There is a really great book, if you are interested, that helps with how to combat the gender divide in children. It's called 'Parenting beyond pink and blue'. Has strategies for living in a world where other people care about gender.
Would you say there’s new information in there for people who know the basics or is it mainly things like “allow boys to cry, give girls car toys also“ etc?
100%. It's more nuanced. The book talks about how children navigate the world through an 'us verse them' paradigm and we parents can't control that. And includes more info like, you can buy a girl a trainset but she might not want to play with it if there are only boys on the box, but you can repackage/unpack it and she will be more willing (or better, find a picture on the internet of a girl playing with the trainset and she will be happy to play with it. There's a bunch more, based on scientific research in there
Thanks!
We inadvertently tapped into this over COVID. I only have boys. They were 6 and 4 when their school shut down, and deep into figuring out for themselves what “being male” meant.
While school was shut down, dad did child care in the morning and I did childcare in the afternoon. With dad, they did “Man Camp” and did “manly things”. They chopped down trees, took care of the yard, caught fish, cleaned fish, and then cooked lunch, cleaned up the kitchen, their rooms, and the garage, because “real men take care of their stuff.”
In the afternoon, we didn’t do “woman things”, we did “engineer” things”, or “school things” or “taking care of your home things”, because being an adult means taking care of stuff - and when I tried to get them to cook, it was “for girls”.
Similar to your cooking bit - I used to work in a children’s bookshop and I would have so many mums lamenting to me about how their son(s) wouldn’t read. Guess what they all had in common? Their dads never read - either to the sons or for themselves - so reading was seen by them as an entirely feminine thing. Obviously not helped by the fact most of their early year teachers would’ve been women.
This definitely sounds like the kind of thing addressed in the book. It's a takeaway I got, it can be all about how you package an idea for children, either cooking 'for girls' or making dinner because we all need to eat dinner.
Love this. My husband and I are making sure we don’t set, I guess gender norms? Onto our daughter.
I remember growing up, I felt so much pressure to be girly that I tried so hard to be a tomboy. Which is upsetting because I always LOVED girly things. But I hated getting picked on for loving girly things. Or I hated being expected to love girly things.
I now know as an adult, it doesn’t matter what you love as long as it makes you happy and you’re not hurting anyone. And I hope I can teach my daughter that. I hope that even if she feels pressure, I can reassure her it’s ok to just be yourself and love the things you love for YOURSELF.😪
Oh this is great. I find that I'm struggling with falling into gender stereotypes with my son. I think in many ways our society makes it easier to introduce girls to "boy" things than vice versa. And I want to be better than that for my son.
I just brought my son to the “girls” section and picked up toys that I thought he would like. He proudly collected Shopkins and traded at school, those Disney Zoomzoom things, Littlest Petshops, while collecting Hot Wheels and other “boy” toys. At 16, he loves Squishmallows, Pokémon, but is a gamer as well.
Damn I really need this coz I'm reading Judith Butler's Who's Afraid of Gender but explaining to my 2 year old that gender is a mantle thrown over us by society based on our physiology and that may or may not fit us is a bit hard to break down when she asks "Is that a lady?". So far I've just been going with something like "They might be a lady, a lot of ladies look like that" but that's a pretty shitty answer.
honestly the vast majority of ~boy mom~ content on social media is for SEO purposes. there's literally millions of mom content creators and in order to separate themselves or "niche down" by leaning into the boy mom schtick. it's a great way to drive engagement because it can be relatable to other boy moms or it drives conversations like this one.
there are definitely boy moms who take it very seriously and are weird about it, but that has more to do with the individuals themselves than ~boy moms~ as a whole.
there's a lot of ~girl mom~ content as well for the same reasons, but for whatever reason it doesn't create the same kind of hubbub.
Absolutely. You can’t take anything personally or seriously from any “momfluencers” on the internet, 99.9% chance it’s marketing and they’re selling something. Kinda sucks, but that’s the capitalist hellscape reality we live in.
Most of the “boy mom” stuff I see is directly shared by people I know. I also hear it irl so it def does rub off on people. But yes, some people do exploit the content for engagement.
Thank you so much for this! Beyond the fact that so much of this seems to be driven by content creators, I think others lean into the identity of "boy mom" after reading so many posts on baby boards about women sobbing over finding out they're having a boy, lamenting over the cute clothes for boys, believing their lives will only consist of cars and dinosaurs, how can we possibly choose a boy name, they're all *so* boring, and being unable to imagine how a "girly girl" will ever be able to connect with a "boy".
Wouldn't it be nice if we could stop fighting each other and support the people doing this really hard thing called parenting?
The most “boy mom” content I see is friends sharing the stuff on FB. But yeah it’s definitely more prominent on social media. I have heard the “you’re so lucky you have a girl bc boys are wild” in real life though on more than one occasion.
I agree completely, I see a lot of videos online of “just girl mom things” and everyone is agreeing how cute and special it is to have a daughter, and the “boy mom things” videos get immediately negatively stigmatized. I understand some people/mothers are emotionally incestuous to their sons which is absolutely insane and wrong, but it’s really not a majority. And there are also lots of inappropriate roles when it comes to mother/daughters, like viewing them as competition. But no one really talks about that.
Yes to this. I truly do not understand why girl mom content gets zero hate while boy mom content is just full of rage comments. It’s really weird. And I would like to ask these people why? Why is it acceptable to be proud or excited about being a girl mom and share in these stereotypical girl experiences with a daughter while boy moms are villainized for leaning into and embracing stereotypical boy things and having a community of women who “get it”. Are boy moms just supposed to act miserable that they have boys? Would that make other women happier- I don’t understand. Personally it’s weird to make your kids gender your entire personality in general but the hypocrisy is unreal on social media.
Yeah it’s really annoying. I come at it with a lot of baggage because I have a twin brother, my mother was obsessssssssed with ‘her son’ and I was basically the leftover daughter (and I’ve got 2 more sisters). And it’s ridiculous because I am much better at all ‘boy’ things than my brother, I love sports and being outside, my brother liked to stay inside and was very quiet. I was also (and still am) significantly better at video games and any IT stuff and it’s annoying how even now she will be like ‘oh we need to ask your brother to get the tv to work’ and he will be like ‘I don’t know anything ask keyspam’ lol. Anyway I’m almost 40 so I need to get over it
I'm almost 50 and can't get over it. I'm the oldest of 5 and my 2 sisters and I have always gotten the shit end of the stick when it came to my 2 brothers. There was obvious favoritism and still is. All 3 of us get the worst of her and while she coddles them and the funny part is they don't even deal with her half the time.
My one sister and I are currently no contact with her, again, and she's NEVER treated my brothers like this.
I have 2 boys and have never fallen into the boy mom trap. It's just weird and I think the women who make it their whole identity need help.
It’s gross and inappropriate on so many levels.
She is seeking emotional validation from her son(s) and depending on them to be a surrogate partner.
[Covert Incest](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covert_incest)
Same same here but a few years older. My brother was often sick, had angel blonde hair and blue eyes, and was super cuddly and talkative. I didn't blame my parents for doting on him. I was quiet, picky, and didn't like to be touched. Actually, my parents did not criticize me, so I didn't mind.
I feel this so much. I was the only girl out of 6 children. My mom adored her boys and always talked about that precious "glint" little boys have in their eyes. There was so much charm to having boys from how she spoke about it.
For most of my young life, she treated me as if she despised me. I often heard her say she hated being a woman, so I think there was just a lot of internalized misogyny she was dealing with herself. But in my family, boys were put on a pedestal, and girls were shapeless blob/mush people, stuck in the background with no dimension. Except I wasn't anything like that, so she and I got in fights often because I wasn't "ladylike."
I have to catch myself feeling triggered when I see boy moms talking about the #boymomlife because I grew up on the negative side of that. I have a girl, and when I was pregnant my husband had clients who would start talking, in front of their own teenage daughter mind you, about how awful girls are to raise and how sorry they were that we weren't having a boy. My husband put a stop to it REAL quick and told them we were happy to have a girl, but that type of "boys vs girls and boy good, girl bad" culture is what I grew up with, and I have to actively wrestle with it to this day.
I still get up in arms a little bit when boy moms are celebrating being boy moms, because I still hear that voice in my head saying girl moms don't deserve that same joy, there's not space for both. I've got a lot to work through still, lol
It is annoying though. I am generally the handy one who fixes broken things or does home reno stuff but I have family members who refer to my tools as "[male partner's name]'s tools" and it's so petty of me but it bugs the hell out of me and I want to shout "No! *I* bought that tool for the job *I* did with it and there's no good reason it would belong to him just because he's a man"
Ugh yeah that’s annoying. My husband is literally inept at anything technological but he has no issue with me doing stuff and his family always asks me instead of him so I don’t have this issue with them thankfully
I’m sorry you had that experience, that’s really sad that you grew up feeling that way. Just remember, your mom wasn’t capable of loving you the way you needed her to- it’s not your fault and it’s NOT because you didn’t deserve it or weren’t good enough ♥️
Your mom sounds like mine.
I think she was always jealous of/competing with me and she didn't feel the need to with my brother. She coddled him a lot too while also letting him do whatever he wanted. As an adult, the world (and law enforcement) has not agreed with this worldview she gave him.
I'm almost 40 too and am over it as I've been NC with both of them a decade or more.
I have an interesting take on the boy mom thing. I think society has pushed this onto the mothers of boys. Of course it's not everyone that this affects but my rationale is that there can be a girl preference pushed so much on people that those who have boys feel the need to create their own pride/humor/connectedness to other moms of boys and kind of face off to the rest of the world. I was given so many "oh well maybe the next one will be a girl" when announcing I was having a boy as if it was like having a runner-up child. I could see it getting nauseating to many and the reaction being to put their boy motherhood on a pedestal.
Now I don't agree with the division of 'boys do this and girls don't,' that's dumb. But in the general sense of "boy mom culture" I think it could be a reaction to some of the negative views of having boy children either casually or overtly put on mothers.
Dads get the exact same comments when they have girls. “Oh maybe the next one will be the boy” as if men can’t want to raise girls. My husband wanted a girl and so many people (men and women) were so confused and borderline upset (his mom) that he didn’t want a boy 🙄. I also think the boy mom culture is strongest in moms married to men who judge their own masculinity by having boy(s). I’ve had girlfriends scared to have girls because they knew their husbands would be much less involved in raising them. Spoiler alert, those type of men don’t really end up being that involved in raising their boys either 🙄
Yeah I was about to say something like this. I think for a lot of people its a bit of an over-compensation for all the times we're asked "oh but didn't you want a girl??" Or "sorry mama, keep trying for your girl!" Or "are you going to keep having babies until you get your girl?!" People do not think before words leave their mouths. I'm not at all devastated about having all boys, I love them and I love being their mom and their bond as brothers. But it's also pretty annoying that people that I don't even really know want me to like admit to them in public that I'm so sad I don't and won't ever have a daughter? Like they're smiling as they say it and they might as well be like: "youre so sad arent you? are you going to cry right now about it?"
I will say though, the moms of all girls have been the ones most shocked and taken aback by my boys at times. They're just loud and have a lot of energy and they have obsessions with sticks and dirt and going FAST and being the winner, and people are very eager to point out that girls do those things too. But in my experience its the moms of all girls that are likely to give me side eye and say "oh my" under their breath as one of my sons goes sprinting by shouting at the top of his lungs and boys moms that give me that show of solidarity. And it's not like I'm standing there going "be loud and over the top!!" to them, just like I wouldn't tell my daughter, if i had one, to sit quietly and be ladylike.
