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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

#811
post #513

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was not my experience. The message was bitterness, and there is a reason their lot is poorly perceived. Try /r/menslib for a healthier discussion that isn’t centred around blaming women for everything.

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Re: Ignoring boys' emotional needs fuels public health risks

#812

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By failing to maintain the population. The richer people get, the fewer children they have. This is the same in countries all over the world. Your intuition is wrong on this one.

And why should we maintain the population ? Have we reached the perfect amount of people on earth ? We could be a lot less humans on earth, it would be amazing for the environment, and I think we'd be as happy. The only downside I see is economic (in the sense that everything is built with the expectation of growth). But it is to me an economic problem, and not a reproduction problem.

> > And why should we maintain the population ? Have we reached the perfect amount of people on earth ?

Because when people are happy they fuck on impetuous and fucking on impetuous generates children (modulo vasectomy and morning after pill)

It’s not about the outcome , it’s about the happiness on the way there, whatever outcome it might be.

Also when people are happy they wind up perishing by fucking around in the real world due to excessive confidence doing dangerous activities such as drinking and driving, jetski accidents, drug overdoses etc

You have to substitute these people somehow and not only that, Nature installed a mechanism inside their brain so that the more they engage in dangerous activities the more they tend to have unprotected sex.

So to summarize we want to have a world above replacement rate because having a world above replacement rate is correlated with having a good time, wheras realities such as Japan represent a dystopian world where everybody live to 100 but they are miserable throughout their lives

Re: Ignoring boys' emotional needs fuels public health risks

#813

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From things like "my son left his math book in school, can someone send a picture of page 23 so we can prepare for the test" to "my daughter didn't write down the homework assignments; can someone send them" to organizing the class outing, discussing general issues with teachers or the schools organization.

Doesn't this just delay learning about responsibility and consequences until later, when the consequences might actually be real? Parents getting this involved in the children's learning seems really, really weird to me.

This is the content I've seen so far, limited to primary school children.

I'm German so my view may not be the prevailing one in the US, but I see my role as including making sure that the kids get a proper education. This includes making sure they are doing their homework and are revising for tests.

The consequence of forgetting (or "forgetting" ;) ) to write down their homework assignments or their books is not a work-free afternoon, an inconsequential negative remark by their teacher or a slightly worse test score (I'd argue that at primary school age consequences have to follow directly; a delayed test score does not register).

The first time it happened, they got a friendly expansion of the expectations. The second time an expression of disappointment. There hasn't been a third time.

Re: Ignoring boys' emotional needs fuels public health risks

#814
The HN commentary on this article is strange. The title is "The ‘manning up of boys begins in the cradle.’ But what boys really need is emotional support from their dads" (why is the HN submission title different from the article title, by the way?). Yet so many commenters here are arguing about men's rights and discrimination against men instead. The article isn't about how fathers are somehow prevented from being emotionally available to their sons; rather, it's about how fathers choose to be emotionally unavailable to their sons in the misguided notion that boys need to be trained from childhood to be "manly" and "strong". A telling quote: "Fathers are also more likely to sing to and soothe their toddler daughters at night when they cry."

Re: Ignoring boys' emotional needs fuels public health risks

#815

This comment will probably be lost but hey maybe someone will read it: We inherited a world where for many generations, men were hostile to women. It was unfair and needed rectifying. But increasingly, we fixed it by normalizing hostility to men. Overemphasis on "toxic masculinity", hyper focus on promoting outcomes for girls while doing nothing of the sort for boys. Plenty of various "Women in X" supporting each oth…

> men were hostile to women

Were they really though? I mean, yes there always were and always will be some abusive men, but men _as a group_ have been more associated with protecting and caring for women than being hostile to them. Until very recently in human history, women actually couldn't physically survive without men - it's only been in the past few generations that the nature of work has changed to where women could actually perform it.

