault that you're yelling. You didn't choose to yell. You didn't wake up and say, I think I will scream at Johnny to a class, right? It's like something that is happening because of your stress. Your stress response is triggering the activity, right?
It's not like a conscious choice. And it's very much the same way. It's really eye opening for us to realize that I think, and that we can like, Stop blaming and shaming ourselves, but then we, it's also really eye opening to say oh, kids have the same stress response and loads of, like a lot of their behavior is coming from this dysregulation and stress.
It's not like you're choosing to pick and fight and whatever, it's really helpful to change that orientation in order. Entirely.
[00:21:42] Ruth Whippman: Yeah. And I think with, I think this is obviously true for all kids and that's, the work that you do, which is so important, but I think with boys, it comes with this added like gendered sort of message about from the culture about who they need to be in the world and how they should respond and like the kind of role models they're given and the kind of ways that we.
The messages we give them about who they should be and the kind of things that we've failed to teach them or failed to provide for them in terms of learning those social, emotional and relational skills and having those role models. So I think. It's in the culture in all kinds of invisible ways.
And once you start noticing it, you realize that there are a lot of gendered messages coming to kids in terms of how to be and behave. And I think boys are getting the message in lots of subtle ways that aggression is okay, that human interaction is combative and, you see it in the kind of shows they watch, the kind of movies they consume, their video games, all of these things.
They get so many stories about battles and fighting and competition and so few about relationships and emotional nurture compared with girls.
[00:22:45] Hunter: Yeah, that's interesting. I guess you must have been on the lookout for that. It's fascinating because we had recently had a conversation.
With Sasha, the therapist, who wrote When Your Kid Says They're Trans, and one of the things she talked about is that the way, in our culture we're so socializing boys to be just this one certain way and we can talk about it like as like in the man box kind of thing, right?
And girls to be this one specific way. And so that kids, a lot of kids think because we aren't, kids aren't given examples and models of men who are feminine and loving or women who are just more masculine or whatever. Like people who aren't like in those stereotypes and we're not, they're not given those examples.
A lot of times kids think, Oh, if I, if I, Within the context of our, our larger society and questioning and all the different things, if I am, if I like painting my nails and if I want longer hair and I like dolls, then maybe I'm maybe I'm actually a girl rather than maybe I'm just a boy that likes these things and vice versa.
It was really fascinating to see that.
[00:23:50] Ruth Whippman: I really see that. And especially like we live in the Bay Area, which is very progressive in many ways, but I think that, I think this is especially true for boys actually. I think for girls, we've done quite a good job of giving them access to you can be a CEO, you can be a scientist, and it seems like.
Even I was like a tomboy and that was okay in the eighties, right? Yeah. It's okay. It's there's a good way to break gender stereotypes and we encourage girls to do it, but I think for boys, it feels like there's a real cost. Like it's partly because we don't give feminine qualities enough value in our society.
So for boys, it's like seen as this demotion or this humiliation to embrace any of those things. So I think it is, it's instead of expanding the category of boy to include more ways to be, we're just like, okay, step out of the category and you can be Maybe you actually are a girl or maybe you actually are non binary, which is not to diminish the very real experience of people who do identify as genders that are different from their birth.
Assigned Sex, I think that the category of cis boy has become so limiting. It's just, or not has become, it has always been, and we haven't really done the good work of trying to expand it, I don't think.
[00:24:58] Hunter: Yeah. Yeah. I think I've seen that, and I think probably there, there are a bunch of people in the culture who are wanting to keep it.
Right, who are seeing people who want to expand the category of where we see all these these people who are, I know, my kids tell me about some YouTubers or people who, Oh, yeah. I think you mentioned him in the book some really misogynist YouTuber, and they were like, Oh, yeah.
Mom, our cousin watches
[00:25:19] Ruth Whippman: This YouTube. Yeah. And it's, telling to boys, I think it's absolutely true. So in many ways, We talk about the feminization of society or whatever, but actually I think those masculinity norms are actually really ramping up for boys, in the culture they can see on YouTube, this, in the kind of shows they watch, in their narrative universe.
I think the, our vision of masculinity has become even more stereotypical and like caricatured and muscly and tough guy and action hero, so I think, yeah, it is ramping up in many ways.
