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Ignoring boys' emotional needs fuels public health risks

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Re: Ignoring boys' emotional needs fuels public health risks

#741

Post by SSLy »

ianai wrote: post #695
_xnmw wrote: post #593

OK, this is going to sound extremely controversial, but as a person who lived for many years in three different worlds: 1. The Western world (born/raised/educated in Canada) 2. The Arab world (lived for years in Jordan, have Muslim/Arab roots) 3. Eastern Europe (currently living in Ukraine for many years, now volunteering in the war) My observation is that 1. has an overly effeminate culture and harmfully stifles mas…

I’m reminded of a general trend I heard of from sociology decades ago-societies birthed around plenty of water tend to be more sexually liberal than those from dryer places. The US is somewhat a mix of that while UA seems to have consistent water access. Are people as glued to social media in EE as they are in the US? Have they had a #metoo movement? How about religious zealots? Granted, in UA it goes a long way to f…

> *Are people as glued to social media in EE as they are in the US?

Millenials and Gen-Z? Absolutely.

>Have they had a #metoo movement?

Not really, other problems abound.

>How about religious zealots?

In Poland thanks to them abortion was recently banned. Other countries don't really pay attention to them.

Re: Ignoring boys' emotional needs fuels public health risks

#742

Post by brazzy »

noname2021 wrote: post #444

Here's a thought and I am writing this as I don my kevlar flame retardant jacket. For most things in life where we could impact the lives of other people materially - driving is a good example - we ensure some minimal amount of training before letting people perform that activity. However with parenting we have nothing and the result it seems is we pay with a ton more resources downstream in the way of therapy, deten…

My city (Munich, Germany) automatically sends "parent letters" to every child registered here (they are addressed "To the parents of ), which contain advice on dealing with common problems and questions as well as providing information about support services, sorted by age.

So for example, the one for 3,5 years has sections on how to deal with food pickiness, or with excessive preference for one parent.

Re: Ignoring boys' emotional needs fuels public health risks

#743

Post by mathgladiator »

They also need rough play. Last night, I was playing with my nephew, and I was just picking him up and tossing him on the couch. Then, I was choking him out, and he was just laughing and laughing.

I think about what men need most, and I'm pretty sure it is brotherhood. People that you can go, hang out with, and not hold back with. I've thought about getting into men's health because I see the future in my nephew. I don't want him demoralized by the world... I want him to become strong, manifest virtue, and build a better world.

Re: Ignoring boys' emotional needs fuels public health risks

#744

Post by Neil44 »

cies wrote: post #614
Neil44 wrote: post #608

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My daughter's teacher this year just straight blanks me at the parent consultations. Like, it's uncomfortable. Speaking to some other fathers it's not just me. But I am still undecided over whether it's worth complaining as her holding her hands up and saying mea culpa seems somewhat unlikely and I feel I would quickly become the bad guy.

> My daughter's teacher [...] it's not just me Maybe it was just her though. I'd talk to the school director over this.

You're not wrong but at the same time she otherwise seems to do a good job with my daughter which I'm keen not to in any way get in the way of by making this about me.

Re: Ignoring boys' emotional needs fuels public health risks

#745

Post by prmoustache »

itronitron wrote: post #728
globular-toast wrote: post #686

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is a parents' WhatsApp group for?

To help Meta collect more information on everybody and their children.

I wish people were using xmpp, tox, briar or jami but that is the way it is. Network effect.

Re: Ignoring boys' emotional needs fuels public health risks

#746

Post by brazzy »

fifticon wrote: post #703
pastage wrote: post #663

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> smack our kid into submission What does this mean? I never talk child care in any significant way on the net, so I feel there are way to many ways too misinterpret this. Even the nice interpretation of this would border on illegal here. (FWIW I think I agree with you on all accounts and I have had it easy)

I don't think this was intended as "physically hitting". The intent was "ignore what the kid is requesting, and communicate to them 'no you don't want that, it is wrong to want that'". One way to do that would of course be to "hit", but the idea is about insisting that 'your view is right', and ignoring/not acknowledging the need the child is trying to communicate. My point being, this can do almost as much damage, e…

> I don't think this was intended as "physically hitting".

I am very sure it was. In many parts of the world (including the USA) that is still completely accepted and normal.

Re: Ignoring boys' emotional needs fuels public health risks

#747

Post by phil21 »

myshpa wrote: post #636
antigonemerlin wrote: post #479

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's exactly what my father did. He took parenting classes at the library, because he wanted to learn more and didn't think that just because he considered himself successful in business and life, he would necessarily understand pedagogy. To that, I am eternally grateful to him. It's very hard for people to swallow their pride and admit humility, to say "I don't know" and listen to the experts. I have an immense amou…

I've read somewhere that just buying a parenting book, even without reading it, can make some people better parents or have a positive influence. Simply thinking about how to be a better parent and showing an interest in improving can lead to self-reflection and conscious consideration of parenting approaches. While reading the book (attending the course) would likely provide more benefits, just the intention to be a…

I've been around the block a decent number of times, having had a kid way too early at the age of 19. Now I'm 42 and watching friends raise kids, along with many others throughout the years - my kid is 22 now.

