The Boys We Are Raising

by Michelle Worley, LMFT

I found myself unexpectedly emotional looking through pictures of my son and his friends getting ready for homecoming. Maybe because they look so grown up. And also so young.

And I’ve been thinking about the young woman at Cornell and the horrific things she reports happened to her at the hands of a group of young men.

And suddenly I’m looking at these pictures differently.

These are the years when our boys become men. I love these boys. I know their humor and their awkwardness and their goodness. I’ve watched some of them grow up. And loving them makes me feel even more strongly that we owe them conversations that go far beyond, “Don’t sexually assault someone.”

I don’t want the tenderness I feel toward these boys to blur the point: I stand with Jane Doe.

We have to talk to our sons about consent.

About what intoxication means for consent.

About pornography and the messages they receive about women.

About what happens when a group of men begins treating a woman like an object

instead of a human being.

We have to talk about the text thread.

The joke.

The picture someone shares.

The friend who is clearly crossing a line.

The moment when everyone else stays quiet because nobody wants to be the guy who ruins the night.

I want the young men I love to know that their responsibility is not simply to refrain from causing harm.

It is to notice.

To speak.

To interrupt.

To walk someone home.

To tell their friend, “No.”

To refuse to participate in someone else’s humiliation.

To understand that being a good man sometimes means being willing to become very unpopular with other men.

Looking at these pictures, I don't feel afraid of these boys.

I feel the weight of our responsibility to them.

Because they are still learning what kind of men they are going to be. And those lessons don't happen in one big conversation before we send them off to college.

We're teaching them now.

In what we laugh at.

In what we excuse.

In what we challenge.

In what we model.

In what we say about women when we think they aren't listening.

In what we teach them they owe another human being simply because that person is human.

These boys are becoming men.

May we love them enough to expect something meaningful from their manhood.