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Originally Posted by mixedmedia
My main problem with the idea that single motherhood is somehow 'ruining' our men is that it doesn't take into account all of the wonderful young (and not so young) men that were raised by single mothers and somehow ignores all the assholes that happened to be raised in two-parent homes. It's not fair to make them a scapegoat. I mean, if you want to be 'men,' then stand up and take responsibility for your own behavior.
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"Just stand up and take responsibility" is easier said than done, and it's deceptively simple. How does one take responsibility? What does that even mean? I think this is where a lot of men get lost. This is not to say women don't get lost too, but in the case of men, many of them haven't had the opportunity to observe male role models, whether they were good or bad.
Much of this stems from the absentee father, whether it is a single-mother situation or, as in my case, the father who works all day outside the home and spends countless evenings either sitting in a bar or on a couch watching TV and interacting mainly with sarcasm or teasing, either physically absent or emotionally absent. These are extreme examples, but there are degrees otherwise.
The idea of a "generation raised by women" or "the impact of single motherhood" isn't about blaming, scapegoating, or attributing all responsibility on women; it's about figuring out the real impact overall. It's also about placing the onus on men, whether fathers or not, and how they influence children and young adults.
Sure, our roles in society have become more flexible and less rigidly defined, but the balance is still generally in favour of traditional models: women tend to spend more time working within the family; men tend to spend more time working outside of the family.
This isn't the case across the board, and I think the times have changed enough that we're slowly finding solutions to problems we see, but you have many cases where children of both genders have little if any time with male role models. And I'm sure it's often the case that men are disengaged because they drop into family life after spending so much time outside of it. It's difficult to switch gears that way.
And then you have the common situation of two working parents, which means that the majority of a child's time is spent with influences outside the family, namely, school and after-school activities. And snowy raised a good point about male teachers and how their impact on male students shouldn't be underestimated. Most primary school teachers are female.
So what you get is both girls and boys interacting for a large proportion of their time with female adults. Unless you think that interacting with men and women is exactly the same experience, then you should at least accept the fact that there is an imbalance of influence with regard to role models and their impact on young people over their entire upbringing.
Coming back to responsibility. Do men and women do the exact same things to take responsibility over all stages of life? Are women the best equipped to teach or otherwise provide an example of how boys should learn how to take responsibility over each stage of their lives?
It's not so easy to think of these things. In a perfect world, gender shouldn't matter with these issues. But I tend to think that it does. As I said, I'm exploring these issues. I've enjoyed this thread so far.