The sole thing that is universal is simply giving a shit and putting effort in. If you legitimately care about your kids and live a life to ensure they get the best reasonable outcome you can achieve for them, things are likely to turn out fine.

This goes across countries, continents, cultures, socioeconomics, you name it.

Anything else after that is basically focusing on micros vs. macros. It's amazing how rare this train in parenting actually is.

After that it's largely on society in most places. The suburbanized atomic family expected to handle everything on their own are extreme headwinds for the average parents to push against for example. Only once you get beyond this would I feel "parenting education" would be worthwhile of any serious society effort.

Re: Ignoring boys' emotional needs fuels public health risks

#748

Post by itsoktocry »

paganel wrote: post #646
ZephyrBlu wrote: post #633

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's interesting that when people talk about having another child there is almost always the implicit assumption of maintaining at least the same lifestyle. I was quite amused that in your comment you explicitly talk about expanding your lifestyle to have another child: "the need for a larger car and possibly larger house". Poor people have more children than well off people until you hit top >1% incomes. Economics i…

> Economics is not the thing stopping people from having kids, reduction in lifestyle is. Technically you're somewhat correct, because it sucks to have kids when you know they'll be raised by an economically poorer you. And as most of the people don't see themselves as economically stable given the socio-economic conditions that have been in place for the last 15-20 years, that means that many people give up having k…

>And as most of the people don't see themselves as economically stable given the socio-economic conditions that have been in place for the last 15-20 years

But as the OP says, this is almost backwards. The poorest in America are continuing to have children; their lifestyle isn't encumbered by a family.

Meanwhile, it's the young professionals, who sometimes have a skewed view of what it means to be "poor", who aren't starting families because they don't want to give up aspects of their lifestyle. Again, not a judgment, just observing.

This is a cultural thing. My wife and I ended up with a child at a fairly advanced age. We moved to a rural area about 5 or 6 years ago. Now that our child is of the age to play sports and other activities, we are socializing with other parents. They are sometimes half our age, married with families in their early 20s. These people are what would generally be considered "lower-middle class". And yet most of them have everything they need. There's no expectation that you're going to be a globe-trotting nomad, or live in a 5000 sqft house here. Raising a family is a priority.

Re: Ignoring boys' emotional needs fuels public health risks

#749

Post by erenyeager »

quixoticaxolotl wrote: post #370
lo_zamoyski wrote: post #245

It is absolutely true that boys have been neglected. But the contempt of men is a recent phenomenon. Feminism has a great deal to do with it, demonizing masculinity by construing all men as brutes and promoting the false doctrine that men are unnecessary, that women are self-sufficient, that the patriarchy is some kind of evil oppressive thing. All of that is false. Men and women are complementary , which is to say t…

With respect, there are some errors in your thesis. Specifically, you're attacking some strawmen. Here's the steelmanned version of the ideas you're saying are causing issues: - Instead of defining men / women, think of each human as a person . There are no strong men, sensitive boys, intelligent women, vulnerable girls - there are only strong people, weak people, hard people, soft people. Our job as society is to co…

But these qualities are gendered. Women are in general not wanting to be leaders in the same fields as men, and these fields are generally in prominent prestige (think roles like banking, lawyers, leadership, etc). In fields like medicine where there is more gender balance and even more women at the lower roles (like Nurses), we see these fields have more qualities of care imbued as well as the leadership that a physician need demonstrate. But even it was controversial for women to be doctors in the times that physicians had a lot more authority... now when the field has curtailed physician autonomy and become more about shared decision making, it is interesting to see that more women are entering the doctor role.

Still when it comes to leadership, it suits a man by his qualities to be a leader, while a woman is suited for other roles. You can just see this by the role mothers play in their families versus fathers. If you have an imbalance or the women starts taking control or leadership in the family when the men are still present, then you get a lot of wonky results.

Re: Ignoring boys' emotional needs fuels public health risks

#750

Post by lapcat »

Natsu wrote: post #696
lapcat wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It used to be done by promoting marriage and stigmatizing divorce. Stigmatizing divorce does absolutely nothing to make fathers emotionally invested in their kids. If anything, it can make them resentful of their kids. The article was about how boys need emotional support from their father. A father who is present and married but still demands that his son "man up" and bottle up every problem is of no help.

It's really hard to be emotionally invested when you're totally absent from most of their lives, though. It doesn't work the other way, i.e. it won't fix a bad father, but there are plenty of guys who could do better by literally just showing up.

> It's really hard to be emotionally invested when you're totally absent from most of their lives, though.

Why would you be totally absent from most of their lives?

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