NICOLAS MARTINEZ

The answer is simple. They don’t.

All too often I hear the argument that young boys need a male role model in their lives. Having a father around in a young boy’s life would fix the drug and violence problem because the “father figure” would provide structure and discipline in the boy’s life. There are two things wrong here:

1. This argument unfairly expects men to be aggressive and disciplinary – not all men are born to be assertive. This gender norm assumes that fathers must be the source of discipline and structure and implicitly assumes that women cannot provide discipline. Moreover, if a mother is assertive, social norms dictate that she is acting out of her place and not being nurturing enough. Male partners need support just as much as female partners in decision-making and administering discipline. We have to move away from telling fathers to “man-up” because it unfairly places unrealistic expectations on men.
2. This argument assumes that mothers cannot be adequate role models for young boys – on the other side of the coin, we assume that women cannot be role models. Yes, we should be teaching our young boys (and girls, but more on that later) how to be upstanding citizens and responsible adults. But in traditional frameworks, society places the responsibility on men to teach those values, rather than women. This unfairly takes power away from the mothers (who literally grew a human inside of them, no easy feat) to teach their children discipline, values, morals, responsibility. This framework reduces the women to an incubator, rather than a mother – someone to provide food and warmth, but nothing else.

Boys are allowed to have mothers who teach them life values. Boys are allowed to have fathers who give nurturing care and emotional support. There is nothing inherent to having a father that makes young boys any more or less of a “man”.

In my own experience, my mother and father were both strong role models and always worked together to solve problems. I saw strengths in my mother and my father that I wanted to emulate. Often my mother would be the disciplinarian, and my father the emotional support. It wasn’t set in stone though, and they often traded roles, either intentionally or unintentionally. We shouldn’t encourage parents to assume one role over the other, because women can be strong and men are allowed to be weak – these are the things that we need to teach our children.

As a side note, I do not mean to imply that having a single parent household is either better or worse for children. I only mean to highlight the implicit gender norms that we unfairly place on mothers and fathers. I should also note, my line of thinking works strictly within hetero-normative frameworks – I hope to expand outside of those bounds later on.