[00:25:50] Hunter: Yeah. And that we know we've talked about with men, like how this pushes boys into this like idea of a man box where they may not, they may be really lonely because they can't be emotionally vulnerable with people.
They can't really make those connections.
[00:26:05] Ruth Whippman: When I, cause I interviewed a lot of older boys and young men, so like adolescents and college age boys, and they talked about loneliness very frequently. They felt they couldn't be emotional with their friends. They felt like they couldn't show up in that way.
That was like. They couldn't show weakness to their friends, and it was keeping them from connection. And you can trace those lines all the way back to early boyhood, where they're given these messages in so many ways. And they're not taught those, like they're not given the role models for how to have friendships.
Like just the show, My Friend with Girls, you see the kind of shows that her girls watch, the books they read, they're all about relationships and friendships and emotional labor and how to do that work. And the boy content, is so much about battles and fighting and that kind of thing.
And I think you can trace it all the way to adulthood and male loneliness. That's so fascinating. So this
[00:26:55] Hunter: must have been horrifying for you, like learning all of this and seeing this. Yeah. Yeah. What, I imagine, what did you learn anything about if there's a father, a male figure at home and the influence of that figure and anything about, maybe what we could hope for as far as like a father's influence to maybe counterbalance some of these toxic influences?
Yeah.
[00:27:21] Ruth Whippman: So it's interesting cause I think when we talk about boys and boys socialization, we always look to the father. As like the main provider of the role model, whatever. And there is a lot of data to show that boys do better when there are fathers in the home. And that's very real. But I think the part that we sometimes miss in the narrative is the importance of mothers.
There's this one long running study called the Harvard Grant study, which looked at boys looked at a generation of boys. It was from the 1930s and they followed them all the way through adulthood to look at all of their. Factors that went into what makes men thrive. And I think one of the single biggest factors was the quality of a man's relationship with his mother was one of the most important factors in like his long term happiness, his long term health, his long term.
Earning potential. It was just this staggering thing. So I think this is part of the reason I wrote Boy Mom, because I felt like a lot of the parenting books that I'd read, which were about boys were like, all about men. It was, they were written by men. They were directed at fathers. It was like boyhood, mothers can't really be involved in that.
They can't possibly understand. I just saw so much to support the idea that mothers were incredibly important. And obviously it stands to reason once you hear it, I just want to reiterate that message, that I think mothers often feel quite absent in that conversation.
[00:28:41] Hunter: Okay, so then for the mom or dad of boys, if you're a mom of, excuse me, of boys that are, you're listening to this, okay, moms are important.
What do I do?
Stay tuned for more Mindful Mama podcasts right after this break.
[00:29:04] Ruth Whippman: So I think that we learn to care for other people by being cared for ourselves. So I think to have this, whether that's a mom and I don't want to underplay the importance of fathers that absolutely really important, but it's that nurturing care that I think boys miss out on in many ways, that they get slightly less of that in our culture, that really emotionally focused.
On the nose, nurture, not that kind of, cause I think, I hear a lot of this, like what you really need to do with a boy is he needs more wrestling. He needs more sports. He needs more physical play, and, but boys generally get a lot of that kind of stuff already. And what they're really missing out on is that emotional nurture, engagement with emotions, listening, talking about feelings.
And so that's what I think that parents can provide for boys. It's that like change in relationship that we talked about, that nurture, that listening to feelings, that naming emotions, our own, other people's, that acceptance of. Emotions, which I think is quite hard for people with boys, and those role models, whether that's in, in life or in art, as we call it, like TV books, et cetera, stories about boys in relational roles.
And then it's really hard to find them, but, to seek them out. Do you have any good recommendations? And I get asked this a lot and it's quite hard cause I really aren't that messy, but one book that my kids. Really enjoyed, which I recommend to people is a book called Wonder. There's also a movie of it and it's about a boy with a facial disfigurement.
And, but what's really unusual about that boy is, about that book is that it has a main character who's a boy, but he has real interiority, he has a real emotional life, which you often, you know, books aimed at boys tend to be about adventure and fighting and it's all external, it's things happen, but there's not so much interiority. I saw that with Inside Out. I don't know if you've seen the movie Inside Out. Not the new one yet. We're hoping to go see it soon. Okay. So what was really interesting to me about that was that it is about emotions and interiority, but it's focused on girls, it's like a girl character.
