Boys Do Get To Cry

My 10 year old son told me the other day he felt like crying, but he wasn’t going to cry because “you don’t cry in front of people.” Mind you, the only “people” around were me and him. I can say with certainty and for damn sure that he did NOT learn that idea from me! Not in this home. 

I have always tried to teach him the exact opposite– that it is human to feel feelings, that it is healthy and good to express them, that the way we express them matters. In our living room, we have a customized visual chart of many different ways he can choose to soothe and express his feelings. I cry in front of him often, and I often talk him through the general reason why (e.g. I’m disappointed about something I wished would happen but didn’t, I feel overwhelmed by a problem I need to solve, I was reminded of a sad memory, etc.) and I affirm to him that it is a good thing to cry, that I feel better now that I did.

But I am not the only one raising him. There is his father, but just as much, there is this society that also raises our kids, with all its social norms and patriarchal ideas that seep perniciously into the mainstream and contaminate it completely. He’s exposed to all of this as he goes out into the world, to school, to his father’s house, as he watches Pixar and YouTube, as he watches the men and boys around him.

His kindergarten teacher used to tell me in an encouraging way that, as their caregivers, we just need to repeat an important teaching to our kids one thousand times over the course of their childhood, and eventually it will stick. They will hear that teaching in their head when they are grown, it will make a difference.

I choose to believe that’s true. I know it is true for me– at 37 years old, I constantly hear my mom telling me to turn off the light when I’m no longer in the room, to not use the stovetop for storage of flammable items like pizza boxes, to have compassion for strangers and always remember they are someone’s loved one.

So, I will continue to tell my son over and over again one thousand times that he absolutely can and should cry WHENEVER he feels like he wants or needs to cry. 

I will continue leading by example and allowing my deeply emotional Cancer moon ass to cry in front of him. I will continue to gladly offer up my tenderest moments as examples and live field demonstrations for him to see that it really is good to feel and release our human emotions, in a safe and healthy way. 

I believe that the teacher and example I choose to be in his life will make a difference– not only for him, but for the boys in the future who will see him as a man who knows his emotions and expresses them, a man who cries. And little by little, for this society.

And yet I know I am not the only one raising him. As mothers, we are a profoundly powerful influence on our kids, but we cannot and should not have to do it alone– any of it.

There is a big part of me that aches for this society, where men, women, boys, girls, nonbinary, and gender expansive people all suffer from the tiny-minded yet extremely baneful curse that is patriarchal oppression. I’ll keep letting myself feel that ache.

But what I’ll focus on even more is my gratitude for every man, woman, boy, girl, nonbinary, and gender expansive person who will continue along with me to say to boys one thousand times that they in fact do get to cry.