We’re a generation of men raised by women. I’m wondering if another woman is really the answer we need. – “Fight Club” (20th Century Fox).
We’re a generation of men, raised by women, who are then supposed to enter into loving, lasting relationships with other women. I’m speaking heteronormatively, of course; non-heteronormative individuals face a different crisis altogether. But, in a clever and cruel twist, heteronormativity also harms men raised solely by women.
Many readers will undoubtedly protest that a woman is just as capable of teaching boys how to love as any man. That’s true. But a woman cannot teach a boy how to love women without – at least - the help of a man. First, women, like all people, barely understand themselves, much less how someone from the opposite sex should interact with them. Plus, women, like all people, will tell you they’re attracted to one type of man, when they’re actually attracted to another type of man and either don’t want to admit it or don’t even realize it.
Second, due to either nature, nurture or both, men and women want and expect different things out of love. When a single mother tells her son what he should want and expect out of love, she’s speaking from a female perspective – a perspective, I should add, of a bitter woman scorned by a past lover. Bitterness aside, women only know men through a feminine prism, so anything a woman understands about men is distorted.
It all boils down, yet again, to fatherlessness. If fathers are supposed to be the primary examples of manhood for their sons, then who does the fatherless son turn to for guidance? And since, in a heteronormative world, men love women and women love men, a boy-man or woman-man doesn’t know how to love a woman and, in turn, isn’t loved by women, because women are rarely socialized to love anyone other than man-men.
In a perfect world, there would be no heteronormativity, and men and women would behave and love the same, ensuring no difference between a man raised by a woman, a man raised by a man, and a man raised by both. But we don’t live in such a world, nor are we approaching one; therefore, boys must grow up to be men who can navigate, not a perfect world, but a sexist world.
Yet, there is hope for men raised by women. Love – or as the philosopher Bell Hooks so aptly terms it, “the practice of love” – is something that cannot be taught; a person can only be shown how to practice. Love is as inward as it is outward. Love is something you do, not something you know or feel. The practice of love is a road to self-discovery and understanding. Someone’s ability to love is never hindered by the past, only by their ability and willingness to refine their understanding of love.
Men and women, fatherless or motherless, must be taught to practice love.
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Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and should not be understood to be shared by Being Latino, Inc.
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About Hector Luis Alamo, Jr.
Hector, so well-written and spot on. We continue to perpetuate bad relationships because we don’t have a frame of reference. It is sad, but true as many of us have been raised by single mothers or our single grandmothers intent on making good for previous bad parenting. Not all of us have that story, but there are way too many who do and repeat the pattern as a result.
I thank you for your insight on this and will share on my social media channels.
I think you’re a bit of a misogynist myself. And in the same vein that you say that ‘women’ can only come to the advice table from the perspective of a woman, so too it with you…merely, and ignorantly from the perspective of a man. And do me a favor, don’t try to speak for all single moms…thank you.
I believe that any child needs a variety of good role models in his or her life, whether those people are fathers, mothers, aunt, close friends, etc. But I really don’t understand what point the author of this article is trying to make. I don’t believe fatherlessness is the key to the problems the author is describing – there are plenty of men raised without fathers who grow up to be great men, and plenty of them growing up with a father who don’t.
Saying that all single mothers are bitter women scorned by a past lover and that anything she knows about men is distorted is both simplistic and insulting. There are too many truths and life stories for this to be presented as the general one.
If everything a woman knows about a man is distorted, isn’t that then also true for what men know about women? Should they then really teach other young men how to love a woman? It doesn’t make sense. We as people are not that one-dimensional and we don’t fit that neatly into boxes of different types of women and men (boy-men, women-men, man-men….)