You see all her emotions. She has this complex emotional life. And when you see men or boys on the screen, it, their interiority is a joke. It's you see the dad character is, it's like and, it's what are you thinking? And he's sports the gay, so it's almost we're laughing at him for.
And it's something that I would never have noticed before I had boys, but when I'm watching it with my six year old son, I'm like, Whoa, he's really getting the message that like interiority and emotional life is for girls and women. A mom has like complex emotions. The daughter has complex emotions, but the dad and the one boy character that appears are both like that's the joke, so I think it's like pulling it out as well, like with your boys and being like, do you think men are like that? Do you think? To just make a point of noticing the absence.
[00:31:55] Hunter: Yeah. Yeah. To point out that this is. This
[00:31:58] Ruth Whippman: is sexist. Do you know, it wouldn't be okay to do that kind of stereotyping, if we had a girl character that was like ditzy or like bad at math or, people would be calling that out and I think we should be doing it the other way around too.
[00:32:11] Hunter: Yeah, absolutely. I'm with you. That's great. You should, we should be doing that. Then we need these sort of roles of healthy masculinity. I guess in our culture and things like that, we want to search them out. Do you get, shifting the way you're parenting your boys, shifting your focus and things like that?
I guess you're in the Bay Area, so you may not get so much, but do you get pushback from, people about this, about, wanting to just regular people in your life about this kind of thing?
[00:32:43] Ruth Whippman: It's more with, I think people in my life have been really open to it.
And I'm really grateful to my husband who's been amazing. And he's we've been on this journey together and he's done some amazing stuff, like helping our boys. I think once all this stuff was pointed out to him, he felt Oh yeah, I realized this is a loss. in my own life.
So I want better for my boys. So he's been great. So I think people in my own life have been pretty receptive to this, since the book came out, there have been pushback like from all sides, so there's the flavor of pushback, which is you're trying to turn boys into girls and, a man needs to be a man and boys need to man up.
And, there's that flavor, but there's also the other flavor, which is more from progressive spaces, which is like. You're centering boys. And if you give too much attention to boys, then it's like taking away from women and girls. And that it's almost like this right wing coded idea to like.
to help boys is like somehow this going against the ideals of feminism. And I think that's a mistake as well. So yeah, there has been some pushback, but like mainly actually people have been really positive towards it, I would say.
[00:33:49] Hunter: That's
[00:33:49] Ruth Whippman: good.
[00:33:50] Hunter: So one thing that we're thinking about if we have You know, we have, I know we have some boy moms in the listening audience, and what, what do we, what are some of the things you do with your boys about the idea of, because one of the topics you address in here is as boys get to be young men and in their, early adulthood, what A lot of issues of consent come up, right?
Like those, these, this has not gone away. The issues of sexual assault and all these different things, right? What do you, what have you learned through all this research and study that you've done about this, about and about how to raise boys who are aware and consenting? Are there things you should do when they're young versus when they're older?
Yeah. So I
[00:34:35] Ruth Whippman: think that, I think we have as a society started to do better with this. I think it's really great that we're talking about consent, that it's something like, I think when I was a kid, I don't think I even really had that framework to understand this. And I think now we're naming this, we're talking to kids about it.
We need to do it more. It's, these conversations are so important. I think often consent, people see it as this like binary thing, which is are you forcing someone to, to have sex or not? And. I think consent is this incredibly nuanced conversation, which is grounded in all these social relational skills that, so I think the consent conversation happens right from the beginning with teaching boys, these like nuanced skills of understanding what another person is thinking, interiority, tracking another person's emotions, like seeing body language, nonverbal communication, all of which we.
Don't really do such a good job off with boys. So like by the time they get to the age where they're like looking to have sexual encounters, that, they don't have this skill set in the same way that girls do. And it's not like one, it's not a yes, no binary. It's like all kinds of complicated things.
And so I think the work really needs to start from the beginning, like just teaching this sort of nuanced set of relational skills.
[00:35:51] Hunter: Yeah,
[00:35:51] Ruth Whippman: it's tricky
[00:35:52] Hunter: because, yeah, I can see there's so many, so much gray space and that it's not black and white, because sometimes we tickle our kids and it's hilarious, but it's not like consenting touch, right?