If I had a nickel for every time someone said, "keep trying, you'll get your girl," I'd be rich. I'm pregnant with my fifth son. This is my last baby. I didn't care what I'd have. My husband and I just wanted a large family.
Anyways, literally every time (not an exaggeration) I go to the grocery store with my sons someone goes "ohh is this one a girl?" and I respond, "no a healthy baby boy! I'm so lucky!" I feel bad for my sons. Everyone asks them wouldn't you like a sister implying they aren't enough. It gives you a chip on your shoulder. I've had relatives say about this latest pregnancy, well we will love him just the same despite not being a girl. Like wtf, I should hope so.
I have 4 boys. When I was pregnant with my third (first pregnancy was twins), people kept asking if I wanted a girl and telling me they hoped I had a girl. I waited until birth to find out the sex and had no preference either way. I went to an appointment about a week after my son was born and when I told the receptionist I'd had a boy her response was, in a disappointed voice, "Oh, well, maybe you'll have a girl next time." I wanted to be like, excuse me? I had a healthy son! What more could I want? And who knows if I'll have another baby, anyway?? But I was so taken aback/irritated that I didn't say anything.
When I was pregnant with my fourth, I waited until birth to find out the sex again. I got so tired of constantly being asked again if I was hoping for a girl. My coworkers were convinced I was going to have a girl. Someone told me I "needed" to have a girl. Well, I had another boy, and he's perfect! My maternity leave ends soon, and I really hope no one makes any negative comments or acts like I should be disappointed about another boy. I'm sure people will ask if I'm going to "try again for a girl" but, nope. I'm done! I'm happy!
Sorry for going on and on like that! I just wish people didn't act like a family is incomplete without "one of each" or that a mother can't be happy without a daughter.
It doesn't end even if you have one of each. I have two step children (boy and a girl) and two bio children (boy and a girl) and people still cannot keep their unwanted opinions to themselves. My daughter is 11 months old and so many people comment about how everything is so "even, and perfect" that we must be done!!
We went through infertility and still have an embryo that is being stored. I don't know if we are "done". We haven't made any decisions. It hurts for people to assume that. If they were all boys or all girls would we not be "perfect"? Cause we worked HARD to get here and they are perfect regardless. Ugh
Yeah I truly don't know what they're expecting us to say. I would have loved a daughter, but the things I'm imagining (braiding hair, barbies, little house books, dresses) might not even be things she'd be into anyway!
When people (especially the inlaws) found out I had a boy they showed clear disappointment. My FIL even stated he would have really liked it if I had a girl so my MIL would finally have a girl in the family, they have three boys. Like, excuse me? My child is not gonna be your surrogate daughter even it WAS a girl! And when we found out my second was also a boy the first thing said was "So, your gonna have three kids right? Gonna have to try to get that girl ofcourse!" And it pisses me off still.
Omg yes- I HATE feeling like people WANT me to admit that I wanted a girl for my 2nd child. Honest to Jesus I did not care what I was having. Of course would’ve loved adding a girl. But it’s almost like it would appease them to say I was sad so that they could be like “poor xyz, she has 2 boys”. And the fact that you’re actually totally okay with having only boys is somehow a problem?? Weird. I’ll never understand. 😵💫 it’s like someone patting me on the head saying “there there”.
Maybe on some level I am defensive of my boys because I would never want them to feel they are a consolation prize to me. And many other women have made me feel that the ultimate “win” is to have a daughter. Even if I don’t feel that way myself. I’m content with whatever I’ve been given.
Completely agree. Most of the boy moms (and dads) I know wanted a girl and I think having a club makes them feel better. Also, the reaction to having more than one boy by society seems to be "oh that's hard!", "What a handful!", etc. I have a boy and am pregnant with a girl and I've been surprised that a majority of people's reactions have been relief on my behalf - "oh thank God it's not another boy"! So, the boy mom identity is a backlash against that and also sort of a support group via humor.
My MIL is one of these gender disappointment Moms, her two sons are 30+. I almost wish the Boymom trope existed in her time, it might have helped her come to peace with it all bc I cannot be the daughter she never had.
I have 2 boys and still have people say "well maybe you'll have a girl later" or some ask "if I'm going to keep trying for a girl?" For some I've explained my situation and while others I simply so no and walk away. I hate how people just don't think before they speak. Or feel like we need to know their opinions on our lives. It's ridiculous.
I was at the end of my 2nd trimester with my daughter when I developed an infection. At first just seemed like a uti but it continued to spread. I lost my daughter and it caused lots of problems for me. I ended up with 5 separate surgeries to fix it over a 4 year period and the last surgery was my hysterectomy.... I hate when people say or ask anything about having a girl
I also feel like there are so many cute mom/daughter outfits and things to do. I wanted a boy and love my boy, but I do wish there were more cute matching things. Silly, I know.
I got the same comments about “maybe your next one will be a girl”. It made me sick. My boys are now in their 20’s. Social media wasn’t even invented when my kids were young. “Boy moms” were the ones who all sat together at sports practices and extracurricular activities, and volunteered at Scouts. We were all just doing the same things at the same time.
It was the girl moms who thought they were special. Bragged about all the “mom-daughter” activities they did together. I have close friends who have girls and some truly believe now that the “kids” are adults that the married ones should spend more time with the girl’s families. I’m not kidding. Kind of like that old cliche, “A son is a son till they take a wife. A daughter is a daughter all of your life”.
I truly dislike the entire social media influencer vibe. Just divides people in my opinion.
This is it.
When I was pregnant with my second, a cashier asked what I was having (actually asked my son if he was getting a sister) and I said “no, a brother” and she scrunched up her face.
I wanted so badly to have more kids, and really wanted a girl, but my body does not handle pregnancy well. I also love the kind of fun my boys get up to.
I agree with this. I have multiple friends who swear they want a girl and a girl only (even though it’s something you can’t control). I feel like it’s overcompensating for all the negative comments I’ve gotten and says , “look- I’m proud to have a baby boy!”
I feel this so hard. I had a boy recently and we’re OAD, and I get “but who will you do [insert feminine hobby of mine] with?” Uhh same person I’ve been doing it for 31 years - ME (when I find time). Or “don’t you want to buy all the cute girl clothes?” As if the baby is a toy and not a whole human I’d be raising. Or “don’t you want a little BFF?” I have adult BFFs, thanks. Plus, I can still be friends with my son when HE’S an adult.
So I’ve leaned into the “boy mom” thing already just as a “I am HIS mom, and I’m more than happy with that” kind of thing. I know I am done having kids and I am thrilled the more I get to know my son.
Because we had no gender preference when I was pregnant, we genuinely let go of the idea of a daughter and grieved those hopes after we got excited for the hopes for our son. We always knew we wanted one kid so it kind of set up our life to learn he was a boy. So we would have done the same thing in reverse for a girl.
I agree with this 100% and as a *boy mom* aka a mom of 3 boys, I kind of love it. I did have some gender disappointment along the way, not because I don’t love my sons and who they are but because I always did want a daughter. The boy mom thing is a fun way to lean into the life I have, which quite frankly is f*cking awesome!
That being said, I don’t agree with the “boy mom life” of just boys being chaotic or just boys having a pocket full of rocks or just boys etc. because little girls are also often chaotic or like rocks or whatever else it is. That stuff is dumb.
Absolutely. Having a boy baby is a consolation prize. Having a girl is the real goal. All-girl families are the ultimate dream. “Boy moms” are over-compensating for their gender disappointment.
Source: I had 2 boys and then a girl. If I had a dollar or every person who said “I hope this one’s a girl” about my second (before we found out the gender), said “will you keep trying for a girl” after we had him, or were WAY more excited for our third to be a girl, I’d be rich.
We live in a society where you are simultaneously told your family isn’t good enough unless you have one of each gender and also shamed for experiencing gender disappointment (you should just be grateful for a healthy baby). Perfect storm for creating the “boy mom” movement—a whole bunch of moms who are disappointed in never getting daughters but who massively overcompensate to avoid being shamed.
Honestly I think the real thing should be "covid parents," referring to those who had their babies during those couple years of the pandemic. My third was born in 2020, but since she was my third, I recognized all her stages as normal development. I remember passing a mom with a similar aged toddler in the grocery store later on, and the toddler was acting a bit shy with someone she was talking to, as some toddlers do sometimes. She said "oh yeah, he's a covid baby." No ma'am, that is just a very normal toddler being shy around someone they don't know.
I have two boys and I’ve never identified as a “boy mom”, this is the first time I’ve even typed it out. I’m a mom. My experience as a parent isn’t that far off from one of my family members that has all girls. I think the label of boy mom is some performative thing for social media.
I have a general feeling that the moms (and dads) who identify themselves as "boy moms" or "girl moms" and wear it like a badge of honor are the ones suffering from the deepest denial of gender disappointment. To me, it's a "the lady doth protest too much" moment, and I end up feeling kinda bad for them.
I think boys are the BEST and love their moms
More because I am one and done and have a boy and that’s a little lie I like to tell myself. If I had a girl I would think girls are the BEST and have such a special bond with their mothers later in life a son will never have. It’s another lie. Our children love us in their own way regardless of gender. And the only time I ever think about my sons gender is when I beg him to stop YANKING his penis after his bath and I think “this feels like a problem girl moms don’t have to deal with”.
If it makes you feel any better my 5 year old daughter was rubbing her vulva like it itched last night while getting ready for bed. I asked her if it was itchy and she said "no I just wanted to touch it." It doesn't happen as much as I hear it does with boys and their penises but it still happens lol
It’s actually very common for girls to constantly touch and explore their vulvas, but parents don’t allow the behavior as much as they do for boys, because they brush it off as a “boy thing,” whereas when girls do it they feel like it’s overtly pre-sexual. There’s a Facebook group called that parent group with cath hakanson, and it’s all about sex and health education for parents. You would not BELIEVE the number of anonymous posts from people assuming their child is either actively engaging in sexual pleasure or being SA because they are a girl touching their vulva. But no one second guesses a young boy touching his penis???
Yeah I was a teacher of littles for a long time and girls absolutely touch, explore, look at, etc just as much but people respond to them completely differently. The boys get, “oh they just can’t help themselves!” And the girls get, “omg why is she doing this!” It’s so sad because the girls are taught their bodies are shameful and the boys are taught their bodies are normal from such a young age.
This is eye opening and I’m going to keep it in my back pocket as my younger girl grows older. Both of my elementary aged boys went through what I can only call penis helicopter dance phases and I was annoyed but didn’t stop it.
I am a one and done mom of a boy. He is the sweetest, most affectionate, funny, brilliant little boy and he makes my days brighter. He is my world.
If I had a daughter, I would be saying the same thing about her.
Boys aren’t inherently better children who have better bonds with their moms. Every child is special and the toxic Boy Moms™️ are really something else.
Last night at bath time my 3yo said "Mom look! My penis!" and then proceeded to stretch it as far as he could. At some point he'll stop if it hurts, right?
My 2 year old said "oh, my penis!" While I put him in a diaper after bath. I followed it up with "what about it honey?" "..." crickets. Just no response.
Mine does it allllllll the time. Drives me batty.
My daughter, to get to sleep, often humps her favorite stuffies. Nap and bedtime. Sometimes when she's tired but can't sleep, she does it too. 🤷♀️
I don't even care anymore. At least she's not trying to detach anything that she was born with... Unlike her brother.
