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This post is a special case of what I talked about yesterday in Stand Up For What’s Right, Regardless.
Many moms are overprotective of their sons. Maybe they do okay when the boy is young, but don’t adjust as he grows up. Part of this is a result of gender ignorance. She’s never been a boy and she has no idea how they think and feel. She doesn’t understand some of their needs because she’s never had them. God made guys to take risks. I say this because He gave us ten times as much testosterone as the average woman. In addition to fueling our sex drive, testosterone causes us to take risks and be aggressive.
Now I’m not suggesting our sons should just be allowed to run wild. You know how that would end and it wouldn’t be good. But shutting them down too much is harmful. It prevents them from being the boys they should be, which means they can’t become the men God wants them to be. It can also result in a rather ugly backlash.
When I was 17 a buddy and I decided we wanted to ride our bikes from Austin to Corpus Christi – a 195-mile jaunt. My mother was dead set against it. My father asked questions and when we showed we were serious and were planning it well, he was provisionally for it. I know that cost him with my mother and I am so thankful he supported me. In the end, my buddy got a summer job and we didn’t make the trip. But the planning and the long rides on the weekends to get ready were great fun and it made me feel less like a boy and more like a man. And my father certainly gained a lot of respect from me.
Your son needs you to help him temper his aggression and risk-taking. He also needs you to temper his mother’s fear and attempts to stop him. You are far better qualified to help him find sane boundaries. Do that and push back against mom as needed even if it costs you.
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I have a slightly different take on mothers being overprotective. I think many women were raised in a very restrictive way. For me this definitely applied to my paternal aunt and my first cousins on my dad’s side. It applied to me also, in ways that were often very arbitrary.
If a woman was raised in a very restrictive way, and she does no self reflection whether this way appropriate or not–why wouldn’t this carry on in to her parenting? Or would she raise her daughters in the same restrictive way but give her sons substantial freedom that the daughters don’t have—which can also be incredibly problematic.
I think as parents we should all stand up for our children when they want to pursue something meaningful in their lives.
I know if I had wanted to do something similar as in your post, it would have been a hard no from my parents–honestly I would have known better than to ask. When I had asked for much smaller things–whether I received permission or not it was often very arbitrary. And of course whether my parents admitted it or not–it was because I was female.
I think we should all encourage our children to spread their wings. Neither of our children ever asked to do something as you describe in your example. However, what if mom says its okay—and dad says no–does that put a different spin on it.
My husband grew up in a more rural area, and was the youngest(so less supervision as a teen). Back in the days before stranger danger I suspect he and his friends did a fair amount of running wild. And he has had a lifelong friend that I suspect was a ringleader at trying to get his friends to go outside the safe boundaries.
My husband and I have mostly agreed on some of what is safe. No school driving permits before age 16–heavy peer pressure for that. No mopeds. Absolutely no riding on ATVs etc if we are not present. But my husband would say it is because he has been there done that being a testosterone influenced teen where he has been a little bit more wary of some situations my son would have wanted to be involved in –especially depending on what friend was involved.
I bring up the ATVs because we used to live adjacent to some undeveloped land where people would illegally ride their ATVs. The behavior and utter disregard for safety of these people was astounding. Obviously there are many dads who are good at setting good boundaries—but some are not.
@Denise, very good point about upbringing and how our daughters also deserve freedom. I grew up in the 80s and 90s and … let’s just say parents were a different breed then. My strict conservative parents were also weirdly permissive and hands-off. They allowed me to do things that in my opinion were very dangerous and placed me at risk. In turn, I think I may have over-corrected with my own children, and i tend to be quite protective. My mom often tells me I’m too cautious with my kids and “if you were that age, I would have let you.” Yeah mom, that’s kind of the problem! 🤣 for instance, I don’t let my children have sleepovers (unless it’s a family I know so well that I consider them to be family) and I don’t let them go over to a friend’s house if I haven’t met the parents first and “vetted” them. In my opinion, you have to know who your children are spending time with and have a good sense of the family’s values and how well the children will be supervised and what sorts of things they will be exposed to. In contrast, the summer I turned 16 and got my driver’s license, my parents allowed me to borrow the car and go on a road trip with my best friend (also 16) for the weekend, where we would drive to the neighboring big city (think like Philadelphia or DC) and stay the weekend with some of her friends, and stay out late and basically be unsupervised… it required driving on some busy unfamiliar highways (and this was before GPS) and there were no cellphones… in fact I wasn’t expected to stay in touch at all. I have many more anecdotes like that. To this day I can’t believe how hands-off my parents were and I would never do the same with my own children!
In our house after the request is asked or event that he wanted to do was described and he left to give us a moment to talk I would look at my husband and if he said “he’ll be all right” I would usually agree to it. My husband for things like risks has not yet gotten it wrong in regards to our son.
Totally the opposite in my house. I’m the wife, but it is my husband who is more restrictive with our children.
Countless times my children have asked to do a particular thing, and in my head I think, “yes”, but my husband will say, “no”. He just has a very different view of the danger aspect than I do.
He’s the husband, so he’s the one who makes the final decision, not me.
I’d be interested to hear what you might say to wives in this kind of situation.
@Wife – Is it about danger, or something else?
I’d suggest you pick things you think really matter to champion – in private.
@ Paul – I think it’s most often danger. For example, letting children climb trees (or not letting them, in my husband’s case).
I have tried talking to him privately, but haven’t seen much change.
@Wife – It would be interesting to dig into the roots of that. But I suspect he will have none of that. Does he treat you and himself the same way?
Pretty much.