Yeah. Sometimes, we sometimes we're just coming in for touch, like a hug, and we don't ask for permission every time we Yeah. Touch
[00:36:13] Ruth Whippman: our family members, it's no, I don't think that's really the answer either. I don't think we wanna live in a world where every time you touch No, I, and you're like, do I have permission to hug you?
2-year-old, I don't think that's, and I think, look. We, if we're honest, we have to give our kids a lot of non consensual touch just to take care of them. Yeah. Get out of that road. I have to change your diaper, and so I think for us to pretend that this is like a sexual encounter that we have to get like full consent every time we touch our kids, I think that's unrealistic, but I think these are themes that we can talk about with our kids.
And I think if we can teach boys and girls to Be able to see another person's experience, to able to like really engage with another person. And I think that boys historically and still now are not really socialized to do that. And it's part of a much wider thing.
[00:37:03] Hunter: Yeah. And I guess like part of the widerness of it is that like we're in such an individualist culture too, that you're only.
Taught to you're, in a collectivist culture, I wonder if they have some of the same challenges, because like in a collectivist culture, maybe where your ancestors were rice growers, you had to work together, right? You
[00:37:22] Ruth Whippman: have to be in tune with another person and pick up on their moods and pick up on their signals.
And yeah, I'm sure that's right. I don't know any sort of research onto that, but it'd be really interesting to see because I think Yes, we, and I think boys especially are socialized to see themselves as this like main character, hero on his hero's journey and everybody else is like an accessory to that.
And it doesn't encourage this idea that women have their own emotional life, their own interiority. They're just like these side characters that are there to further the narrative of the boy. And I think this is like a really unhealthy, girls, we tend to give them more of a model for to see themselves.
As part of a community that works together. Obviously everyone's exposed to all of these things, but it's just a kind of degree. Okay, so
[00:38:09] Hunter: before we finish up, I just have some sort of I'm super practical person, like into the nitty gritty. Yeah. So like when my girls were little, hearing about I guess when I, again, when I talked to, Sashayan about the, the boxes kids are in.
I was like, Oh I feel really good now about my kids, we talked, we looked at the diggers and we, yeah, I gave them clothes from the boys section. Cause why can't they wear green and blue? I don't know. Anyway, yeah, we did stuff, right? Like they ran around naked and barefoot and, whatever.
It was great. Like just trying to give them lots of different versions of how a girl can be. Do you recommend, or, one of the things I, I sometimes never see like in a boy house is a boy having a little doll like to be nurturing and things like that. So did you, are there practical?
Things like now that we've gone into the heart of it, that you would recommend for parents raising low boys? Yeah, I think
[00:39:03] Ruth Whippman: doll is like such a great symbol of caring for another person and I thought we should absolutely normalize those being for boys too and like the actual doll themselves being boys as well as, and unworthy of care and that boys should have dolls to, to play with and that we help them play with them, that we do that kind of play with them because they won't see so many models.
in life of that. So yeah. And those stories, this is something my husband's been so great at and I've been really admiring of him doing it because he did not play like this himself as a child, but he will play for a long time with my boys with figures where it will be stories about emotional dilemmas or relationship, like acting things out with the little figures or the little dolls, or my son likes these like woodsies, they're called those, these little like woodland characters, but it's this idea that, that he acts out these little like scenes where the mom needs this or, and I don't think you want to be heavy handed about it.
It's gotta be like fun, but Just try to expose them to more of that kind of stuff and, to see boys in those kinds of roles and, when there are role models for it to expose them boys to that. And when there aren't role models for it, so talk to them about why, what's missing, to name that absence, like, why are there no boys in this?
Why do they think the boys can't be friends? Why can't the boys be babysitters in the babysitters club? And, just to name it as an absence, I think makes, puts it on their radar.
[00:40:22] Hunter: Yeah. That's smart. And I think that, if I was a parent of a boy and thinking about this, I think probably remembering what is the big picture of this?
If you can raise boys who are more emotionally in tune with other people, better able to communicate, better able to problem solve because of being less, being more emotionally in tune, like that kid's going to be way ahead of. Every other kid who's just maybe been, had too much screen zombie time, like you're going to be like, if you, that's what really the future needs.
If we think about everything being automated, things like that, like those human skills and that the creativity kind of stuff and. All of that being that is something that you can't, you absolutely can't replace that. So yes. That it will give your kid an absolute advantage, I imagine.