Re: Ignoring boys' emotional needs fuels public health risks

#816
post #736

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really wish schools taught humility. As a new parents we got tons of books as gifts on pregnancy and baby's first year or two. But then it ended. I continue to buy books on parenting, child psychology, etc. But sadly it seems once baby turns toddler, most parents are done with learning. One of the most common toxic phrase I keep hearing from these parents is I was raised this way, look I turned out to be fine. Of c…

Ok but if hubris is profitable, why couldn't or wouldn't a private school teach it? There's alot of people pissing on public schools, whether to sabotage the general public or have special non-standard curriculum only available in private schools, I have no idea.

There is a lot of pissing on public schools because the public has lost sight of why they exist.

There is a lot of religious-y "If you don't go to school you will spend an entirety in hell, er, flipping burgers" or "Those who graduate will make more money – please don't notice that incomes are stagnant and that those with struggles in life that will make them economically unproductive fail/drop out because of the same struggles" nonsense floating out there, but not a lot of concrete details on what value is actually delivered. Other governmental departments put a lot of effort into communicating their value proposition, but schools seem rest on faith.

Which may have been fine a century or two ago when people still remembered why the schools were created, but people now forget. As such, they seek out things they think the schools should do to justify an existence.

Re: Ignoring boys' emotional needs fuels public health risks

#817

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From things like "my son left his math book in school, can someone send a picture of page 23 so we can prepare for the test" to "my daughter didn't write down the homework assignments; can someone send them" to organizing the class outing, discussing general issues with teachers or the schools organization.

Doesn't this just delay learning about responsibility and consequences until later, when the consequences might actually be real? Parents getting this involved in the children's learning seems really, really weird to me.

Also I was glad they could ask for anything they missed when my girls were still learning the language and were spending most of their class time trying to grasp what they were told in class.

Re: Ignoring boys' emotional needs fuels public health risks

#818

This plays out at all levels. I felt extremely insulted just a few days ago when my youngest’s preschool held a gathering to celebrate their “graduation” to pre-school. At least 4 times mothers were called on to step forward— once to have a song sung to them, another to receive a flower, etc. Fathers were not mentioned at all. This prompted me to look around, get a rough sense of the distribution… Counting the kids &…

It is annoying ( effectively being excluded ), but do we need social validation to do our job ( raising kids )? Now, if the teacher is withholding information, that is a different story.

Re: Ignoring boys' emotional needs fuels public health risks

#819
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…

Interesting. I thought for 1 there was actually both : half men are effeminate and the other half basically ultra-masculine gym bros ^^. Eastern Europe looks interesting tho

Masculinity is summed up in the motives behind why we do things: are you running from something or are you building towards something?

You can build an impressive body because you're running from the thoughts and feelings you get when you're at home alone without the endorphins in your blood. Or you can have a vision and build towards that actively.

You'll always have both to some degree in everything but the core point here is what percentage are spending in which pole?

Re: Ignoring boys' emotional needs fuels public health risks

#820

This comment will probably be lost but hey maybe someone will read it: We inherited a world where for many generations, men were hostile to women. It was unfair and needed rectifying. But increasingly, we fixed it by normalizing hostility to men. Overemphasis on "toxic masculinity", hyper focus on promoting outcomes for girls while doing nothing of the sort for boys. Plenty of various "Women in X" supporting each oth…

Imo I think this comment would have had more weight behind it for me before recent political events and before Roe vs Wade was overturned. I don’t believe in easy answers and I don’t claim to be able to experience life from the other gender, but cat calling is still common in the US. Women still get payed significantly less than men. Women still have much higher risks of sexual assault. We just decided to roll back constitutional protections for abortion something that imo is critical for women’s ability to exist as equal citizens. I don’t think we’ve pendulum swung somehow past equality. Obviously something has gone wrong for men in the US. Stats around education, depression, and suicide make that hard to dispute, but it remained the fact that a boy born today can expect to have more power than his sister.

I do think this can be true while there can also be elements of society that push the other way. Culture is made up of many micro cultures and the kid born in SF will have a different experience than the one born in Mississippi, but we do have bigger issues than people on the internet making fun of mansplaining or something. It’s just too easy to have one’s perception of reality distorted by your perception.

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