Love is not exclusively shown by a father- or mother-figure, and in cases when one of them are missing someone else could fill that gap (regardless of gender), and might at times do it better. What we need are good role models for our children, not just the biological mother or father, because there are many cases where being without one or both of them would have been better for the child’s development. I don’t think that a man is the only one capable of teaching a boy what it is to be a man. we’re not all that different and most of all I think we all want our children to grow up to be great people regadless of their gender.There are many reasons why it’s good to have a father and why it can hurt a child not to have him in his/her life, but they were not presented in this article.
Most of all I’m annoyed that the author’s personal views are presented as facts without anything backing his statements. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but this was a very uniformed and insulting one
Wow, this is incredibly biased! Not all single mothers are bitter. A father figure doesn’t necessarily have to be a man the mother is dating. Yes, it’s important for the mother/family to surround the child around positive male role models, but to say that mothers can’t teach their boys to love is WRONG. In order to love you need to learn respect (not solely for romantic purposes). With respect comes care and understanding as a result a relationship can be made and love can blossom. That’s something that mothers can definitely teach.
Some of your points are valid, but some of your generalizations are extreme.
speaking from the perspective of a single mother I resent your statement “….When a single mother tells her son what he should want and expect out of love, she’s speaking from a female perspective – a perspective, I should add, of a bitter woman scorned by a past lover.” I’ve had very bad relationships with men in the past, and yes I was bitter and scorned but I have never passed that on to my son when I speak to him about love and respecting women. His father lacks some morals and qualities I wish not to instill on my son and Im careful that he does not pick up on those things. I teach my son to respect, love and honor women, to communicate and be honest to have integrity. I also teach him to not allow anyone be it his partner or any other person to compromise who he is as a person. I dont believe these lessons derive from bitterness. Yes, as a female I can only teach him so much the rest I have to hope his father teaches him and I agree only a MAN can teach a child to be a MAN but thats relative, my view of what a MAN is, is very different from what my sons father thinks a MAN is and that view is one I do not want my son to have.
Speaking from an intellectually and emotionally aware woman, and single mom, I don’t resent your statement but I do laugh at it. I can however concede some of your points but I think that as a member of the opposite sex you are completely off base. I know some fathers (or male “role” models) who are also bitter and scorned and teach their young sons (or young family members) to be disrespectful towards women, to use them, that they are nothing more than which to “train” to take care of them and procreate and then move on. I do not teach my son about love from a woman’s perspective, I teach my son to love, period. I teach him to communicate his feelings effectively, not just with anger and definitely to never raise his hand. I teach him that he must value who he is as a person and the person he chooses to be with must complement him. So yes I do teach him that what he should want and expect out of love is what he gives. And yes, I say “teach” because seeing love practiced inwardly and outwardly IS teaching. You cannot know love if you’ve never seen it or experience it. Perhaps next time you should do a little bit of better social research.
There’s so many criticisms that can be made about this piece. Some of the comments already touch on some of them, such as assuming that single mothers are necessarily incapable of raising well-balanced and healthy males. Perhaps the most glaring irony of this whole piece is the use of bell hooks. I doubt she’d ever endorse these male-centric, misogynistic ideas of yours.
“When a single mother tells her son what he should want and expect out of love, she’s speaking from a female perspective – a perspective, I should add, of a bitter woman scorned by a past lover. Bitterness aside, women only know men through a feminine prism, so anything a woman understands about men is distorted.” Honestly, this whole section is truly sad. That all single mothers are bitter and scorned by a past lover is ridiculous. And even if “women only know men through a feminine prism” that doesn’t make a female perspective “distorted”! Female perspectives on “manhood” aren’t distortions!
“For decades, researchers have said children from two-parent families do better than those raised by a single parent. That’s still true, they say. But newer research pokes holes into that all-or-nothing approach, says fatherhood expert Michael Lamb, a psychology professor at the University of Cambridge in England.
‘The key point is yes, there is a risk,’ he says. ‘But it’s not really a risk inherent in the single-parent family, per se. You can’t assume that every child raised by a single parent is going to have difficulties. The majority don’t.’”
