A brown woman’s response to Deadbeat son is a sign of America’s failure to raise boys
This started out as a short Facebook post, but it began to snowball when I wrote out my full range of thoughts and feelings about what Karol Markowicz said about raising girls versus boys.
Karol Markowicz, I agree with the title of your NY Post article Deadbeat son is a sign of America’s failure to raise boys. And I’m glad you wrote it and that I read the clear points and facts. So thank you for that and making me think about this.
Here is where I didn’t feel right about your choice of words:
“the future is female”
“We tell girls they are amazing and unstoppable by virtue of their gender.”
“The language of empowerment we use around girls is absent from how we talk to boys. The expectation that males will succeed just because they are male has been smashed, just like feminists wanted, but now what?”
You did say “Part of the problem is we’ve been encouraging girls at the expense of boys.” Yes, you said it was part of the problem.
But, you clouded your opinion piece about the challenges for the young men of America with phrases that are sweeping generalizations, distorting feminism into an “us against them” movement.
A shadow is cast with the phrase “just like feminists wanted” which demonizes feminism, making feminists the villains who are preventing our men, even our own sons from launching and growing up and prospering in the world. And I know that’s not true for many feminists, including myself.
I’m a feminist AND a mother of three young men. I and my husband have taught our sons that they are smart, talented, amazing and are totally capable of whatever and wherever their passions lead them. They have even grown up with material resources—nice homes, safe neighborhoods, good friends. We were even lucky enough to have been together as an extended family, having my mom around, their Lola. But still they struggle.
Our hearts break as we witness our sons’ hardships in today’s America. They have been coping with prejudice, bullying, and racism in their schools and in society.
But still we have hope.
As parents of three sons, I and my husband agree and know that just because parents raise American daughters to believe and behave like they’re amazing and capable is certainly not stopping parents from telling their American sons that they too are as amazing and as capable as ever. We’re also teaching them to be fair and just.
So screw the skew “by virtue of their gender.”
“We tell girls they are amazing and unstoppable by virtue of their gender.”
To say that and the “future is female” is akin to the negative by-products of patriarchy — imbalance, inequality, racism, misogyny, bi-partisanship, and divisiveness, to name just a few.
Do I need to remind another woman that feminism is about, equality and balance in society?
Because feminists are helping create a more egalitarian society is certainly not the reason why our sons are bogging down in growing up to be flourishing adults today.
I must voice out, as a feminist and as a mother of sons, that it is not new ideas and bringing about equality that is destroying the future of our sons. In fact, those ideas create the fertile soil for a better America.
I think and believe in my heart that it is the old, decaying order of America that is failing our sons, our families and our country. The end of the world as we know it is the demise of patriarchy and its illusions even now.
I’m not against patriarchy—I’m all for the balance and harmony between patriarchs, matriarchs and their sons and daughters.
It is the corrupt, crumbling patriarchal society — the one that invented imperialism and material-based power, and yielded crony capitalism… the one that tears up peace treaties with the first Americans… the one that effects frakking, global arms race, patented crops, pollution, and all manners of devastation and destruction — that is, in fact, struggling to get beyond the unsustainable models of imperialism, consumerism, and privilege.
After all, historically the imperialists’ motto is “divide and conquer.” And, that is still going on today, right underneath our noses.
I see this divisiveness because it’s the same as privilege in the Philippines, a once-colonized nation, where privilege is based on your social class, the lightness of your skin, and on land ownership and material wealth, where multinational mining and lumber corporations pay politicians and landowners to do their dirty work, land-grabbing from indigenous people, annihilating their numbers. It is the imperialists who taught colonized people to, in turn, be imperialists and harm their own people—all for profit and more power—neo-imperialism in a modern world.
So what’s failing our sons here in the United States?
It’s the same thing failing all U.S. citizens. It’s the imbalance of power under ages of patriarchal privilege that has brought us to where we are today — our grocery and convenience stores are full of fake cheap food packed with sodium, sugar, pesticides and glusophate… our oceans are full of eco-system-harmful plastics… our wars are armed takeovers for natural resources that make the rich few more rich… our society is rife with lost jobs and anxiety, depression and bullying, suicides and shootings.
So what can we do for our sons… and our daughters?
Our families are called upon to go to the next stage of human awareness and teach our children expanding, evolving values within an optimistic, egalitarian human society that thrives in the world creatively, peacefully, harmoniously and sustainably.
But we’re also in great need of a U.S. government and society that supports us families in doing that.
This is where compassion and wisdom is called for. These are feminine traits that are in both men and women and are direly needed in our schools, society and leadership.
We are in need of developing our sons’ and daughters’ abilities to think, collaborate, problem-solve and be creative. This is what will make America great again, not the tyrannical theme of “destroy and conquer.”
Mothers and fathers in the U.S. and around the world, need help from their communities and society, in teaching good values to our sons and our daughters, that prepares them for a better future… to be part of future civilization that isn’t relying on unsustainable, dying out ways that could very well cause the human race to die out.
We need our society to be lead by more and more men and women who know how to balance their feminine and masculine natures within—intelligence and intuition, logic and compassion, order and flexibility. We need men and women who respect people’s roles, capabilities and contributions—regardless of gender, race, age— and who have a vision of a potential future and society that no longer objectifies and diminishes humans, disrespecting people for their varying access to wealth, education or resources.
So we call upon our school leaders to weed out consumer-oriented values and weave-in these new values into the U.S. educational system so that they are cultivated in the hearts and minds of our youth, and woven into the fabric of the American society for generations to come. If the leadership of our schools fails to do this, then they will fail to prepare the younger generations for the future and will be failing America.
It is possible and essential for us all now to learn and live the values and lifestyles that will get us there.
If America is failing our men, our sons, then we parents must step up and do something ourselves. We can’t wait for a crony-capitalist-run government to take care of them.
It has to be us — us women and men, who have to uphold the balanced values and traits within ourselves, our families, our workplace and our communities… that is we have to do because, yes, America is failing our sons.
We need to try and in the trying it’s okay for us to make mistakes and learn from those mistakes.
“Failure is not an option” is an old dictum that must fall by the wayside, because outdated thinking like that that paralyzes us, most likely our sons, our men.
Whilst we buzz along like drone, worker bees in the humdrum of our day-to-day jobs in order to pay for milk and bread… dishwashers and data… utilities and YouTube Red… We parents are all called upon to create within our lives the glimpses of the potential future we want fully for our own kids.
As a Filipino-American woman, I strive to live the Filipino value of pakikipagkapwa which for means everything and everyone is connected in a sacred way. The root word is kapwa meaning “self in other” or one who is connected with you at the Source.
Tao is tagalog for person and so pakikipagkapwa-tao means Filipinos are open and compassionate to others and feel one with others, treating our fellow humans with dignity and respect. This creates in all of us a sense of unity and relatedness, comaraderie and connection, and thus we live and act fairness in our day to day lives. It creates a deep sense of what justice is for everyone.
The vision of us all being kapwa creates a hopeful future and pulls me forward as a parent, talking and acting like an optimistic future is already here.
If you have anything positive to add that will help all of us parents do better for our kid in America, in the world, I look forward to hearing from you.
Comment and reshare if you feel the same as I do about being a feminist and raising our sons and daughters with love, awareness, hope and compassion.