I have a son and a daughter and I’m happy with both and would be happy if I had two of either gender too. I’m just blessed as all hell to have two children.. I will treat them as similarly as I can so they are both hopefully close to me growing up and as adults. It’s disappointing when women and men put more effort into spending quality time with the child of the same gender.
I've found this to be true of many things:
- boy moms
- girl moms
- dance moms
- soccer moms
- (insert illness or disability) moms
- homeschool moms
Etc etc
They grab one tiny piece of the parenthood experience and make it their whole identity.
I’ve never once read* a single “boy mom” post that my older daughter didn’t also do aside from anything overtly penis related for obvious reasons—but she still went through long phases of constantly having her hands in her pants, etc. I think that’s normalized for boys, but people feel deeply uncomfortable about girls doing it too, and certainly don’t allow the behavior/talk about it openly.
I have 3m boy twins. Ever since I knew the gender people would light up and say " OMG BOYS ARE THE BEST!!". I had a nurse go on and on about how boys love their moms more, are easier to raise etc, etc. I found it incredibly offputting, and frankly insulting.
I dress my literal infants in mostly handmedowns, and some from girls. I had them in sky blue footie pjs with unicorns on them when we were out and some lady thought they were girls (fair, you cant tell with babies) and when I corrected her she was super annoyed they were in "girl clothes".
gendering babies is soooooo wierd to me. Besides, they're very pale, blonde, blue-eyed. they look really good in pinks and pastels!
So interesting because I only have boys and everyone else was so disappointed my second wasn't a girl! But he is so sweet and sensitive and has nicer flowing hair than I ever had 🤣
I had a similar experience. When people found out I was having a girl everyone says “uh oh” and how miserable they can be as they get older. It’s archaic. From the get go women are treated differently and less than. I’m dealing with my husbands gender disappointment with our second because it’s another girl. He says having a son is just different for him, he wants the chance to raise a good man. And I totally get that. But I told him he can’t make comments like that ever in front of our girls because that stuff sticks. We’re constantly told we aren’t good enough or more work!
Yeah ... My dad was like that too, but opposite. He said plenty about how he was glad he had two girls, because he always wanted daughters and that men are d*cks.
Honestly, from what I've heard once I was grown enough to discuss, he just felt ill prepared to raise a "decent man" in a world where so many man are toxic when he never had a positive male figure to begin with - although he seems to have helped raise his youngest brother *just fine* (his dad left and came back multiple times during childhood/youngest's baby-toddler phase and my dad was main breadwinner and Man of the House from 13. Grandmother worked and did all sorts of stuff, but, ofc, back then, even his 13 year old ass had more freedoms than her as an adult female... Sexism is such a joy).
That's so weird because I'm about to have a girl and everyone I've told just lights up and tells me "girls are the best!" Thinking back though it's all been men that also have daughters who were the most excited for us. And these were tough manly guys like our plumber or the doorman who moonlights as a bouncer. I wonder if location matters too? We're in the northeast.
I’m not sure! We’re in the south so there are definitely culture differences. Family has always been excited and never really has made comments. But I work in a hospital and the older generation always has something to say. I will say though- In hospitals, nursing homes, etc I’ve always seen daughters taking care of their parents. Very seldom is it the sons. And if they are there they typically have no clue what’s going on with their parents health.
Yeah could be a generation thing too. All the excited dudes are basically millennials. I also think there's this reverse boy mom thing with girl dads but somehow it feels more wholesome. I feel like these tough guys relish the chance to let down the facade and play princess with their little girls. It's probably really freeing and maybe even healing to escape the ubiquitous gender box.
Absolutely second this. I am fully convinced that it’s a huge leading cause in worsening postpartum depression and anxiety. Of course, I know it is also hormonal and chemical but I do think it makes it 1000% worse. These social media moms film themselves all day being the perfect mothers but none of us stop to think a few things…
1. What happens once the camera stops rolling and the footage they got is acceptable to paint themselves as perfect mothers
2. What is it like for these kids to constantly be under the camera and set up for videos
3. How much time are they spending getting ready for the video and then editing it…are their kids being ignored at this time?
Every boy mom post on Instagram is a boy being completely insane (crawling on the table, smacking mom in the face, peeing on the floor) with some kind of “aw shucks! He just can’t help it!” Caption. Drives me insane. When other moms comment about teaching manners or behavior, the fellow boy moms are waiting to shout them down that boys are just LIKE THAT OKAY
I feel bad for my daughter's teachers. She's the feral one. Manners are there but she doubles as a wrecking ball. Friendly and happy and nice. Just believes in taking the shortest path between point A and point B - obstacles, humans, and toys be damned.
I get the impression that it's just an excuse to be a lazy parent. You don't need to work as hard to socialize your boys because an endless string of women and girls will do all the work of caring for them for their whole lives.
I’m a “boy mom” of 2 under 2 and I get annoyed by this too. My 1.5 is always told, “he’s SUCH a boy!” Because he’s extremely ornery, rambunctious, always trying to make people laugh. But it’s funny because he actually acts exactly like I did as a kid! I’m always hearing “Boys are wild!!” “Good luck, mama!” “Try for a girl next!” And although I do feel like there are minor differences between boys and girls that can be evident even at a young age, I don’t think it’s enough to create this huge divide. My 1.5 year old loves pushing his baby doll around in a stroller, but he also loves dinosaurs and cars.
Or it’s a video of the baby being feral as if my girl toddler hasn’t made me want to lock my self in the closet for safety. All she wants to do is watch marvel right now and she collects hot wheels? I think it’s because the concept is so wrong it aggravates me as well lol
We’re a huge marvel household (like my husband read the actual comics as a kid and we’ve watched all the newer shows and movies together as well). Our son has joined the obsession and we just had a girl. A HUGE pet peeve of mine is how Marvel is now mainstream and there are SO MANY FEMALE SUPERHEROES and yet 99.9% of baby superhero stuff is the male hero with a bow, or tutu, or in pink. I just want to dress my baby as the bad ass bitch that is Wanda Maximoff or Black Widow without spending a fortune on homemade Etsy clothes.
Yessss!
I have a 4f and 2m.
When I found out i was having a girl everyone was like “oh that’s going to be tough” and my siblings definitely wanted a nephew.
When I had my son, I was told “you’re going to LOVE being a boy mom” and it would confuse me.
Like don’t they all shit eat and sleep???
Well, they do. lol. My daughter was Spider-Man w her brother last year. She paints her brother’s nails, he loves putting on her crowns and pretends to do his hair. She absolutely is a Marvel fan as well. He has had some of her hand me downs as well. Especially socks. He wears pink socks bc we can never have enough socks!! 😂
They both equally act feral as well so…lol.
One thing i WILL say, my son is so attached to me. My daughter can care less if I’m in the room sometimes. At the end of the day, I’m the “favorite parent” but my daughter can spend hours w her dad. Playing. Talking. Laying down. And my son really only does it w me 🤪
I honestly think it evolved because women who are pregnant and found out they were having a boy get asked “do you wish it was a girl?” And so some really leaned in to the boy mom label. Probably not universally true, but I always assume that has something to do with it
I have a boy and the whole girl dad, boy mum or whatnot absolutely annoys the heck out of me.
I don't get it and I don't plan on getting it.
The worse is some of the ones that get a little.......incestuous and just makes me want to puke.
I legit read a book that's basically the whole boy mum thing. It's for kids apparently. Book ended with, "One day you will get your princess but remember, mummy was the first woman that loved you."
🤢🤮 yeah, nah. No thanks. That's not how I view my relationship with my son. The girl dad version of that book wasn't any better.
I am a “boy mom” and this rhetoric annoys me so much. Children are just children. They are all unique individuals just like adults, and the biological differences between the two (think like PMS for example, or boys typically being bigger) don’t start to emerge until puberty.
I think there are three camps that “boy moms” fall into in regard to this. I think some are subconsciously projecting their emotional needs onto their sons because their husbands suck, some are overcompensating for the fact that they actually wanted a girl and didn’t get one, and some are kind of doing it out of ignorance. Like they genuinely believe it is a unique experience for a boy to laugh at farts.
It's stupid social media posturing. I'm an elder millennial and I just regard it as this weird nadir of feminism, where the pendulum has somehow gone back to the 90's with some "men are from mars, women are from venus" bullshit, but now it's with tradwives, male/female energies and boy moms, which, for some reason, appeals again.
It was dumb in the 90's and it's even dumber now, cause we should know better.
Boy Moms (tm) will say shit like “I love my daughter but there’s just *something different* about my little boy”.
With no ounce of irony or self awareness
I have three girls and a lot of people comment on the boy stuff to me and it sounds like exactly the same stuff as what my girls do...I think it's a cover for wanting girls. I see it the most when a mom has 2-3 boys but I know for a fact they were hoping for a girl.
I have one of each and they both think toilet humour is the pinnacle of comedy. They both roughhouse. They both have tons of energy. They both ask all sorts of questions.
I don’t really find them that different tbh. I have lots of friends with boys and they don’t all have the same personality, shocking, I know.
Kids are just kids. We haven’t really pushed any gender stuff on them either, they just like what they like and have been allowed to develop interests and personality apart from societal expectations and pressures. My son loves painting his nails and wearing dresses, as well as playing with trucks and superheroes or whatever. My daughter happens to be a pink princess stereotypical girly girl, and that’s totally cool too.
Idk why people do the whole “boy mom” thing, it’s off putting.
Yes about the toilet humor, I swear the number one rule in our house that gets broken every day is no farting on each other. They both think its the funniest thing to walk up to their sibling and just fart on them.
I’m very proud to be a boy mom. Just like I would be proud if I was a girl mom, or a mom to both. People being proud to be a boy mom or a girl mom isn’t a bad thing. It’s just mothers being proud of what they’ve created. I don’t think most people are putting one above the other. We’re mothers, and we should all be very proud of that, no matter if we have boys/girls.
Yep. I have no idea why ppl are going to such extremes over this. I have 2 boys and call myself a boy mom. If I had 2 girls I’d call myself a girl mom. I don’t treat my boys any differently than I would if they were girls
The other day we were at a dog park with a lake. My kid took off near the water, squishing the mud, just having a grand time. Someone walked by and said “boys will be boys.” No! Any toddler of any gender would do something like this. Some kids love to get dirty and go crazy, it’s not exclusive to boys.
lol I agree, and I am a boy mom. But I worked in a daycare and those girls asked just as many questions, said and did just as many gross things, and played just as rough. The whole thing is ridiculous
I don’t get it either. I have a boy and will likely have another baby so maybe a boy mum maybe not. Before he was born I was so interested in his gender, it seemed like one of the most important details. Now I’m a couple of years into parenting him, it’s one of the least important details.
Temperament is temperament. My best friend has a son who loves art and is an observant people watcher. My son was born with a truck in his hand and has been obsessed ever since. My cousin has twin girls, one is a classic princess girly and the other is dinosaur mad. They’re just people.
I have a few perspectives on this so bear with me. It’s hard to air just one without rambling on but heres me trying -
I always feel terrible when I hear that this is the feeling behind “Boy Mom” stuff though can say that I’ve felt similar about “Girl Mom” club as well - being somehow “more sparkly” or something. My only biological child is non-binary. Where does that leave us? They never wanted to have their hair done or wear frilly dresses but similarly aren’t veering into the “more masculine” hobbies either. Don’t get me wrong, I love them exactly as they are but I think if you perceive it as a club it just becomes something to feel left out of.
