As single moms, we have to do better at teaching our sons to love, and that crying does not make him weak.  We shouldn’t want to raise our sons to be the men we don’t want to date or marry.  I’ve found that as single parents, we try to overcompensate for the lack, inadvertently becoming enablers.  We don’t correct them if they have multiple girlfriends, we wait on them hand and foot and we don’t teach them to clean or cook because we want them to grow up and be manly men.

I was having a conversation with a friend of mine, and she was telling me about how her son had his own apartment, but when he wants to cheat, he brings his other girlfriends to her house.  I was stunned as she told me this story as she laughed saying, “Girls are so stupid.”  As my mouth hung open, I thought to myself, are you the stupid one, and is she serious?  Not only is she teaching him to be disrespectful to women, but did she ever stop to think, she would never want a man to treat her in this manner, nor would she want someone to treat her daughter like that.    I’m sure we’ve all had similar conversations with our girlfriends, and they’re joking and saying, “Girl he is a trip.”  He has more women that I can keep up with, or we’ve been that mom uttering those same words ourselves.  I’m sorry, but I don’t see the humor in this. Double standards can sometimes send the wrong message.  As “Modern Day” moms, we accept any and everything, and we try to be our children’s friend and not their parent.  It’s also in the way we conduct ourselves as single women in relationships.  If we are flaunting multiple men in front of them like we’re running an escort service, we are essentially teaching them that it’s okay to be disrespectful to women, because that’s what mama did.

I think we take for granted that they just know better, but that’s not always the case.  I was having a conversation with a family member of mine (early 20’s) and explaining to him, how it wasn’t cool to lead women on.  His interpretation was that it was okay for him to go out with multiple women if he wasn’t having sex with them all.  He asked, “What’s the big deal?”  If they don’t mind, why should I?” 

When my siblings and I were growing up, my mom didn’t tolerate disrespectful behavior toward women from my brothers.  If they had a girlfriend, she was the only one allowed in our home.  She made it clear to them that her home was not a motel, and if that’s how they were going to conduct themselves, they wouldn’t do it around her.    

We teach our boys not to hit women, we teach them not to initiate fights, how to read and write and all the essentials they need to grow to be productive adults, so why is it so difficult to teach them to respect women?

Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.  Proverbs 22:6

 -Terry D.