This is the third post in a series I'm writing over the course of the next week on men and boys. These posts are aimed at gaining a deeper level of understanding for the men and boys in our lives and how our attitudes and actions affect the relationships we have with the our precious male people.
I welcome your feedback, questions and suggestions. If you would like to guest post on this series email me please at aylayoga at gmail dot com
Part 3, Raising Future Leaders and Providers
As we have discussed in section two of this series raising boys in today’s society is a challenge for a variety of reasons. There exists so much to drive our sons off track on their way to manhood, and there existed so much to drive our husbands off track when they were being raised.
Today’s post is about raising our boys to be the future leaders and providers their souls crave to be and to help us as wives and mother’s sustain the men in our lives to this position of leadership and responsibility, remembering that our husbands may not have had strong values instilled in them as young men and that we must be patient and supportive as we aide them on their path in the family mission.
Our young men today are in crisis. Many have been raised without strong father figures or consistent guidance. Those with a solid family background are challenged in other ways. They are hounded by our media driven culture which subverts the natural male instinct to proudly lead and provide and channels that nature instead into selfishness, video games, violent movies, military extremism and careless sexual attitudes.
If a boy can manage to avoid those pitfalls with a strong family and a healthy character he must then face the challenge of living in a society where feminism has gone so off track that women proudly call themselves “bitches” and behave thusly. A community where it is completely acceptable to degrade men in favor of holding women up to be the nobler and smarter half of the human race.
He will have to try and balance a social attitude which tells him he is both ignorant, smelly, sex obsessed, and dumb yet must provide unwavering support to a female community which proudly boasts in song, movies, poetry, books, looks, and words that they do not like or need him. How many times have you heard this; “Once women find out how to make sperm they’ll just get rid of all the men, they won’t need us after that. Ha ha.”
Our boys and men must live as second class citizens in their own homes for a social movement gone amuck. When I had my first son I proudly placed him in a little T-shirt which read “I love my feminist Momma.” Now I believe in equality of worth for both men and women but as I bring up my three little boys my heart aches at what over-blown feminism has done to the way we treat our men and boys.
I want my sons to be strong leaders and providers for my future daughters-in-law and grandchildren. I also want to raise boys who are not afraid to work hard for their family and to do what is best in guiding the next generation. In short I don’t want my son’s emasculated, degraded or put down.
To this end I am raising my sons to be strong leaders and good providers. In our home they will…
1. Learn to be proud, responsible, constant , consistent providers for their home through hard work and skill
2. Learn to love their wife and children
3. Learn to take the lead in the family gently, with kindness and input from family members when appropriate
4. Learn to be expressive enough to have honest dialogues with their wives about their family’s direction
5. Be strong enough to keep their sense of value and self worth in a society which is degrading to men and masculinity
6. Honor their role as stewards of Mother Earth and protectors of the feminine
The best way children learn these virtues is by example. They will learn to be proud providers if they see their fathers take on this role and especially if they see their mothers honor it. Remember, boys are raised predominately by their mothers; it is HER example which will set the stage for the man he will become. If their mothers speak ill of the father when he is away, openly criticize or ridicule him, if the mother picks fights or makes unfair demands upon her husband this is what young boys will learn is OK. One of the most important things parents can do is openly model a balanced, harmonious lifestyle to their children.
As women we must remember that men express their love differently than we do. We shower our children with affection through words and actions, men shower their love and attention upon us by providing a roof over our heads and food on our table. Remind your children of their father’s love and how he shows it. Encourage them to be openly thankful and respectful to their father. Remind them that honoring daddy’s decisions is the way they can participate in the family mission, in their family team.
When your boys are little take pride in sheltering them from negative influences. We tell our sons that video games will hurt their growing brains thus they are not allowed to play them until they are eighteen. In the same way they are not allowed to watch movies which are gratuitously violent or movies in which the characters are shown as openly disrespectful or movies which are overly feminist and degrading to men (I’ll be writing a post about this more in-depth later).
I remind my sons everyday that they are strong and responsible men. That they are honoring our Heavenly Parents and themselves by taking care of their family and their earth. I instill them with a sense of pride and duty in everything from taking out the compost to changing a diaper and I do not let them shirk responsibility in the hope that one day they will be the future leaders and providers our world needs.