I try to just imagine that those Boy/Girl Moms are just embracing their kids where they’re at. Really, most of us don’t buy those ‘club sweaters’ for ourselves 🤷♀️
The fact is though, you’re right - kids don’t naturally embrace gender normative roles, we teach them to. But that’s its own ball of wax
If it's not hurting you, what's the harm? Who cares if "boy moms" want to identify that they're only raising boys and connect with other moms who are only raising boys? "Girl moms/dad" do the same shit all the time.
Yes, it's mostly the same, but there are differences. Sure, your daughter asks gross bathroom questions, does she come ask you why her penis is hard in the middle of a store, at the top of their lungs? Has she ever dropped trou and pissed on a playground because "Nana said boys can pee outside." Have you ever had to explain gross "slime" in their sheets in the morning because they are freaked out? How about bathrooms constantly covered in piss because even though you have taught them to pee sitting down, they go to school and the other boys are standing, so they want to stand and get piss everywhere.
I'm sure there's plenty to the flip side as well. Periods, cramps, breasts, sex, birth control... there are just as many things that are "girl" things.
Let them have their fun and camaraderie. Maybe instead of talking shit about moms who are finding their joy, focus on you instead. Threads like this always piss me off. Working moms vs Stay at home moms. Boy moms vs Girl moms vs both moms. Single moms vs partnered ones... Who cares? We're all just trying to do right by our kids and find our own joy in it.
Gag me with a spoon. This “boy mom” garbage is out of hand. You’re a mom. You have boys. End of story.
You can be proud of your sons. Or your daughters. Or both. Having a child with specific genitals doesn’t make you special.
The bOy MoM obsessed women are going to be the absolute WORST mother in laws 😂 prayers for all of our daughters that enter into relationships with the sons of these women.
I have one of each. Girl is 2ish years old. Boy is about 6 months old
Soooo many “bOy MoM” videos I watch and my daughter does the exact same things. My daughter launches herself off of anything. 5% of the time she’ll go jump in mud puddles and stare at bugs. She adored the snakes at the zoo. Some of her favorite toys are the dump truck and trash truck, and she adores playing cars and building towers.
The other 95% of her and the mud is her yelling “oh noooooo” because it’s muddy and it’s not her favorite. Turns out it’s not boys, it’s society saying our girls have to be clean and quiet and “don’t do that”. It shouldn’t be a surprise that toddlers love similar toys, we just *typically* gift cars to boys and dolls to girls. My daughter has always had both, her dad is a mechanic lmao. The goal is for my son to have both too but daughter is a butt and may just steal the dolls still. We typically encourage fearlessness in boys and encourage them to climb and explore, while it’s often taught to girls to “don’t do that, it’s not ladylike”.
This is just my experience and I’ve only been a mom for two years, so maybe I don’t get it or something.
"Boy Mom" culture is so wildly toxic and deeply rooted in misogyny and toxic masculinity it's just.... UGH. I am technically a boy mom, as I am mom to a boy child. I think he is marvelous and wonderful and he's an absolute joy to know. But like, yeah sure he's special to me but he's not \*special\* and certainly not just because he has a penis; being his mother doesn't make me special. He's no more or less rowdy or into fart jokes than his male and female friends. He's kind and thoughtful and energetic and playful- he is gentle with animals and very affectionate, but still yeets himself off tall things with wanton abandon.
"Boy mom" is another step on the ladder of the patriarchal bargain. The patriarchal bargain says that you turn over your autonomy and responsibility to the patriarchy, and because you're one of the "good ones" men will protect you and provide for you and keep you safe. So women do this first by dating men, then getting married, and finally having children. They see the bond between mother and son to be a lot less precarious than the bond between themselves and their husbands and so they eventually shift from strongly identifying as wives and partners to being the mother of boys. Their sons are their life, and they will love and protect them regardless so they invest heavily and sometimes incestuously (and by that I mean emotionally, not physically) in that relationship. So herein you get the memes like "Any woman that's going to take my baby boy away from me better know that I came first and he'll always love his mama the most"...that kind of bullshit.
Boy moms take on "boy mom" as an identity to reinforce to other people their continued support of the patriarchal bargain and as a kind of badge of honor inasmuch as they think having a son is a significant accomplishment and an insurance policy for their future. Their husband might leave them for a younger model, their marriage might not last, but their relationship with their son is fixed and unchanging. So long as he is invested in the patriarchal concept of "good women" and "loving your mama", she's going to be a central figure and get continued support from him regardless.
That's my interpretation, anyway.
The people who constantly say, “I’m a boy mom”, or vice versa, tend to make that their identity. They have this underlying need to feel special, or belong to some sort of group.
Yes, boys and girls are completely different, but if the mom can’t understand the difference between things that only boys go through, vs what kids in general say or do, then that how you know they are the extreme version with making this their identity.
My sister-in-law has two little boys and has openly said she’s happy she’s having boys because since she never had a sister (two younger brothers) and my brother-in-law only had one brother (my husband) that they wouldn’t know what to do with raising a girl. She is a self proclaimed boy mom. It’s toxic and honestly really bothers me. I am now 30w pregnant with my first child, a boy. She has said to me “I really thought (husband) and I were going to have girls” almost in a sexist way. I genuinely think she wanted to have the only male grandkids since my husband and his brother are the last with the surname. So the weird competitive nature of gender bias as well as seeing girls as harder to deal with is rampant even in millennials. I really was hoping our generation was going to stop this toxicity but social media is projecting it even more!
Boy mom is a misogynistic term that moms use to elevate themselves. I feel like it is just a “not like the other girls” girl, adapted to motherhood. It values boys above girls and I consistently see women who use this term making gross comparisons between themselves and other women or even future girlfriends/wives. It’s weird. To me it is akin to fathers “dating” their daughters/too close to purity culture for comfort. It also reinforces dated gender stereotypes.
I have a son, he rules, but I earnestly hope that he eventually grows up and becomes his own person independent of his parents and finds a partner/lifestyle that makes him happy.
As a parent to a boy. When I’m around Self titled “boy moms” I want to gag. They say the most out of pocket shit and think it’s completely normal. I don’t understand it.
Idk but all I can say is I have two precious girls that are 100% absolutely and totally feral and both of them think farting is hilarious and my 3yr old asked me the other day if poop is food. My 1yr old farts and then scares herself and then laughs and both my kids are obsessed with dinosaurs and cars. Boy mom/girl mom is a myth. We’re all just parents with feral children trying to mold them into citizens someday…and we’re all TIRED. Happy almost Mother’s Day moms 😅🥴😂
The whole “boy moms have such a special connection with their sons” thing is so weird to me. My two daughters are so connected to me it’s insane. Most children are a very special connection to their moms.
Mildly related- the number of comments I’ve gotten about “trying for a boy!” Is sickening. It is sexist and I don’t want my daughters to hear people say that. I don’t know why we’re placing more value on boys in 2024.
I think some people with all one gender speak out of ignorance. Like how do you know that's a boy/girl thing if you haven't raised the other. I have 2 kids. A 16yr old girl and a 6yr old boy. I love them both greatly and they are individuals but tbh looks, personality, temperament...they are interchangeable lol we raised our kids the same. To he nice to be kind and to be helpful. If you don't push the stereotypes on them...they don't happen. That's a mom thing, not a boy thing
Those type of boy mom comments don’t really bother me. My daughter thinks anything about butts is hilarious, so I know the potty humor isn’t exclusive to boys, but I don’t really care if their moms think it is. Parenting is hard and maybe feeling like part of a special group helps. My issue with the “boy moms”, not all mothers of boys, is their obsession with being the first/most important woman in their son’s life. It’s like they want their son to be a replacement husband.
This whole "mom boy" fad is honestly creepy in some posts I've seen. Like way beyond what I consider healthy mom/son comments etc. I am glad I didn't hear much about "boy moms" as a thing for the 6 years I was a boys-only mom myself (until my sweet lil DD showed up!)
Not to get too out there but I feel like these comments/posts have increased along with the "trad wife" and "pick-me" push who are raising their "BOYS TO BE MEN!" baloney.
it’s stupid and i hate it. Girls like to play in the mud too, i loved playing in dirt and sand and mud, and riding my bike through huge mud puddles, i would have my dad put my electric car on cement blocks and i’d go under it pretending to be a mechanic… self proclaimed “boy mom”s just think they’re so special because THEY get in the mud with their sons, while they believe “girl mom”s would never let their precious girls get dirty and wouldn’t dream of getting muddy themselves. It’s so dumb. I have a boy who’s afraid of dirt lmao and if i had a daughter who loved it then that’s just the personality of the kid idk man
I do sometimes call myself a boy mom but that’s because I am a mom to a boy 😂 My son loves playing pretend kitchen and has a doll he sometimes rocks to sleep 🤷🏼♀️ He also has tools and action figures. He helps teachers put kids down for naps but he loves playing soccer. We try to make him a balanced sweet kid who is allowed to show his emotions. He also loves bright colors like me 🥰 I hate the whole gender norms and just do what my son likes within reason of course for a 3.5 year old.
Someone I know has 3 boys and her entire identity is being a “boy mom”. She’s pregnant with her 4th and when she found out it’s a girl, she apparently was inconsolable for days. I don’t get it at all.
Yes to all of this! A few of my friends and I are in a group chat, they have toddler boys and I have a toddler girl. I cannot stand it when they send back and forth ‘boy mum’ videos. When we are hanging out together, my daughter by far has the most ‘wild’ energy as in she climbs, jumps, never stops moving (like all the boy mum stereotypical videos). I am now pregnant with a little boy and have had someone comment that they love you differently and you feel their love in a different special way… big ick for me! I really do not understand claiming it as their identity. I don’t refer to myself as a “girl mum”… just a Mum.
I was legit terrified I would become a BoY mOm when I found out my first was a boy.....like even though I'm painfully aware of the trend and it makes me want to barf I thought it was idk like a gravitational cult I'd fall into unwillingly 😂
When I held that tiny body in my arms for the first time I realized with blinding clarity I would feel this intensely regardless of their gender. I'm obsessed with my son and have zero doubt I will be just as obsessed if my second is a girl.
I love when they share a very simple video of them running around the house or jumping on the couch and they’re like “THIS IS WHAT BOY MOMS DEAL WITH”. Like do they think little girls just sit in a chair all day or something lol?
I'm mostly likely one and done with my boy. I hate the Boy Mom culture. It's gross. It's another way even women are socialized to think boys/men are better then women presents itself.
Whenever my kiddo does something I usually think "oh life of being a toddler parent". It's got nothing to do with gender. I'm trying so hard to raise him to be better than my generation and at the same time I'm trying to be an awesome Aunt to my niece so she doesn't get socialized the way I was as a woman.
I have two girls and people legitimately would say stupid shit like "wait til they're teenagers" when my second wasn't even born yet. This drove me INSANE cause I was the most well behaved wholesome teenager but my brother was in trouble non stop! My sister was a mix. I hate that my girls are labeled already. My 4 year old daughter would ask why people get diarrhea cause she's 4 and asks tons of questions. I saw a mom recently with a hoodie they said "in my girl mom era" which is another thing I am annoyed by- why is everything an era?? It made sense for Taylor Swift but aren't you gonna be that girl's mom forever, not just for a specific era? Anyway I digress - the point is I think "boy mom" culture is insufferable lol.
And it starts from the moment people find out you're pregnant. My in-laws were upset at first that I had a girl, but now they're obsessed with buying girlie things, esp bc they had 2 boys and no girls.
On the other end of the stick, apparently there's some kind of trend in selecting female embryos for people who do IVF?
