My sweet son looked at me with his cherubic face, tears rolling down his cheeks: “Mum, they said my trousers look like girl trousers. The older kids were shouting it at me in the playground. Please, please can you buy me some new ones?”
“And what is wrong with girl trousers?!” I snapped back.
His voice broke with panic: “Please, Mum. Please.”
And that was when I realised there is a time and place to talk to your child about gender equality. This wasn’t it.
My nine-year-old son had enough to deal with, wearing trousers that were two sizes too small. Expecting him to simultaneously solve centuries of patriarchy was perhaps a step too far.
I ordered him a new pair of trousers and gave him a cuddle. “Sorry about the trousers,” I said. “You’re right, they’re too small. I’ll get you new ones.”
As my sons get older – they are now nine and 11 – the pressure to instil in them healthy, positive lessons before they lose interest in my opinion looms large.
My eldest starts Year 7 in September, moving from the squishy cocooned comfort of primary school to the hormone-filled battlefield that is secondary school. He will soon be a teenager with testosterone coursing through his not-so-little body, and self-preservation will be his modus operandi.
I worry every single day that I haven’t done enough to develop his critical thinking skills, so he can successfully navigate the challenges that will be thrown at him.
Like many parents, I want my kids to question gender stereotypes. I want my boys to treat girls, and those with a different skin colour, as their equals. I want them to know that strength is not just about power, but about patience, empathy, and restraint.
I want them to grow up to be men who value their emotions, who understand that vulnerability is not a weakness but a courage all its own. I want them to be the kind of men who stand up for what’s right, even when it’s inconvenient, even when it’s uncomfortable. Not to be a hero, but to be a human.
I want them to be the kind of men who question, who challenge the expectations of what it means to be a man, and who understand that their worth is not measured by dominance or conquest, but by kindness and integrity.
But I’ll level with you: right now, that feels almost impossible.
I expect it has always been hard. I expect that every mother has wrestled with this challenge in some form or another.
But with the internet, certain politicians gaining expanded power, and male influencers projecting a type of masculinity that makes most women want to start a feminist commune on a remote island, it feels more daunting than ever.
We’ve spent the last few decades going absolutely mad with excitement about empowering girls. And rightly so.
But – and this is a bit awkward to say – hasn’t anyone noticed that we’ve left the boys out of the whole empowerment thing? Where’s their glittery, confetti-filled revolution? Where’s the damn high five for boys who, y’know, aren’t complete dicks?
Why have we poured so much energy into telling girls they can do everything – and then turned around and shrugged at the boys, like, “Well, you’ve got plenty of time to figure it out, right?”
And no, I’m not talking about a Boys’ Rights Movement or some weird, dark corner of the internet where men band together to make sure no one ever mentions women’s rights again.
I’m talking about the sheer, glaring imbalance. We’ve been telling girls they are strong and can be anything they want to be (and yes, trust me, I know all too well that structural barriers mean this isn’t always true). But we’ve spent virtually zero time helping boys become more nurturing, more emotional, more able to develop deep and meaningful relationships with other boys.
We are confidently telling girls they can be engineers, astronauts, and tech wizards, but we aren’t telling boys they can be nurses, childcare professionals, or stay-at-home dads.
It feels to me that we’ve spent far too long under the delusion that empowering girls means ignoring the confused, often overlooked, and desperately lost souls that are young men.
Boys are trailing behind girls in almost every subject and at every level of education. Boys are nearly twice as likely as girls to be identified as having special educational needs. Boys and men are more likely to die by suicide, with suicide being the biggest killer of men under the age of 50.
Men are far more likely to be both the perpetrators and the victims of physical violence. And, on average, men live shorter lives than women.
Of course, all of this has a huge impact on girls and women – not just because they could be our brothers, sons, dads, or partners, but because we know that the wellbeing of men is intrinsically linked to the wellbeing of women.
When boys and men suffer, so too do the communities they are part of, and the structures that depend on their participation – such as the workforce, the family unit, and society as a whole.
Women are often left to pick up the slack. Raising boys has made me realise that it is only when both women and men are supported equally that real progress can be made.
It feels to me that understanding how to raise our boys in the modern world is one of the most urgent conversations of our time.
That’s why, alongside my friend and colleague Elliott Rae, I am delving deep into this subject with a new podcast, To Be A Boy – with episodes landing every two weeks.
Together, we hope to unpick the hidden – and not-so-hidden – forces shaping our boys, tackle how we can better support the men in our lives, and push the boundaries of what it means to be a boy in today’s world.