This past weekend my 13-year-old son had a friend over (also 13) and they were playing outside while I was doing yard work because it was such a nice day; and they got it into their heads to take turns getting into a wagon we have and rolling it down our very long driveway, which is on a hill, and into the street; my younger children followed suit; and when I (mildly) objected worrying that someone was going to get hurt, my 13-year-old told me “we’re men, mom. That’s what men do.” 🤣🤣🤣 I said no more and they had a blast. And no one got hurt or hit by a car.
I have two younger brothers. I left home as a teenager and carved out my own life. My brothers were far less adventurous than I was. My son is a quiet intellectual sort as are his friends. You have to let your children be who they are regardless of their gender.
“Your son needs you to help him temper his aggression and risk-taking. He also needs you to temper his mother’s fear and attempts to stop him. You are far better qualified to help him find sane boundaries. Do that and push back against mom as needed even if it costs you.”
I know what it is like to ask your parents for something and have the say no, especially if it is something really special.. However I have to take issue with these last few sentences of your post.
Many moms are doing the heavy lifting in raising their boys. My son was friends with several kids from all boy families—the largest of these families had 8 boys! It is impossible for dads to be around 24/7. But if dad is “better qualified” to find sane boundaries why do these boundaries differ so much from family to family. My son went to public school and played sports until he graduated from high school—for many families those things would be outside their “sane boundaries”. Many moms spend countless hours helping their boys pursue their passions—could be supporting their desire to be in a robot building competition, taking drum lessons, taking them to the ski slope during winter or pursuing competitive sports. I met dozens of these moms while my kids were in school. If dads are so much better qualified in determining boundaries—–why do some of these dads seem almost entirely absent in their boy’s lives?
Good comments from Tory, Wife, Activemom and Fiona. My sister once climbed a tree and was up so high my mom was worried she would have to call the fire department to help her get back down. And parents can so arbitrarily decide what sane boundaries are—depending on their own beliefs, changing norms etc. Many members of my family tree grew up in Chicago. They weren’t “allowed” to go to coed high schools. But it was perfectly normal for them to run around in a large city navigating things like the El trains etc.
I was lucky that my parents ended up raising us in a town where the single gender high school was a thing of the past—otherwise that would have been my fate as well.
@Denise – Well said.
Obviously there are cases where the mother is restrictive of the boys’ sense of adventure and risk taking, and I don’t disagree with Paul’s overall sentiments here.
However, I did not enjoy reading the sentences that Denise highlighted. I’m assuming Paul didn’t intend this, but it did come across as saying the mother is some degree of hopeless in this regard, and that boys need to be saved from that by their fathers.
We’re not all like that, I promise :)
Perhaps there could have been a bit more of a balance in there somewhere, noting that not all mothers are fearful and overly restrictive.
I also agree with some of the comments that girls are often raised with more restrictions, simply because they’re female. I know a girl who was 7 years old and stated that “boys get to do all the fun stuff “. Sad.
Fathers – don’t forget to let your daughters have some fun too!
@Wife – As I am convinced gender differences are real, and often innate, I think there are places where a same-sex parent is far better equipped to help their child. Exceptions don’t change that reality.
And of course, the girls should be having fun too. And in most families mom is going to be better able to discern between safe and not safe for a girl.
@Denise – I didn’t give the exceptions bit at the end. I should probably do that for virtually every post I write, but no one wants to see that. I assume regular readers know.
The post was aimed at men, not women. I’ve written about similar things over on The XY Code aiming at women.
Dad is better qualified because he has the same drives. He also had the same less developed prefrontal cortex when he was 16 and all the girls were more mentally mature and thus less likely to make really bad choices. Even if mom really gets it, most teenage boys won’t believe that, which gives them an easy way to dismiss what mom says. Dad’s been there and done that, so he’s harder to blow off. He’s also more likely to catch things mom misses.
In the same way, there are places where a mother is more qualified than a father to help a daughter. A dad can try, but he lacks the experience and understanding most women will have.
I didn’t think I was talking about exceptions. In our state kids can get a permit to drive to school at 14 and a half years old—this is something many kids will ask for. Many kids ask to do things like moped riding, riding ATVs, boating with others which are potentially risky.
I get that the post was aimed at men. I know all about the prefrontal cortex. But if there is data to show that some activities are potentially risky, I don’t know why mom wouldn’t be involved in the decision making if she had concerns. I’m talking about activities where there are laws and accepted safety practices(helmets, life jackets) that a teen may or may not be mature enough to follow. I’m talking about activities that involved fatalities amongst younger age groups. Fatalities that have happened locally.
What would a mom miss that a dad would catch?
But even so, if dad is better qualified why do some dads make such markedly different decisions whether a given activity is okay for a kid. There are some dads today that are almost entirely trying to shelter their kids from anything in the “world”–others not so much.
My husband and I never had any arguments about any of these things. But for some activities we were making decisions for both our daughter and our son. To say I couldn’t have input on when my son could start learning to drive, or whether he could get a school permit just because I am a woman—but it would seemingly appropriate for me to have input for my daughter–I don’t understand.
And again, setting boundaries is something that goes on daily for parents–that isn’t an exception at all. Dad won’t always be there. A really simple example is the fact that my daughter is the oldest and we set boundaries just on that fact with activities at a given time–rather than their gender. Another simple day to day example is what friends could come over, how often and what friend combinations. The friend that was trying to stack the patio furniture to get to the roof—he was a over a little less often.
@Denise – Not sure you and I are talking about the same kind of risk. Watch teens on ATVs and you will find that most of the boys ride in a more dangerous way than most of the girls. It’s not as much what they are doing as how. (Accident reports confirm boys take more risks!)
I’m all for mom being involved. What I have a problem with is mom vetoing based on her fear. That is where dad needs to step up.