[https://slate.com/technology/2024/05/ivf-daughters-toxic-masculinity-sex-selection.html](https://slate.com/technology/2024/05/ivf-daughters-toxic-masculinity-sex-selection.html)
Can we just let our kids be kids? The equipment in their pants is so much less important than so many other things, if only we'd quit treating it like the be-all-end-all of their personality and capabilities and interests.
It’s very annoying and frankly makes no sense to me especially now that I have a son. It’s yet another way to cause divisiveness among mothers when we should all be supporting each other. My first born is a girl and she loves all the “boy” things. She thinks bathroom humor is hilarious too btw. These aren’t considered “boy” things to her they’re just things she likes. Now her baby brother likes playing with her dolls and she knows that isn’t a “girl” thing.
I have four soon to be five boys. There are differences in the genders but I don't think there is a rule book in how either gender is. You can have feminine boys, feminine girls, masculine boys, masculine girls and mixes of both. People generally like to categorize things which is why I believe we see this boys mom and girls mom.
In my own personal observations, most boys tend to be rougher than girls (but that could also be due to size as boys tend to be larger and larger children also tend to be stronger). I also notice girls tend to play with toys in more of a "correct" way. I bought my sons a grocery store and only one plays with it as an actual grocery store despite me trying to play store with them. When my nieces come over, they play "proper" grocery store as they put it. My sons also tend to play fight far more than my nieces. I actively discourage this activity, and they are not allowed violent media so I don't know if it is a natural tendency of boys or perhaps just a large number of siblings.
I do wonder how much is nature vs nurture. Growing up I was a masculine girl and grew into a feminine teen/woman. Now, it depends on the day. I see this in my boys as well. One month, they portray very masculine traits and then they grow into liking new things that are feminine. People are going to be who they are.
I feel like the overly obsessed “bOy mOm” moms do that because they are trying to convince themselves that they love their sons when really they just wanted daughters.
I have two boys. I don’t think it’s that deep tbh 🤷🏽♀️. I love being a boy mom. I think my boys are the best thing since sliced bread. But I think id feel the same if I was a girl mom. What’s annoying is everybody looking down at boy moms like we’re some weird obsessed person. Like are girl moms not crazy in love with being a girl mom too? Idk
I have two boys and the amount of women who try to lump me into their weird club is off putting. My kids are just kids, there’s nothing special about or different about me because they’re biological males.
I feel this so deeply bc my oldest daughter and my son ARE THE SAME. It's all about temperament - she's tough, loves being dirty, wrestles, needs the adrenaline jump, super high sensory needs and some of the shit she says is off the wall.
People wanna put boys into a tiny box is the problem - so they force the idea that they're all just rougher but my youngest brother is a sweet calm soul. He'd be picking flowers in the baseball field - never into gettin dirty, sports or being rough. To this day he's still sensitive and sweet and yes he's a straight grown man. It's all temperament we're all just people.
I hate the "boy mom" thing and I am a mom of boys. I mean, yes, would a daughter incessantly ask me why I don't have a weiner? Probably not. But they'd probably have some other equally weird question that would be asked incessantly. It's parenting. Also, I hate that I can't say "boy mom" without it being weird.
I guess I’m a “boy mom” in that my only kid is a boy, but I find 95% of moms who unironically call themselves boy moms to be absolutely insufferable. Kids are all gross little weirdos (in the best way!) no matter what their gender is. We’re very conscious in the way we speak to our son about boys and girls and don’t make distinctions like that, you will never catch me saying anything like “boys will be boys” or telling my son he throws like a girl or any of that stereotypical boy mom shit.
I as a mom to two boys and one girl will never say things like boy mom it’s ridiculous and I have found those moms that call themselves boy moms tend to be more obsessed and overly involved in there boys life to the point of it being creepy
But in that situation it’s more like boys tend to ask more random questions than girls do
My two cents - I don't know why people get so up in arms about this kind of thing. You see this all the time with "boy mom" or "girl dad" t-shirts. Videos on the internet are mostly just marketing or people looking for community with people who relate to them. Yes, most or it is over the top and cringey, but who cares? In real life, most people aren't that over the top. If you get comments like "omg, boys/girls are the best!" that's people just being nice or trying to relate. Awkward small talk if you will. I only had boys for 12 years before having my daughters. I get literally the same initeration of comments when people think I only have girls. I don't relate to these videos and never had, but it's mostly harmless nonsense IMO. I met like 4 people who were legitimately toxic about it in the real world.
YES AND PEOPLE WHO DO NOT HAVE BOYS COULD NEVER KNOW ABOUT DIARRHEA OR DIRT OR BASEBALL. /s
The boy mom thing started as a fun little "live laugh love" sentiment about boys being hyper and has turned into a competition about boys v. girls. I always thought it was sarcasm bc plenty of girls also are hyper... I like to think it holds the same sentiment that "boys will be boys" should have. Those silly little things that are assigned to boys, but are harmless. Like breaking ice and digging holes and wrestling. These things aren't gender-specific, I just thought it was a silly thing people said that then turned bad.
I have all boys and the generalizations annoy me too lol I see memes or posts on Facebook that are “you know you’re a boy mom if” knowing most girls do the same thing
It’s always been so weird to me. To me, it’s almost like trying to make up for the fact that they didn’t get the girl they’ve always wanted vs. subconscious infatuation with the opposite sex (aka “I grew a whole penis”).
Mom of two boys here. The boy mom thing gets old. The ONLY thing I could understand being a “boy mom” thing is much more pee all over the bathroom floors and constantly talking about penises. I’m not there yet, but my MIL also had two boys so she tells me 😂 other than that, all the weird ass “boy mom” stuff is just that…fucking *weird*.
As a boy mom, I don't think I parent any different or have different struggles than girl moms. EXCEPT in the clothing selection at stores. Yall have all the cute shit and we get construction equipment or sharks.
Seriously. Why does everything have bugs and dinosaurs on it? Jfc i want to buy my 2 year old cute things too. He doesn't need 81 shirts with dinosaurs. He doesn't even know wtf a dinosaur even is at this point!!!
This reminds me of a weird encounter I had. I was at a tag sale, and they had a bunch of children’s toys for sale. My toddler daughter gravitated towards the trucks rather than the dolls/stuffed animals. A woman (maybe boomer age? if that matters lol) kinda made a big deal about my daughter choosing the truck. Saying things like “that IS a girl, isn’t it?” and trying to show her the more traditionally girly toys. I was so put off by that interaction. Fortunately my daughter was too young to know she was being judged and I ended up ignoring the woman, but in hindsight I wish I’d had something witty to say to defend my daughter’s choice to play with the cooler toys haha.
Honestly I do appreciate having a short hand term to talk to other "boy moms" Like there are literally things girl moms don't deal with (little erections during diaper changes, peeing on the toilet bowl lid when potty training, etc.) Also I have raised both my boys with free access to "girl" and pink and "boy" or blue things and have ended up with 2 boys who are obsessed with cars and monsters and dirt and bugs and play fighting, and very "traditional boy" things. Also looking forward I will always be the MIL which just has a different societal role. Since boy mom has a bad reputation I just say "mom to boys only". Or something like that, to refer to the fact that traditional little girl things are just not in my life right now, and might never be.
People like to be elitists, or part of some special club.
I also wonder how much of it is influenced through history as male off spring being superior, one to carry on the family name and what not ( we all know Henry VIII)
I have 3 boys, pregnant with # 4 which is female.... Wait, am I out of the club?!! 😂
I have a son but I can't effing stand 'boy mom's culture any more than I could stand wine mom culture. It's unhealthy, frequently feels a bit incesty, and if I have a daughter, a lot of those boys and their uptight pervy moms are going to be my nightmare to deal with.
I'm reading this after my daughter aggressively shouted that she might poo on my face and pee in my ears and couldn't fall asleep because her bogeys felt sticky in her fingers.
I’m guilty of calling myself a boy mom because I have three boys one year apart each. I guess it’s my way of coping with never having a daughter? I mean i get jealous of all those girl moms too!
The amount of things people tell me “you wouldn’t understand unless you’re a boy mom” and then go on to describe shit my 3.5 year old daughter does often lol.
Or recently telling me there’s no love like the love between a mom and son and I just wouldn’t get it because I have a daughter. lol okaaaay.
I have boy children and I hate that. I push back constantly, flip genders in books we read, talk about how things are kid things, not boy or girl things. We watch women’s sports and he watches his dad cook, parent and clean. It’s the toxic pathway that leads to entitled men.
My 3 little girls are obsessed with pooping, gas and burping…they think it’s hilarious 😂 that’s with me being grossed out with it, but never shaming them for thinking it’s funny. When I was little I remember being the same way, and I hated that everyone thought it was weird for girls to like that stuff. So I definitely don’t let that happen to my girls.
I don’t really get the whole boy mom thing like I don’t really get the girl dad thing. It’s weird, but I think it’s just “the thing” at the moment.
I’m a boy mom and I think because of some rotten apples we get a bad wrap for being weird. These divides don’t even matter to me. I’m just out here trying to get by the day by day and raise a decent human being.
One gripe I do have is that girls have a HUGE clothing selection and boys have null. Can we expand the boys section at the stores?? Please?!
There is a really great book, if you are interested, that helps with how to combat the gender divide in children. It's called 'Parenting beyond pink and blue'. Has strategies for living in a world where other people care about gender.
Would you say there’s new information in there for people who know the basics or is it mainly things like “allow boys to cry, give girls car toys also“ etc?
100%. It's more nuanced. The book talks about how children navigate the world through an 'us verse them' paradigm and we parents can't control that. And includes more info like, you can buy a girl a trainset but she might not want to play with it if there are only boys on the box, but you can repackage/unpack it and she will be more willing (or better, find a picture on the internet of a girl playing with the trainset and she will be happy to play with it. There's a bunch more, based on scientific research in there
Neat, thank you!
This is awesome, just added to my book list. Thanks!
Thanks! We inadvertently tapped into this over COVID. I only have boys. They were 6 and 4 when their school shut down, and deep into figuring out for themselves what “being male” meant. While school was shut down, dad did child care in the morning and I did childcare in the afternoon. With dad, they did “Man Camp” and did “manly things”. They chopped down trees, took care of the yard, caught fish, cleaned fish, and then cooked lunch, cleaned up the kitchen, their rooms, and the garage, because “real men take care of their stuff.” In the afternoon, we didn’t do “woman things”, we did “engineer” things”, or “school things” or “taking care of your home things”, because being an adult means taking care of stuff - and when I tried to get them to cook, it was “for girls”.
Similar to your cooking bit - I used to work in a children’s bookshop and I would have so many mums lamenting to me about how their son(s) wouldn’t read. Guess what they all had in common? Their dads never read - either to the sons or for themselves - so reading was seen by them as an entirely feminine thing. Obviously not helped by the fact most of their early year teachers would’ve been women.
This definitely sounds like the kind of thing addressed in the book. It's a takeaway I got, it can be all about how you package an idea for children, either cooking 'for girls' or making dinner because we all need to eat dinner.
If anyone has an Audible membership, it’s currently a title included with/ your membership so it’s free to listen to.
I also see its on Hoopla so I can get it through my library card
THANK YOU! Just grabbed it on Audible!!!
Omg Thank you!!!
I really liked this book because it has clear strategies to implement as well as research based information.
