I started this project of raising a feminist son out of fear of him becoming like the men who had neglected me, beaten me, abandoned me, preyed on me. Today, I see my son turned into a man who looks a lot like those men, but I don't see in my son an oppressor. In fact, my son is vulnerable. He is an American boy with brown skin. Just as Audre Lorde said in 1975, white women's feminism may not be appropriate for women of color, and I believe that it may not be adequate for my boy of color. I am working - alongside white feminists and feminists of color, of all genders, including trans feminists and queer feminists - to tailor a beautiful, sleek, custom-made, expandable and yet timeless feminism for my child. Which is where you come in. If you are reading this book, you have a boy in your life whom you want to raise as a feminist. I hold you in happy solidarity. And I tell you we are not alone. We can build a gentle and vital masculinity from the ground up. We can raise our children without gender stereotypes, perhaps even without gender binaries, so that they are free to experience and express the whole spectrum of human emotion. And, we can be all sorts of family as we do it. Most of my rearing of Gibran was done as a single mother. Perhaps that made my job of raising him a feminist easier, perhaps it made it harder. I have witnessed the strengths and weaknesses of the feminist enterprise in all kinds of families. In 1996, when my boy was one year old, researcher Phyllis A. Katz published a paper titled " Raising Feminists ," in which she pointed to one significant contributor that determined whether or not your child would be a feminist: parental behavior. For one, Katz pointed out, many children rely less on sex-role stereotypes if their mothers have been employed outside the home. I do not believe that my stay-at- home-mom friends are not raising feminists, but I have come to see that mothers who seek and find fulfillment of any kind outside their home-maker roles are more likely to phone home and ask their sons to fold the laundry. I made it a point at least once a week to call my teenaged boy and ask him, "What's for dinner?" Katz and her fellow researchers found that at three years, a child was less into gender stereotypes if the parents displayed "a more positive parenting style - they granted their children more independence and they were less demanding, less authoritarian, and warmer than parents of more sex-typed children". The report from my friend Julie and her husband Ragan is that they are doing well in raising their son (and their new baby girl) to be feminists. For one, they are modeling for their children a different gender-role equation. Julie has a Ph.D. and is a professor. Ragan is a musician who works odd construction jobs. Julie is putting Ragan through college to be an engineer so he can bring those skills to his music production career. They also re-order the chores at home, bring in gender-neutral books, and praise gentleness and respect in both kids, especially in their son. "Things get tough when our parents are around, though," Julie says to me, lowering her voice on the phone because her parents are visiting. "They aren't exactly on board with this idea of raising a feminist boy." Those last two words are down to a whisper. In the battle to straitjacket boys' masculinity, millennial feminists like Julie and Ragan are seeking an armistice. No, actually, they're going a step further and seeking an ally in their boy. Fourth wave feminism, researchers tell us, is going to bring boys and men along. Moms on Twitter are saying yes, please . All over the globe, parents, teachers, activists, and boys are building a league of male feminists and allies that will, very soon, laugh in the face of misogyny. Take Matt Chen and Matias Benitez, who answered actress Emma Watson's call for male feminist allies and started a HeForShe Club in their high school - Regis High School in Manhattan. When the boys heard that some girls had felt uncomfortable and had been touched inappropriately at some of the Regis High School dances in previous years, the HeForShe club collaborated with the nearby Catholic and all-girls Marymount School to host a conversation about how to shut that kind of thing down at the school's dances. Take Urvashi Sahni, an educator who has developed a special curriculum for teachers of working-class boys in the Prerna Boys School in Lucknow, India. Her teachers go through rigorous training so they can teach boys how to demonstrate "responsive care" to one another. Boys caring for other boys is a first step toward teaching them self-awareness and socio-emotional awareness, so they can examine masculinity, violence against women, gender, and marriage. The teachers ask the boys to look around in their community and notice how gender injustices crush their own dreams and fatten their own fears and those of the girls and women in their lives. Take the men across the world leading the Man Box study, which, in 2017, showed that young men (ages 18-30) feel pressure to "act tough," which then causes harm to those around them and to themselves. The study went deeper to find that these behaviors led to a cost of $20.9 billion that could be saved by the US, UK, and Mexican economies if there were no "Man Box." What were these behaviors and what did they lead to? Sexual violence, bullying and violence, suicide, traffic accidents, binge-drinking, and depression. A private boys' school in Croydon, England, drew this link between male learned behavior and the fact that suicide is the most common cause of death among men in the UK under 45. They brought in volunteers for a charity called the Great Men Initiative, where trained men bring in lesson plans to teach boys about gender issues. Take Fatma Ozdemir Uluc, who led a British Council-supported study into gender equality in Turkish schools. One of her social science teachers gave the students homework to observe their family for a week and report back on who was getting the most tired. A sixth-grade boy reported that his older sister and mother were the most tired because they were doing all the chores in the house. His older sister was preparing for her university exam and still was expected to bring him his tea. Once the boys woke up to this gendered injustice around them, the teachers brought in the families and talked about how they may treat boys and girls equally. One school put on a play about Cinderella, casting a boy in the lead role to find out how this changed the story. Take an initiative in which 36 Kenyan preschool teachers participated in a study to see if they held gender-stereotyped views and if they communicated these views to children during selection and use of play materials. In short, the world is conspiring to raise feminist boys. You, and I, and the whole wide world. The part of me that wants to raise a feminist son is the same part of me that wanted to make sure his Hercules blanket was tucked in well enough around him so he wouldn't be cold as a three-year-old. It's the same part of me that made sure I put an egg on his plate for breakfast every day before school because research said that kids who ate protein for breakfast stayed alert in class longer. It's the same part of me that tells him to call me if he and his friends have been drinking and need a ride; I'll be there, no questions asked. I wanted my baby warm, I wanted my boy well-fed, I want my young man alive. I want to send a good man out into the world and I want for my grown son a good life, with a fulfilled and happy partner. Simone de Beauvoir, in The Second Sex , said: "When we abolish the slavery of half of humanity, together with the whole system of hypocrisy that it implies, then the 'division' of humanity will reveal its genuine significance and the human couple will find its true form." In a world where relationships are jaded, fraught, and short-lived, I want for my son a great love. I want him to be fully shaped so that when love arrives, the human couple can find its true form. It hasn't been easy, and it isn't over yet, but I believe I have raised a feminist son. I see signs of it every day. I know how much you want this, too, and the chapters that follow are an invitation to just go for it . Excerpted from How to Raise a Feminist Son: Motherhood, Masculinity, and the Making of My Family by Sonora Jha All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