“Single moms’ sons can succeed, new research shows”
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-08-27-single-moms-succeed_N.htm
“Michael Kimmel, a sociologist and gender studies expert at Stony Brook University in New York, says the resident parent has a huge effect.
‘We see constantly children of single-parent families who thrive because the parents are so devoted because they’re compensating for the absence of the other parent,’ he says.
But Biblarz says the idea “that boys in particular need fathers in the way girls need mothers” doesn’t hold true.”
“Single moms’ sons can succeed, new research shows”
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-08-27-single-moms-succeed_N.htm
Normally I wouldn’t respond to comments, but I feel compelled to defend myself here.
First, I should say that of course anything I said about women applies to men: men know as much about women as women know about men.
Second, since most comments found fault with my assertion that single mothers are “bitter,” I’ll admit that I was only speaking from personal experience. There are undoubtedly women who aren’t bitter about past relationships, just as I’m not. But I do know that my own mother deeply resented my father and instilled that hatred for him (and love and men) in her two sons throughout their childhood. I was raised to believe that love was combative: get them before they get you. I’ve since learned otherwise.
I am not a misogynist or male-centric in the least, so I apologize if I came off that way. I blame myself for tackling so big an issue with a 500-word limit, which tends to require oversimplification and extreme generalization.
The point of my article was to say that fatherless sons, generally and personally speaking, grow up without an essential balance between feminine and masculine views of love. It’s difficult for a woman to teach her son to be a man, but it can be done, since the ingredients that go into making a good man also go into making a good woman. In the end, we’re all just human beings.
Anyway, I tried to brush the tip of the iceberg and came off looking like a complete idiot. My apologies.
I think the real question is, what’s the author’s definition of masculinity, society’s definition and how it relates to his self-perception.
A person’s experience is not stupid; it’s a stamped moment in time that leaves strong impressions. No apologies necessary.
I agree with Jennifer Larancuent. Love is love. Either you know or you don’t. It does not matter where we learn to love as long as we know how to love. First you must love yourself before you can allow anyone to love you and love them back. There are lots of very loving people that never had someone tell them that they loved them and yet those people are some of the most loving people. There is also the thing with commitment. In order to truly love you must be willing to lose yourself to the idea that your significant other is the only one in the world for you and vise-versa. Love is a very complicated matter. As for telling your readers that I taught you that love is combative, you are dead wrong. I tried to allow you to have a relationship with your father but he did not want to be a dad. No fault of mine. I was not then nor now bitter in any way. You should not speak for other people in this respect because every case is different. It is what you do with what you have been dealt that matters. You can’t love if you are selfish either. From reading this piece, I can tell that you have never been truly in love with a woman. I hugged you and kissed you daily and told you how much I loved you then and now. that is more than my mom did for me and my two sisters. Yet I am very affectionate and loving. You on the other hand are very distant. You chose to be that way. You have always considered yourself better than your family especially me. Whatever floats your boat. They are your choices though. Yours and yours alone.
I used to write for BL as well and I know it’s hard to say all you want in 500 words, but the way it was said is still wrong, misguided and I don’t think it’s right to present your personal opinions as facts (which is what was done here until the authour commented – it should’ve been in the article). You’re saying: “But a woman cannot teach a boy how to love women without – at least – the help of a man”. I this is act, you should have some kind of link or study supporting that fact, i it’s your personal opinion, it should clearly say so. When it’s your personal blog it’s another thing, but I think that when writing or an online magazine, you are telling people as a writer, and not as a person, that what you are saying is true, when it isn’t. Your personal story should’ve been presented as a personal story, and not as general fact
In this case I have to agree with Hector. His personal views of his upbringing is his to share (as long as it’s clear that that’s what it is, and in his comment, it clearly was) and no one, not even his mother, can say that he is wrong. A child cannot be expected to love himself before allowing his parents to love him. it is the adults in the child’s life that bear full responsibility or his upbringing, not the child. Hugs, kisses and words are not all it takes for a child to feel loved. He also needs to be supported…