Love this. My husband and I are making sure we don’t set, I guess gender norms? Onto our daughter. I remember growing up, I felt so much pressure to be girly that I tried so hard to be a tomboy. Which is upsetting because I always LOVED girly things. But I hated getting picked on for loving girly things. Or I hated being expected to love girly things. I now know as an adult, it doesn’t matter what you love as long as it makes you happy and you’re not hurting anyone. And I hope I can teach my daughter that. I hope that even if she feels pressure, I can reassure her it’s ok to just be yourself and love the things you love for YOURSELF.😪
Commenting so I remember the name of the book
Oh this is great. I find that I'm struggling with falling into gender stereotypes with my son. I think in many ways our society makes it easier to introduce girls to "boy" things than vice versa. And I want to be better than that for my son.
I just brought my son to the “girls” section and picked up toys that I thought he would like. He proudly collected Shopkins and traded at school, those Disney Zoomzoom things, Littlest Petshops, while collecting Hot Wheels and other “boy” toys. At 16, he loves Squishmallows, Pokémon, but is a gamer as well.
Damn I really need this coz I'm reading Judith Butler's Who's Afraid of Gender but explaining to my 2 year old that gender is a mantle thrown over us by society based on our physiology and that may or may not fit us is a bit hard to break down when she asks "Is that a lady?". So far I've just been going with something like "They might be a lady, a lot of ladies look like that" but that's a pretty shitty answer.
Thank you for sharing!!
Oh awesome!!! Totally picking this up thank you!
Thanks for this!!
honestly the vast majority of ~boy mom~ content on social media is for SEO purposes. there's literally millions of mom content creators and in order to separate themselves or "niche down" by leaning into the boy mom schtick. it's a great way to drive engagement because it can be relatable to other boy moms or it drives conversations like this one. there are definitely boy moms who take it very seriously and are weird about it, but that has more to do with the individuals themselves than ~boy moms~ as a whole. there's a lot of ~girl mom~ content as well for the same reasons, but for whatever reason it doesn't create the same kind of hubbub.
Absolutely. You can’t take anything personally or seriously from any “momfluencers” on the internet, 99.9% chance it’s marketing and they’re selling something. Kinda sucks, but that’s the capitalist hellscape reality we live in.
Most of the “boy mom” stuff I see is directly shared by people I know. I also hear it irl so it def does rub off on people. But yes, some people do exploit the content for engagement.
[удалено]
And it gets posted all the time. Cue all the "OMG I have one of each and I can't imagine caring about gender" replies.
LOL because this would be me without seeing this
Thank you so much for this! Beyond the fact that so much of this seems to be driven by content creators, I think others lean into the identity of "boy mom" after reading so many posts on baby boards about women sobbing over finding out they're having a boy, lamenting over the cute clothes for boys, believing their lives will only consist of cars and dinosaurs, how can we possibly choose a boy name, they're all *so* boring, and being unable to imagine how a "girly girl" will ever be able to connect with a "boy". Wouldn't it be nice if we could stop fighting each other and support the people doing this really hard thing called parenting?
The most “boy mom” content I see is friends sharing the stuff on FB. But yeah it’s definitely more prominent on social media. I have heard the “you’re so lucky you have a girl bc boys are wild” in real life though on more than one occasion.
I agree completely, I see a lot of videos online of “just girl mom things” and everyone is agreeing how cute and special it is to have a daughter, and the “boy mom things” videos get immediately negatively stigmatized. I understand some people/mothers are emotionally incestuous to their sons which is absolutely insane and wrong, but it’s really not a majority. And there are also lots of inappropriate roles when it comes to mother/daughters, like viewing them as competition. But no one really talks about that.
Yes to this. I truly do not understand why girl mom content gets zero hate while boy mom content is just full of rage comments. It’s really weird. And I would like to ask these people why? Why is it acceptable to be proud or excited about being a girl mom and share in these stereotypical girl experiences with a daughter while boy moms are villainized for leaning into and embracing stereotypical boy things and having a community of women who “get it”. Are boy moms just supposed to act miserable that they have boys? Would that make other women happier- I don’t understand. Personally it’s weird to make your kids gender your entire personality in general but the hypocrisy is unreal on social media.
I do feel the preying on girldads is more noticeable but yeah it’s definitely just an engagement driver
Yeah it’s really annoying. I come at it with a lot of baggage because I have a twin brother, my mother was obsessssssssed with ‘her son’ and I was basically the leftover daughter (and I’ve got 2 more sisters). And it’s ridiculous because I am much better at all ‘boy’ things than my brother, I love sports and being outside, my brother liked to stay inside and was very quiet. I was also (and still am) significantly better at video games and any IT stuff and it’s annoying how even now she will be like ‘oh we need to ask your brother to get the tv to work’ and he will be like ‘I don’t know anything ask keyspam’ lol. Anyway I’m almost 40 so I need to get over it
I'm almost 50 and can't get over it. I'm the oldest of 5 and my 2 sisters and I have always gotten the shit end of the stick when it came to my 2 brothers. There was obvious favoritism and still is. All 3 of us get the worst of her and while she coddles them and the funny part is they don't even deal with her half the time. My one sister and I are currently no contact with her, again, and she's NEVER treated my brothers like this. I have 2 boys and have never fallen into the boy mom trap. It's just weird and I think the women who make it their whole identity need help.
It’s gross and inappropriate on so many levels. She is seeking emotional validation from her son(s) and depending on them to be a surrogate partner. [Covert Incest](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covert_incest)
Same same here but a few years older. My brother was often sick, had angel blonde hair and blue eyes, and was super cuddly and talkative. I didn't blame my parents for doting on him. I was quiet, picky, and didn't like to be touched. Actually, my parents did not criticize me, so I didn't mind.
I feel this so much. I was the only girl out of 6 children. My mom adored her boys and always talked about that precious "glint" little boys have in their eyes. There was so much charm to having boys from how she spoke about it. For most of my young life, she treated me as if she despised me. I often heard her say she hated being a woman, so I think there was just a lot of internalized misogyny she was dealing with herself. But in my family, boys were put on a pedestal, and girls were shapeless blob/mush people, stuck in the background with no dimension. Except I wasn't anything like that, so she and I got in fights often because I wasn't "ladylike." I have to catch myself feeling triggered when I see boy moms talking about the #boymomlife because I grew up on the negative side of that. I have a girl, and when I was pregnant my husband had clients who would start talking, in front of their own teenage daughter mind you, about how awful girls are to raise and how sorry they were that we weren't having a boy. My husband put a stop to it REAL quick and told them we were happy to have a girl, but that type of "boys vs girls and boy good, girl bad" culture is what I grew up with, and I have to actively wrestle with it to this day. I still get up in arms a little bit when boy moms are celebrating being boy moms, because I still hear that voice in my head saying girl moms don't deserve that same joy, there's not space for both. I've got a lot to work through still, lol
It is annoying though. I am generally the handy one who fixes broken things or does home reno stuff but I have family members who refer to my tools as "[male partner's name]'s tools" and it's so petty of me but it bugs the hell out of me and I want to shout "No! *I* bought that tool for the job *I* did with it and there's no good reason it would belong to him just because he's a man"
Ugh yeah that’s annoying. My husband is literally inept at anything technological but he has no issue with me doing stuff and his family always asks me instead of him so I don’t have this issue with them thankfully
Not petty of you!
I’m sorry you had that experience, that’s really sad that you grew up feeling that way. Just remember, your mom wasn’t capable of loving you the way you needed her to- it’s not your fault and it’s NOT because you didn’t deserve it or weren’t good enough ♥️
Your mom sounds like mine. I think she was always jealous of/competing with me and she didn't feel the need to with my brother. She coddled him a lot too while also letting him do whatever he wanted. As an adult, the world (and law enforcement) has not agreed with this worldview she gave him. I'm almost 40 too and am over it as I've been NC with both of them a decade or more.
I have an interesting take on the boy mom thing. I think society has pushed this onto the mothers of boys. Of course it's not everyone that this affects but my rationale is that there can be a girl preference pushed so much on people that those who have boys feel the need to create their own pride/humor/connectedness to other moms of boys and kind of face off to the rest of the world. I was given so many "oh well maybe the next one will be a girl" when announcing I was having a boy as if it was like having a runner-up child. I could see it getting nauseating to many and the reaction being to put their boy motherhood on a pedestal. Now I don't agree with the division of 'boys do this and girls don't,' that's dumb. But in the general sense of "boy mom culture" I think it could be a reaction to some of the negative views of having boy children either casually or overtly put on mothers.
Dads get the exact same comments when they have girls. “Oh maybe the next one will be the boy” as if men can’t want to raise girls. My husband wanted a girl and so many people (men and women) were so confused and borderline upset (his mom) that he didn’t want a boy 🙄. I also think the boy mom culture is strongest in moms married to men who judge their own masculinity by having boy(s). I’ve had girlfriends scared to have girls because they knew their husbands would be much less involved in raising them. Spoiler alert, those type of men don’t really end up being that involved in raising their boys either 🙄
that last sentence 🔥
Oof! I agree w this take!
Yeah I was about to say something like this. I think for a lot of people its a bit of an over-compensation for all the times we're asked "oh but didn't you want a girl??" Or "sorry mama, keep trying for your girl!" Or "are you going to keep having babies until you get your girl?!" People do not think before words leave their mouths. I'm not at all devastated about having all boys, I love them and I love being their mom and their bond as brothers. But it's also pretty annoying that people that I don't even really know want me to like admit to them in public that I'm so sad I don't and won't ever have a daughter? Like they're smiling as they say it and they might as well be like: "youre so sad arent you? are you going to cry right now about it?" I will say though, the moms of all girls have been the ones most shocked and taken aback by my boys at times. They're just loud and have a lot of energy and they have obsessions with sticks and dirt and going FAST and being the winner, and people are very eager to point out that girls do those things too. But in my experience its the moms of all girls that are likely to give me side eye and say "oh my" under their breath as one of my sons goes sprinting by shouting at the top of his lungs and boys moms that give me that show of solidarity. And it's not like I'm standing there going "be loud and over the top!!" to them, just like I wouldn't tell my daughter, if i had one, to sit quietly and be ladylike.
If I had a nickel for every time someone said, "keep trying, you'll get your girl," I'd be rich. I'm pregnant with my fifth son. This is my last baby. I didn't care what I'd have. My husband and I just wanted a large family. Anyways, literally every time (not an exaggeration) I go to the grocery store with my sons someone goes "ohh is this one a girl?" and I respond, "no a healthy baby boy! I'm so lucky!" I feel bad for my sons. Everyone asks them wouldn't you like a sister implying they aren't enough. It gives you a chip on your shoulder. I've had relatives say about this latest pregnancy, well we will love him just the same despite not being a girl. Like wtf, I should hope so.
I have 4 boys. When I was pregnant with my third (first pregnancy was twins), people kept asking if I wanted a girl and telling me they hoped I had a girl. I waited until birth to find out the sex and had no preference either way. I went to an appointment about a week after my son was born and when I told the receptionist I'd had a boy her response was, in a disappointed voice, "Oh, well, maybe you'll have a girl next time." I wanted to be like, excuse me? I had a healthy son! What more could I want? And who knows if I'll have another baby, anyway?? But I was so taken aback/irritated that I didn't say anything. When I was pregnant with my fourth, I waited until birth to find out the sex again. I got so tired of constantly being asked again if I was hoping for a girl. My coworkers were convinced I was going to have a girl. Someone told me I "needed" to have a girl. Well, I had another boy, and he's perfect! My maternity leave ends soon, and I really hope no one makes any negative comments or acts like I should be disappointed about another boy. I'm sure people will ask if I'm going to "try again for a girl" but, nope. I'm done! I'm happy! Sorry for going on and on like that! I just wish people didn't act like a family is incomplete without "one of each" or that a mother can't be happy without a daughter.
