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I have two daughters and a son aged 18-24. My son is 24 and is working on his Ph.D. in computer science, so he's doing alright. But my wife and I worried about
by taylodl 6y ago
I have two daughters and a son aged 18-24. My son is 24 and is working on his Ph.D. in computer science, so he's doing alright. But my wife and I worried about him the most while he was growing up.
For starters, an alarmingly high number of his friends and classmates were diagnosed with ADHD and so were drugged. Boys need more physical engagement - especially when they're younger. Yet schools are reducing time for recess.
I taught my kids to take care of their own business and not tattle so long as: nobody was seriously hurt (no blood), no one was in immediate danger, and property wasn't being destroyed. Those aren't the rules they use at school. Kids continually tell on one another to try to get each other in trouble. Boys tend to be more "ornery" and so tend to get in trouble a lot. This creates an atmosphere where boys are viewed as being "just bad." Sadly, boys learn that girls are "sneaky." That has its own issues but that's for another post.
Bullies are another matter. I was raised to not start fights but finish them. I raised my son the same way. That's not AT ALL how schools work. They do nothing about bullies. Their "no tolerance" policies for bullies are laughable because they don't do anything about bullies. Teachers have told me their hands are tied. They know who the bullies are, but now there's such a stigma with being branded a "bully" the administrators won't let them do anything about it. Eventually the bully will get their just reward and their parents will raise holy hell with the school and the tables get reversed: the bully is the victim. It's disgusting. I've seen that happen time and time and time again. I did see a teacher once stand up to the bully's parents and the school administrators and inform them the bully was, in fact, a bully and learned an important lesson in life. Thank goodness she had a paper trail tracking parents' complaints and had the backing of all the other parents.
As part of all this is parents today won't accept that their children aren't perfect little angels. I knew my kids weren't perfect - they're kids. Their teachers appreciated that they could work with my wife and I if they were having issues. They lamented that so many parents simply wouldn't accept that their children weren't perfect and refused to work with teachers to rectify a situation.
Finally, when my son went to college he had to contend with all the so-called Social Justice Warriors blaming all men, especially white men, for all the world's ills. Never mind that my son and his friends had nothing to do with making the world what it is - just like the SJWs. The sad irony is in their eagerness to blame these young men for all the world's problems they were undermining what I was teaching him about how we came to be in the mess we're in and what steps we can take to get out. I was trying to raise my son to be a good man and the SJWs were making it clear that their world view didn't include the concept of a "good man."I could go on and on and on regarding this issue, but that would be for another post.
My daughters? They never had any of these problems. None.
Obviously things turned out okay and grad school has been completely different for my son than undergraduate school but - the whole point is my wife and I worried about him a lot more than we ever worried about our daughters.
The good news? Yes, you're going to worry more about your sons. That's just a fact of the times in which we're living. Raising kids has never been easy and raising sons has become harder. My advice is to persevere and raise them to be a good man: a man who respects all people regardless of sex, race, religion, or sexual orientation; a man who knows it takes many different perspectives to solve today's problems. It's not easy and it never has been - but the rewards are worth it!
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- birdyrooster 6y agoBeing confronted about white male privilege isn't a problem. It's not about whether your son whipped slaves, the question is about does your son support the status quo which was created by whipping slaves? The status quo that favors white men? Women and particularly black women and women of color face problems that are much more significant. One being how medicine is worse quality for women than men or how medical outcomes for black people are worse than whites.
- taylodl 6y agoDoes my son support the status quo that keeps the 0.01% of Americans in power and leaving millions of Americans destitute and fighting one another for the remaining scraps? No. At the same time, the self-anointed "Social Justice Warriors" shouldn't assume that a white, male, STEM major isn't "woke." Paradoxically, this toxic behavior is increasing the obnoxious "tech bro" phenomenon. EDIT: Something you may not be aware of is these young, white males are being targeted by white supremacist groups on college campuses. Of course they don't call themselves that. When these young men are isolated from their peer group and derided solely on the basis of their sex and race (ironically enough) then they can fall prey to these groups that will take them in and tell them this derision stems from the SJW's jealousy of the white male superiority. That's how these white supremacist groups are recruiting these young men on college campuses, and according to my son it's disturbingly effective. This is not progress.
- jokethrowaway 6y agoIf you think we live in a society with systemic racism, can you point out anything which is systemically racist? No, a few racist individuals don't count, we'll always have plenty of those. The status quo doesn't favour white men, it favours old white men who were doing business 50 years ago and made a fortune. It's not white male privilege, it's a minority of old white men who made more money compared to other social groups, because of racism and because women were spending their time growing children and nurturing society instead of working. There is plenty of poor white men. And I'm not mentioning men soldiers, men doing dangerous jobs, men in prison, men who lose everything because of a divorce or men who commit suicide.