How Do We Raise Sons Who Won’t Become Part of the Problem?

The sexual assault allegations coming out of Cornell University this week are horrific, and you should be appalled whether you have a daughter, are a daughter or are just a human on planet earth. But the fact remains that there’s a certain corner of the internet that’s been doing a little bit of extra hand-wringing: boy moms. How do our squirmy little guys, with their big feelings and construction vehicle pajamas, turn into young men capable of such cruelty and violence? And how do we, as parents, prevent this?

This is something I thought about personally, as I watched my son (who is now—I should note—a fully functioning member of the sixth grade) develop what a friend lovingly deemed “the sickness” in his preschool years. “The sickness,” for the uninitiated, is the seemingly male impulse to push, touch, pull, wrestle and otherwise invade the space of anyone they deem a threat. It’s basically the toddler version of peeing on something to mark your territory.

And as I watched my son pummel a classmate to the ground over a perceived slight on a Nugget couch, I had to wonder: what would this behavior at age five mean for his behavior at age twenty-five? When does boy aggression go from ha-ha to frightening?

It’s what moms across the country are asking themselves this week. And while there have been many responses, ranging from, “They weren’t raised right!” to “Why is this the mother’s job? Where are all the dads?” there was one take that stopped me in my tracks. And it came from—you guessed it—Dr. Becky.

Dr. Becky, the oft-mocked (but always right!) purveyor of firm-but-gentle parenting was quick to tell her followers, “Sexual assault prevention doesn’t start with a college orientation talk; it starts years earlier.” And she went on to outline the ways parents can raise kids who are empathetic upstanders who would not only never do something like this, but would also know how to respond and escalate if they witnessed something like this.

Her tips ranged from, “Let your kid practice wanting something and NOT getting it” to, “Teach your kids that silence is not a yes.” But the one that most humbled me? “Stop pushing your kid to want what everyone else wants.”

“When we normalize ‘just fitting in,’ we’re giving mixed messages and potentially vindicating unsafe behavior. The lesson? Sometimes it’s OK to be the odd man out.”

Because here’s the thing: I do that. Constantly. “All your friends are going to the dance? Why don’t you want to go?” I recently pressed my son. “Everyone else is out at the blacktop playing basketball. Why are you here flopping on the couch?”

After all, it’s natural to want your child to fit in—to be social and adaptable and keep getting the invitations, lest they dry up. But when we do that, Dr. Becky warns, we’re inadvertently saying that group dynamics are the most important dynamics, that it’s intolerable to be the only one not doing something. “We can’t spend childhood constantly pushing kids towards the group and then expect them to magically resist the group when the stakes are higher,” she says. In other words, when I tell my son to join an activity he doesn’t want to do, I’m subtly telling him to resist his impulses, even if they’re right.

I wondered if he noticed me doing this, so I asked him outright: “I know I keep asking you about the dance. Do you think I push you to do what other kids are doing?”  

“Sometimes,” he admitted. “But I still don’t feel bad saying I don’t want to do it.”

That was a relief, but I still wanted to know if he made the connection. “Do you think following the group might ever lead to a bad decision, or something that might hurt another person?”

“I’m not sure,” he said. Then, more quietly, “Maybe.”

Of course, no parent wants their child to feel pressured into a situation they know is wrong. And, of course, a nudge to go to a school dance isn’t a throughline to rape. But it was humbling to realize that even my attempts to get him to make friends and have fun could result in an inability to think for himself and to stand up for what’s right later in life.

Any parent—but boy moms in particular—needs to raise kids with moral conviction. We need to teach boys that “the sickness” may be innate, but it is not OK. Respect, consent, empathy, advocacy: these are skills boys can master starting in their very early years. But when we normalize “just fitting in,” we’re giving mixed messages and potentially vindicating unsafe behavior. The lesson? Sometimes it’s OK to be the odd man out.