JR assumes a portion of the blame:
I really enjoyed your piece on men…let me suggest also that along with the absent fathers, many mothers can and did contribute to their son’s stay into boyhood. I was one of them.
As a single parent I often told my son “not to fight back” in school if at all possible. Knowing the insane policy of the school to expel both victim and bully. I brought him up to not like guns, and I wish I would have taken him to a firing range to learn how to use one. One day, when he was around 10, I saw a neighborhood black kid (who was around 15) kicking my son in the side, while his best friend stood by and watched.(we are white) That day I was awakened to reality and told him, inside of murder, go ahead and fight back with all full fury, damn the schools. IT was a little late, but better late than never.
Thank goodness my son loved sports and learned many “manly” examples from teammates and coaches.
It’s a man’s world, you guys built it, most of the time woman just take care of it.(now, I’m not putting us down, just thinking of a bell curve) I grew up in the 60’s with all the woman”s revolution crap, and I played drums for a living in bands, and lugged around a lot of heavy equipment until one day, I looked at the size of the forceps on the guys and said, “here, I’ll carry the microphones and carry my set, but I’m not lugging those huge 4560’s JBL speakers anymore.” No one said a word….
I still believe that men and woman can be equal in intelligence, but I’m always telling my x-Navy Seal husband, who never believes me, that if HE would just call when we have a complaint about something, it would get taken care of…..it’s the pitch of the voice, it’s the respect of sheer force…it’s mother nature…and to ignore it is stupid. I wish I could convince him of all the trouble I have to go through when all it would take would be one phone call from him.
Men are needed as parents. Period.
I suppose there’s something to the idea that you can’t have a mama’s boy without a mama. But then, JR was raising the boy as a single parent. There are plenty of men who have abdicated their responsibility to be a role model, in which case the mother is acting as a virtual single parent.