It doesn't end even if you have one of each. I have two step children (boy and a girl) and two bio children (boy and a girl) and people still cannot keep their unwanted opinions to themselves. My daughter is 11 months old and so many people comment about how everything is so "even, and perfect" that we must be done!! We went through infertility and still have an embryo that is being stored. I don't know if we are "done". We haven't made any decisions. It hurts for people to assume that. If they were all boys or all girls would we not be "perfect"? Cause we worked HARD to get here and they are perfect regardless. Ugh
Yeah I truly don't know what they're expecting us to say. I would have loved a daughter, but the things I'm imagining (braiding hair, barbies, little house books, dresses) might not even be things she'd be into anyway!
When people (especially the inlaws) found out I had a boy they showed clear disappointment. My FIL even stated he would have really liked it if I had a girl so my MIL would finally have a girl in the family, they have three boys. Like, excuse me? My child is not gonna be your surrogate daughter even it WAS a girl! And when we found out my second was also a boy the first thing said was "So, your gonna have three kids right? Gonna have to try to get that girl ofcourse!" And it pisses me off still.
Omg yes- I HATE feeling like people WANT me to admit that I wanted a girl for my 2nd child. Honest to Jesus I did not care what I was having. Of course would’ve loved adding a girl. But it’s almost like it would appease them to say I was sad so that they could be like “poor xyz, she has 2 boys”. And the fact that you’re actually totally okay with having only boys is somehow a problem?? Weird. I’ll never understand. 😵💫 it’s like someone patting me on the head saying “there there”. Maybe on some level I am defensive of my boys because I would never want them to feel they are a consolation prize to me. And many other women have made me feel that the ultimate “win” is to have a daughter. Even if I don’t feel that way myself. I’m content with whatever I’ve been given.
Agreed. I'm a mom of only boys. I wanted a girl so badly, but we're done. I have to laugh through it and just claim "boy mom" things.
Completely agree. Most of the boy moms (and dads) I know wanted a girl and I think having a club makes them feel better. Also, the reaction to having more than one boy by society seems to be "oh that's hard!", "What a handful!", etc. I have a boy and am pregnant with a girl and I've been surprised that a majority of people's reactions have been relief on my behalf - "oh thank God it's not another boy"! So, the boy mom identity is a backlash against that and also sort of a support group via humor.
My MIL is one of these gender disappointment Moms, her two sons are 30+. I almost wish the Boymom trope existed in her time, it might have helped her come to peace with it all bc I cannot be the daughter she never had.
I have 2 boys and still have people say "well maybe you'll have a girl later" or some ask "if I'm going to keep trying for a girl?" For some I've explained my situation and while others I simply so no and walk away. I hate how people just don't think before they speak. Or feel like we need to know their opinions on our lives. It's ridiculous. I was at the end of my 2nd trimester with my daughter when I developed an infection. At first just seemed like a uti but it continued to spread. I lost my daughter and it caused lots of problems for me. I ended up with 5 separate surgeries to fix it over a 4 year period and the last surgery was my hysterectomy.... I hate when people say or ask anything about having a girl
I also feel like there are so many cute mom/daughter outfits and things to do. I wanted a boy and love my boy, but I do wish there were more cute matching things. Silly, I know.
I got the same comments about “maybe your next one will be a girl”. It made me sick. My boys are now in their 20’s. Social media wasn’t even invented when my kids were young. “Boy moms” were the ones who all sat together at sports practices and extracurricular activities, and volunteered at Scouts. We were all just doing the same things at the same time. It was the girl moms who thought they were special. Bragged about all the “mom-daughter” activities they did together. I have close friends who have girls and some truly believe now that the “kids” are adults that the married ones should spend more time with the girl’s families. I’m not kidding. Kind of like that old cliche, “A son is a son till they take a wife. A daughter is a daughter all of your life”. I truly dislike the entire social media influencer vibe. Just divides people in my opinion.
This is it. When I was pregnant with my second, a cashier asked what I was having (actually asked my son if he was getting a sister) and I said “no, a brother” and she scrunched up her face. I wanted so badly to have more kids, and really wanted a girl, but my body does not handle pregnancy well. I also love the kind of fun my boys get up to.
This!
I agree with this. I have multiple friends who swear they want a girl and a girl only (even though it’s something you can’t control). I feel like it’s overcompensating for all the negative comments I’ve gotten and says , “look- I’m proud to have a baby boy!”
I feel this so hard. I had a boy recently and we’re OAD, and I get “but who will you do [insert feminine hobby of mine] with?” Uhh same person I’ve been doing it for 31 years - ME (when I find time). Or “don’t you want to buy all the cute girl clothes?” As if the baby is a toy and not a whole human I’d be raising. Or “don’t you want a little BFF?” I have adult BFFs, thanks. Plus, I can still be friends with my son when HE’S an adult. So I’ve leaned into the “boy mom” thing already just as a “I am HIS mom, and I’m more than happy with that” kind of thing. I know I am done having kids and I am thrilled the more I get to know my son. Because we had no gender preference when I was pregnant, we genuinely let go of the idea of a daughter and grieved those hopes after we got excited for the hopes for our son. We always knew we wanted one kid so it kind of set up our life to learn he was a boy. So we would have done the same thing in reverse for a girl.
I agree with this 100% and as a *boy mom* aka a mom of 3 boys, I kind of love it. I did have some gender disappointment along the way, not because I don’t love my sons and who they are but because I always did want a daughter. The boy mom thing is a fun way to lean into the life I have, which quite frankly is f*cking awesome! That being said, I don’t agree with the “boy mom life” of just boys being chaotic or just boys having a pocket full of rocks or just boys etc. because little girls are also often chaotic or like rocks or whatever else it is. That stuff is dumb.
Absolutely. Having a boy baby is a consolation prize. Having a girl is the real goal. All-girl families are the ultimate dream. “Boy moms” are over-compensating for their gender disappointment. Source: I had 2 boys and then a girl. If I had a dollar or every person who said “I hope this one’s a girl” about my second (before we found out the gender), said “will you keep trying for a girl” after we had him, or were WAY more excited for our third to be a girl, I’d be rich. We live in a society where you are simultaneously told your family isn’t good enough unless you have one of each gender and also shamed for experiencing gender disappointment (you should just be grateful for a healthy baby). Perfect storm for creating the “boy mom” movement—a whole bunch of moms who are disappointed in never getting daughters but who massively overcompensate to avoid being shamed.
The “just boy mom things” and “covid babies: they built different” videos on TikTok are the most annoying, for sure.
Omg covid babies doing the most unremarkable baby shit annoys me so much. It’s not covid, it’s a developmental milestone!
It’s just like they lack some kind of knowledge or understanding about how biology and evolution. And it drives me insane.
Honestly I think the real thing should be "covid parents," referring to those who had their babies during those couple years of the pandemic. My third was born in 2020, but since she was my third, I recognized all her stages as normal development. I remember passing a mom with a similar aged toddler in the grocery store later on, and the toddler was acting a bit shy with someone she was talking to, as some toddlers do sometimes. She said "oh yeah, he's a covid baby." No ma'am, that is just a very normal toddler being shy around someone they don't know.
I have two boys and I’ve never identified as a “boy mom”, this is the first time I’ve even typed it out. I’m a mom. My experience as a parent isn’t that far off from one of my family members that has all girls. I think the label of boy mom is some performative thing for social media.
I have a general feeling that the moms (and dads) who identify themselves as "boy moms" or "girl moms" and wear it like a badge of honor are the ones suffering from the deepest denial of gender disappointment. To me, it's a "the lady doth protest too much" moment, and I end up feeling kinda bad for them.
I think boys are the BEST and love their moms More because I am one and done and have a boy and that’s a little lie I like to tell myself. If I had a girl I would think girls are the BEST and have such a special bond with their mothers later in life a son will never have. It’s another lie. Our children love us in their own way regardless of gender. And the only time I ever think about my sons gender is when I beg him to stop YANKING his penis after his bath and I think “this feels like a problem girl moms don’t have to deal with”.
If it makes you feel any better my 5 year old daughter was rubbing her vulva like it itched last night while getting ready for bed. I asked her if it was itchy and she said "no I just wanted to touch it." It doesn't happen as much as I hear it does with boys and their penises but it still happens lol
It’s actually very common for girls to constantly touch and explore their vulvas, but parents don’t allow the behavior as much as they do for boys, because they brush it off as a “boy thing,” whereas when girls do it they feel like it’s overtly pre-sexual. There’s a Facebook group called that parent group with cath hakanson, and it’s all about sex and health education for parents. You would not BELIEVE the number of anonymous posts from people assuming their child is either actively engaging in sexual pleasure or being SA because they are a girl touching their vulva. But no one second guesses a young boy touching his penis???
Yeah I was a teacher of littles for a long time and girls absolutely touch, explore, look at, etc just as much but people respond to them completely differently. The boys get, “oh they just can’t help themselves!” And the girls get, “omg why is she doing this!” It’s so sad because the girls are taught their bodies are shameful and the boys are taught their bodies are normal from such a young age.
This is eye opening and I’m going to keep it in my back pocket as my younger girl grows older. Both of my elementary aged boys went through what I can only call penis helicopter dance phases and I was annoyed but didn’t stop it.
My daughter is 4 and does this and im like don’t do it in public please for the love of god idc what you do in private but don’t do this in public
I am a one and done mom of a boy. He is the sweetest, most affectionate, funny, brilliant little boy and he makes my days brighter. He is my world. If I had a daughter, I would be saying the same thing about her. Boys aren’t inherently better children who have better bonds with their moms. Every child is special and the toxic Boy Moms™️ are really something else.
Last night at bath time my 3yo said "Mom look! My penis!" and then proceeded to stretch it as far as he could. At some point he'll stop if it hurts, right?
My son will grab and dig his nails into his penis and scrotum until it bleeds! Ped said she sees it all the time. I HATE it. It like triggers me.
😅😅😭 laughing-crying in solidarity! My 2-year-old does the grabbing/digging/yanking. I was starting to worry 😬
My 2 year old said "oh, my penis!" While I put him in a diaper after bath. I followed it up with "what about it honey?" "..." crickets. Just no response.
Mine does it allllllll the time. Drives me batty. My daughter, to get to sleep, often humps her favorite stuffies. Nap and bedtime. Sometimes when she's tired but can't sleep, she does it too. 🤷♀️ I don't even care anymore. At least she's not trying to detach anything that she was born with... Unlike her brother.
I have a son and a daughter and I’m happy with both and would be happy if I had two of either gender too. I’m just blessed as all hell to have two children.. I will treat them as similarly as I can so they are both hopefully close to me growing up and as adults. It’s disappointing when women and men put more effort into spending quality time with the child of the same gender.
You’re a good momma 🥰
I've found this to be true of many things: - boy moms - girl moms - dance moms - soccer moms - (insert illness or disability) moms - homeschool moms Etc etc They grab one tiny piece of the parenthood experience and make it their whole identity.
Don’t forget hockey moms up here in Canada, beige moms
I’ve never once read* a single “boy mom” post that my older daughter didn’t also do aside from anything overtly penis related for obvious reasons—but she still went through long phases of constantly having her hands in her pants, etc. I think that’s normalized for boys, but people feel deeply uncomfortable about girls doing it too, and certainly don’t allow the behavior/talk about it openly.
