Why boys not boys

Nerf makes a line just for them. Cut their hair short? Interested in STEM? On trend. Pretend they are superheroes? Last year's "Wonder Woman" is one of the highest-grossing superhero movies of all time. Meanwhile, there's still not a single traditionally feminine thing a boy can do that wouldn't raise eyebrows.

A boy who likes wearing jewelry or makeup, twirling in a tutu or caring for baby dolls is at best the subject of conversations conducted sotto voce. At worst: a bully's target. This is what happens when gender roles are forced on kids. The tomboy phenomenon is more than years old and has gone from outsider to aspirational to anachronistic over the course of the 20th century; the tomgirl remains a nonstarter.

Describe a boy with a phrase that includes the word "girl" in it, and you're likely to make his parents' spines quiver, including those of many of the feminist dads I know. Parents are increasingly giving their daughters boy names like James and Finn; few among us would dare give our sons a girl name, because pity the boy named Jenn or Sofia.

Girls fought and won the right to join the Boy Scouts; I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for boys to gain entry to the Girl Scouts. All this might make you conclude that girls have it better.

And in some ways, they do. But a closer look at this gender revolution among children reveals to what degree this whole enterprise has been tipped in favor of the masculine. How to teach children about gender equality. Barbie has been a member of the armed forces, a presidential candidate and an engineer; boys' dolls continue be, nearly exclusively, action figures conscripted to battle.

Girls get to flip through books like " Strong is the New Pretty ," but no publication is telling boys that typically feminine traits like caring for others or, yes, taking an interest in beauty which is often tsked tsked in boys is the new strong.

The last 50 years redefined womanhood: women were taught they can be anything. This is a global issue, not just an American one," says psychologist Teodora Pavkovic. This has led to the creation of not just misconceptions such as 'emotions are girly' and 'boys don't cry,' but to many generations of men with devastatingly poor emotional diversity, awareness and literacy. First as parents, we need to tackle our own ideas about gender, and this means doing some self-examination.

The most important thing to remember with this exercise is to not be judgmental of yourself; these beliefs and rules have been passed on to you, possibly just as unconsciously as you yourself are now passing them on to your child. We all want to be positive role models for our children, but to do so we have to practice what we preach to a T.

These beliefs and rules have been passed on to you, possibly just as unconsciously as you yourself are now passing them on to your child. I was — and am — an easily frightened, oversensitive sort of person.

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The results were exactly the same — almost no men responded to my efforts, and I vomited. We spent a lot of special time with him, did a lot of strengthening of his emotional voice, making sure he expressed what he needed to. We wanted a boy who had his own mind, who was picking up that who he was mattered to us, that we were going to get to know him rather than merely requiring him to fit into what we expected a boy to be.

Beck: How do you think that went? Your sons are adults now, right? Reichert: I think both of my sons benefited from that kind of parenting. They still have really strong connections with both of us. And they evidence a strong capacity to love other people and to establish intimate relationships.

My son is the father of a two-and-a-half-year-old boy and he is a wonderful father. When my grandson says Daddy , the way he says the word, you can just tell it's coming from his heart. It resonates with real connection and delight. How did you work past them? Reichert: Yeah, all the time. Ideas that I was unconscious of that resided in the back of my mind would pop out in these odd moments. One story is: My son had an early experience with bullying and got chased from the playground.

I initially tried to build his self-confidence by sending him back to the playground to stand up for himself, and not settle for being driven from something he loved to do. You have to go back and figure this out.