I bought my little boy a doll recently. A baby doll to be precise. My husband thinks it’s pretty amusing to wind me up about it.
You know, when you get a ‘thing’ in your head about an issue and you won’t stop going on about it… well that’s me about this doll. And boys. And empathy. And it’s not just an excuse to re-watch Mark Ruffalo on Sesame Street… I don’t need an excuse to do that.
I’ve always felt strongly that boys are done a huge disservice when they are taught not to be emotional or tender. Girls talk about their feelings, boys don’t. Right? That kind of projection is lazy and it makes me cross.
Why can’t we encourage the next generation of boys to grow up with the same emotional openness and intelligence that girls have? Jane Fonda spoke eloquently about this issue in her interview with Eve Ensler in 2007, and everything she said about emotional literacy resonated with me so strongly that I go back to it again and again.
The nature versus nurture debate is never going to be solved. There isn’t going to come a day where a professor pipes up with, “Eureka! The answer is eiπ + 1 = 0!”. When you become a parent you start to see both sides of the argument differently. I’ve always been more of a nurture girl, but I have to admit, my son displays a lot of the attributes that little boys are famous for. That’s fine, and if he favours football, cars and puppy dog’s tails that’s his business too, but I’ll be damned if he grows up unable to talk about his feelings.
So I’m starting with a doll. Which may not work, but I have to start somewhere. I show him how to cuddle the doll and kiss him goodnight, in an effort to encourage him to be gentle and kind to other humans. Most of the rest of the time he’s too busy trying to scale the bookcase or eat stones to pay much attention, but we have the odd breakthrough. Last week he watched me tuck the doll in and kiss him goodnight and he did the same. That’s a Eureka moment!
When he’s older we’ll talk about awareness of other people’s feelings – how it matters. And how his feelings matter and should be shared with people he trusts. Because the statistics around suicide and young men are just not ok.
Of course we need to teach young girls they can be anything they want to be when they grow up, that they’re equal and deserve all of the opportunities boys have. We just need to remember that boys need a different kind of encouragement.
Richard Attenborough is quoted as having said ‘Be kind, for everyone is fighting a very great battle’. Now that right there is the kind of man I want to raise my son to be.
Nessa Wrafter is an Irish girl living in London where she works as a writer, scriptwriter, voice actor and producer. She travels between London and Dublin with her brand new hubbie, and gorgeous new baby boy.
