Why do we as men raise our son’s and daughters differently?
As I asked myself this question over the years, mostly due to the fact that my wife has been kind enough to bring this to my attention, I was given the opportunity to reflect and think about it. First of all, just because my wife “thinks” that I have doesn’t mean that it is the truth…right? Well after some reflection, it was apparent that there were certainly some things that were different in terms of how I approached discipline and communication with my son’s vs my daughter.
Just to provide some context here, we have a son who is 21, a daughter 19 and another son 15. From my perspective, there are a number of variables that play into how we raise our children and here are a few of these variables that I believe impact how we ourselves parent;
- Birth Order and the Personality of the Child
- Our growth and learning as parents!
- How we ourselves were raised (obviously)
- Household Stresses
Let’s take a look at some of these variables in more detail so that we can dive a little deeper here. As it relates to birth order itself, there have been books written and studies done that indicate many similarities to first born children versus middle children and again last born in terms of personality traits and default strengths and weaknesses. Looking back it certainly makes sense, as I think back on our first born son and not only the attention to detail, but looking at the dynamics of having only one getting ALL the attention from parents, grandparents and friends. When he had a fever or a cough and my wife would insist taking him to the ER for deeper evaluation since we had no previous experience. So often parents will be conservative with the first child and as time goes on, we grow and learn what is urgent and what isn’t along with the sharing of time as more children enter the equation and time/energy is now being shared. All of these dynamics can change our style of parenting.
Well similar to anything in life that we do for the first time, we tend to be pretty shitty at it right? The first time I tried to skate, the first time I went mountain biking, the first time I went to Jujitsu and was completely dominated by everyone! We tend to get better at things the more repetitions that we do, and this is no different than parenting. The only real curve ball with parenting, is that very few things are repetitive because of the uniqueness of each child and how they respond to different inputs is rarely the same. Either way, it has been our experience that we have learned how to better approach tough discussions or disagreements over the years because of the fact that we have had a number of repetitions and have learned to some degree things that have worked better than others.
How were you raised? Did you have brothers and sisters? were you an only child? What was the parenting like in your own home growing up? I’d have to say that although there are many variables, this is likely the one that holds the most weight in terms of the impact of how we raise our own children. In my family, I had an older sister and younger brother and my mother was a nurse and my father was an engineer. My mother had a strong personality but had spent an entire career nurturing and helping others and had a great deal of empathy. On the flip side, my father was a very masculine guy who constantly worked hard, talked little and had very little physical affection growing up and this is what we experienced of course. My brother and I naturally spend and continue to spend a large amount of effort begin physical and working out and simply DOING stuff but much LESS time talking and exploring feelings. It’s taken me a lot of work and time to invest in these areas so that I can improve in these areas. Naturally though, as men now raising our own families I can see that my goal or objective in raising my children were to have them be productive, loving and confident adults chasing their dreams it was executed with different styles between my boys and my daughter. With my sons, I have been much less nurturing and much more demanding of them. With my sons I have had fewer deep, meaningful conversations regarding feelings and emotions. As much as I want to be able to get to that point with my boys, there still seems to be this unknown force holding on. Saying “I love you” and giving an affectionate hug to my daughter just seems to be more natural than doing the same with my sons and it makes me sad at times and I know I need to work on this, and am certain that other men experience the same. There is no doubt that I would DIE for any of my children, and so it isn’t reflective of my love for them but has more to do with my own growth.
The last thing I wanted to address is the impact that stress has had on me and my relationships with my children. Early on in our marriage, we seemed to always have time left at the end of each month with nothing left in the accounts, and it just didn’t seem to matter how hard I worked. My wife and I were also having challenges with communication and alignment around raising our children so I was often not the most pleasant to be around. This also affected my ability to be the best version of a dad, and since our first born was a boy, he experienced the majority of the “tough” love. We have since worked very hard and are in a much better place in our marriage with communication, our finances are in order and we are both happier individuals based on a lot of hard work.
So did I raise my son’s and daughters differently? Sure that is true, but the important thing is to be honest with yourself during the journey and this way we can make the necessary changes to become better father’s, better husbands, and better men. I’m so grateful to have a wife who has been brave enough to have tough discussions with me that usually were NOT received the best initially, but these are the discussions that we NEED in order to begin to make changes and grow! Things are never perfect, but my children know that I love them dearly and they also know that the version of man I was 10 years ago is not the version I am today nor will today’s version be the same as the one 10 years from now and that change is possible with honest reflection and hard work.