[00:41:12] Ruth Whippman: Yeah. And there's data that shows that like social emotional skills in kindergarten are a bigger predict predictor of academic success than intelligence. Oh, wow. Which crazy you but you can see why, because it helps you to regulate in the classroom. It helps you to, to, to cooperate with other people, to learn, to be a good learner.
All of those things are so important to your success.
[00:41:34] Hunter: This has been awesome. Ruth Whitman's new book is called Boy Mom, Reimagining Boyhood in the Age of Impossible Masculinity. Thank you so much, Ruth, for doing the work that you did, getting curious about this and writing this and speaking to Such a way that you're really like walking this middle path in a very polarized culture.
I feel like that's really very valuable and to go into all this nuance and it's incredibly valuable. So thank you for doing what you do and for coming on. Any last thoughts? Words you want to share with the listener?
[00:42:11] Ruth Whippman: Firstly, thank you so much for having this conversation and being part of it and all the work that you do and hopeful, I think we have this great opportunity now to change this.
The more we are aware of it, the more we can talk about it, the more we can look at our own behavior, the way that we are and the way that we can make some real changes. We've made a lot of changes for girls. Things that were very normal when I was a kid and very sexist and very limiting have changed.
And I think we can do the same with boys. And
[00:42:38] Hunter: Yeah, I love that. Thank you. Thank you so much, Ruth. This has been great. Thank you. It's been such a pleasure. Thank you very much.
What an awesome episode. I feel like this episode is so important. Boys are struggling and they need that parenting. They need us to be there for them for that security. So important. If you liked this episode, you might want to check out the Taking Men and Boys out of the Man Box episode with Todd Adams.
It's episode number 395 of the Mindful Parenting podcast. And you also might like How to Handle Boys and Aggression with Tosha Shore. That's episode number 392, so check those out. That's 395 and 392. And of course, Text a friend about this show today, just share it to somebody, text it to somebody who could use it.
Those other boy moms, boy dads out there, and that's the best way, of course, that we grow the podcast. Thank you for listening. Thank you for being here. I'm so glad that we could share this awesome conversation with you today. My whole team is grateful for you being here, being a subscriber, and sharing the podcast.
It makes such a big difference, everyone. So I hope it helped. I hope it helps you reflect about your boys and how we can raise these kids in ways that are more nurturing, more supportive so they can be more confident and more secure as they grow up. I think this is some of the most important work we could be doing.
So thank you for being here. I really appreciate it. If you have feedback on this episode, want to let me know, just tag me at mindfulmamamentor. com on Instagram or Facebook and I'll be back. Next week, we're going to be talking to Dr. Tova Klein about understanding toddlers and preschoolers.
So make sure you're subscribed and you get it, and I will be back next Tuesday to talk to you. Thanks so much. Take care, my friend. Namaste.
[00:44:52] Mindful Mama Member: I'd say definitely do it. It's really helpful. It will change your relationship with your kids for the better. It will help you communicate better. And just, I'd say communicate better as a person, as a wife, as a spouse. It's been really a positive influence in our lives. Definitely do it. I'd say definitely do it.
It's so worth it. The money really is inconsequential when you get so much benefit from being a better parent to your children and feeling like you're connecting more with them and not feeling alone. If you're feeling like you're yelling all the time or you're like, why isn't this working? I would say definitely do it.
It's so worth it. It'll change you. No matter what age someone's child is, it's a great opportunity for personal growth and it's a great investment in someone's family. I'm very thankful I have this. You can continue in your old habits that aren't working or you can learn some new tools and gain some perspective to shift everything in your parenting.
[00:45:55] Hunter: Are you frustrated by parenting? Do you listen to the experts and try all the tips and strategies but you're just not seeing the results that you want? Or are you lost as to where to start? Does it all seem so overwhelming with too much to learn? Are you yearning for community people who get it, who also don't want to threaten and punish to create cooperation?
Hi, I'm Hunter Clarke-Fields. And if you answered yes to any of these questions, I want you to seriously consider the Mindful Parenting membership. You will be joining hundreds of members who have discovered the path of mindful parenting and now have confidence and clarity in their parenting. This isn't just another parenting class.
This is an opportunity to really discover your unique, lasting relationship, not only with your children, but with yourself. It will translate into lasting, connected relationships, not only with your children, but your partner too. Let me change your life. Go to mindfulparentingcourse.com to add your name to the wait list.
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