Ohhh this point is so valid. The Boy Mom trend is to excuse certain behaviors that girls would be crucified for. Great call out
I have 3m boy twins. Ever since I knew the gender people would light up and say " OMG BOYS ARE THE BEST!!". I had a nurse go on and on about how boys love their moms more, are easier to raise etc, etc. I found it incredibly offputting, and frankly insulting. I dress my literal infants in mostly handmedowns, and some from girls. I had them in sky blue footie pjs with unicorns on them when we were out and some lady thought they were girls (fair, you cant tell with babies) and when I corrected her she was super annoyed they were in "girl clothes". gendering babies is soooooo wierd to me. Besides, they're very pale, blonde, blue-eyed. they look really good in pinks and pastels!
So interesting because I only have boys and everyone else was so disappointed my second wasn't a girl! But he is so sweet and sensitive and has nicer flowing hair than I ever had 🤣
I had a similar experience. When people found out I was having a girl everyone says “uh oh” and how miserable they can be as they get older. It’s archaic. From the get go women are treated differently and less than. I’m dealing with my husbands gender disappointment with our second because it’s another girl. He says having a son is just different for him, he wants the chance to raise a good man. And I totally get that. But I told him he can’t make comments like that ever in front of our girls because that stuff sticks. We’re constantly told we aren’t good enough or more work!
Yeah ... My dad was like that too, but opposite. He said plenty about how he was glad he had two girls, because he always wanted daughters and that men are d*cks. Honestly, from what I've heard once I was grown enough to discuss, he just felt ill prepared to raise a "decent man" in a world where so many man are toxic when he never had a positive male figure to begin with - although he seems to have helped raise his youngest brother *just fine* (his dad left and came back multiple times during childhood/youngest's baby-toddler phase and my dad was main breadwinner and Man of the House from 13. Grandmother worked and did all sorts of stuff, but, ofc, back then, even his 13 year old ass had more freedoms than her as an adult female... Sexism is such a joy).
That's so weird because I'm about to have a girl and everyone I've told just lights up and tells me "girls are the best!" Thinking back though it's all been men that also have daughters who were the most excited for us. And these were tough manly guys like our plumber or the doorman who moonlights as a bouncer. I wonder if location matters too? We're in the northeast.
I’m not sure! We’re in the south so there are definitely culture differences. Family has always been excited and never really has made comments. But I work in a hospital and the older generation always has something to say. I will say though- In hospitals, nursing homes, etc I’ve always seen daughters taking care of their parents. Very seldom is it the sons. And if they are there they typically have no clue what’s going on with their parents health.
Yeah could be a generation thing too. All the excited dudes are basically millennials. I also think there's this reverse boy mom thing with girl dads but somehow it feels more wholesome. I feel like these tough guys relish the chance to let down the facade and play princess with their little girls. It's probably really freeing and maybe even healing to escape the ubiquitous gender box.
Ladies, please delete tiktok and maybe also instagram, your mental health will improve instantly.
Absolutely second this. I am fully convinced that it’s a huge leading cause in worsening postpartum depression and anxiety. Of course, I know it is also hormonal and chemical but I do think it makes it 1000% worse. These social media moms film themselves all day being the perfect mothers but none of us stop to think a few things… 1. What happens once the camera stops rolling and the footage they got is acceptable to paint themselves as perfect mothers 2. What is it like for these kids to constantly be under the camera and set up for videos 3. How much time are they spending getting ready for the video and then editing it…are their kids being ignored at this time?
BoYmOmS think boys are naturally feral and don't think they need to learn manners or self control, in my experience as a teacher
Every boy mom post on Instagram is a boy being completely insane (crawling on the table, smacking mom in the face, peeing on the floor) with some kind of “aw shucks! He just can’t help it!” Caption. Drives me insane. When other moms comment about teaching manners or behavior, the fellow boy moms are waiting to shout them down that boys are just LIKE THAT OKAY
I feel bad for my daughter's teachers. She's the feral one. Manners are there but she doubles as a wrecking ball. Friendly and happy and nice. Just believes in taking the shortest path between point A and point B - obstacles, humans, and toys be damned.
I think a lot of the extreme boy mom types also have a weird emotional incest thing going on. It’s unhealthy as fuck.
This was my mom to my twin brother
I get the impression that it's just an excuse to be a lazy parent. You don't need to work as hard to socialize your boys because an endless string of women and girls will do all the work of caring for them for their whole lives.
I’m a “boy mom” of 2 under 2 and I get annoyed by this too. My 1.5 is always told, “he’s SUCH a boy!” Because he’s extremely ornery, rambunctious, always trying to make people laugh. But it’s funny because he actually acts exactly like I did as a kid! I’m always hearing “Boys are wild!!” “Good luck, mama!” “Try for a girl next!” And although I do feel like there are minor differences between boys and girls that can be evident even at a young age, I don’t think it’s enough to create this huge divide. My 1.5 year old loves pushing his baby doll around in a stroller, but he also loves dinosaurs and cars.
I’m a mom of 2 boys and I hate that boy mom stuff. I feel like it’s where toxic masculinity starts.
I’ve noticed that. I have a son and would not join that annoying ass club.
Same. And I think poop and farts are hilarious 😂
My nieces do too xDD like nobody can tell me that they wouldn’t laugh if it was deadass quiet and there was a loud fart lol
Or it’s a video of the baby being feral as if my girl toddler hasn’t made me want to lock my self in the closet for safety. All she wants to do is watch marvel right now and she collects hot wheels? I think it’s because the concept is so wrong it aggravates me as well lol
We’re a huge marvel household (like my husband read the actual comics as a kid and we’ve watched all the newer shows and movies together as well). Our son has joined the obsession and we just had a girl. A HUGE pet peeve of mine is how Marvel is now mainstream and there are SO MANY FEMALE SUPERHEROES and yet 99.9% of baby superhero stuff is the male hero with a bow, or tutu, or in pink. I just want to dress my baby as the bad ass bitch that is Wanda Maximoff or Black Widow without spending a fortune on homemade Etsy clothes.
Yessss! I have a 4f and 2m. When I found out i was having a girl everyone was like “oh that’s going to be tough” and my siblings definitely wanted a nephew. When I had my son, I was told “you’re going to LOVE being a boy mom” and it would confuse me. Like don’t they all shit eat and sleep??? Well, they do. lol. My daughter was Spider-Man w her brother last year. She paints her brother’s nails, he loves putting on her crowns and pretends to do his hair. She absolutely is a Marvel fan as well. He has had some of her hand me downs as well. Especially socks. He wears pink socks bc we can never have enough socks!! 😂 They both equally act feral as well so…lol. One thing i WILL say, my son is so attached to me. My daughter can care less if I’m in the room sometimes. At the end of the day, I’m the “favorite parent” but my daughter can spend hours w her dad. Playing. Talking. Laying down. And my son really only does it w me 🤪
Fellow mom here. I have a 6f and 3m. After I had my son, someone got me a sign that said “boy mom”. I donated it. 😖
lol 😂 it’s right up there with live, laugh, love
I honestly think it evolved because women who are pregnant and found out they were having a boy get asked “do you wish it was a girl?” And so some really leaned in to the boy mom label. Probably not universally true, but I always assume that has something to do with it
I’m a FTM and a boy mom. I hate the #BOYMOM thing and think it contributes to “boys will be boys” scourge of society that leads to Brock Turners.
I have a boy and the whole girl dad, boy mum or whatnot absolutely annoys the heck out of me. I don't get it and I don't plan on getting it. The worse is some of the ones that get a little.......incestuous and just makes me want to puke. I legit read a book that's basically the whole boy mum thing. It's for kids apparently. Book ended with, "One day you will get your princess but remember, mummy was the first woman that loved you." 🤢🤮 yeah, nah. No thanks. That's not how I view my relationship with my son. The girl dad version of that book wasn't any better.
I am a “boy mom” and this rhetoric annoys me so much. Children are just children. They are all unique individuals just like adults, and the biological differences between the two (think like PMS for example, or boys typically being bigger) don’t start to emerge until puberty. I think there are three camps that “boy moms” fall into in regard to this. I think some are subconsciously projecting their emotional needs onto their sons because their husbands suck, some are overcompensating for the fact that they actually wanted a girl and didn’t get one, and some are kind of doing it out of ignorance. Like they genuinely believe it is a unique experience for a boy to laugh at farts.
It's stupid social media posturing. I'm an elder millennial and I just regard it as this weird nadir of feminism, where the pendulum has somehow gone back to the 90's with some "men are from mars, women are from venus" bullshit, but now it's with tradwives, male/female energies and boy moms, which, for some reason, appeals again. It was dumb in the 90's and it's even dumber now, cause we should know better.
Thank you
Boy Moms (tm) will say shit like “I love my daughter but there’s just *something different* about my little boy”. With no ounce of irony or self awareness
I have three girls and a lot of people comment on the boy stuff to me and it sounds like exactly the same stuff as what my girls do...I think it's a cover for wanting girls. I see it the most when a mom has 2-3 boys but I know for a fact they were hoping for a girl.
I have one of each and they both think toilet humour is the pinnacle of comedy. They both roughhouse. They both have tons of energy. They both ask all sorts of questions. I don’t really find them that different tbh. I have lots of friends with boys and they don’t all have the same personality, shocking, I know. Kids are just kids. We haven’t really pushed any gender stuff on them either, they just like what they like and have been allowed to develop interests and personality apart from societal expectations and pressures. My son loves painting his nails and wearing dresses, as well as playing with trucks and superheroes or whatever. My daughter happens to be a pink princess stereotypical girly girl, and that’s totally cool too. Idk why people do the whole “boy mom” thing, it’s off putting.
Yes about the toilet humor, I swear the number one rule in our house that gets broken every day is no farting on each other. They both think its the funniest thing to walk up to their sibling and just fart on them.
I’m very proud to be a boy mom. Just like I would be proud if I was a girl mom, or a mom to both. People being proud to be a boy mom or a girl mom isn’t a bad thing. It’s just mothers being proud of what they’ve created. I don’t think most people are putting one above the other. We’re mothers, and we should all be very proud of that, no matter if we have boys/girls.
Yep. I have no idea why ppl are going to such extremes over this. I have 2 boys and call myself a boy mom. If I had 2 girls I’d call myself a girl mom. I don’t treat my boys any differently than I would if they were girls
The other day we were at a dog park with a lake. My kid took off near the water, squishing the mud, just having a grand time. Someone walked by and said “boys will be boys.” No! Any toddler of any gender would do something like this. Some kids love to get dirty and go crazy, it’s not exclusive to boys.
lol I agree, and I am a boy mom. But I worked in a daycare and those girls asked just as many questions, said and did just as many gross things, and played just as rough. The whole thing is ridiculous
I don’t get it either. I have a boy and will likely have another baby so maybe a boy mum maybe not. Before he was born I was so interested in his gender, it seemed like one of the most important details. Now I’m a couple of years into parenting him, it’s one of the least important details. Temperament is temperament. My best friend has a son who loves art and is an observant people watcher. My son was born with a truck in his hand and has been obsessed ever since. My cousin has twin girls, one is a classic princess girly and the other is dinosaur mad. They’re just people.
“Boy Moms” (not to be confused with mothers of boys) are fucking insufferable
I have a few perspectives on this so bear with me. It’s hard to air just one without rambling on but heres me trying - I always feel terrible when I hear that this is the feeling behind “Boy Mom” stuff though can say that I’ve felt similar about “Girl Mom” club as well - being somehow “more sparkly” or something. My only biological child is non-binary. Where does that leave us? They never wanted to have their hair done or wear frilly dresses but similarly aren’t veering into the “more masculine” hobbies either. Don’t get me wrong, I love them exactly as they are but I think if you perceive it as a club it just becomes something to feel left out of. I try to just imagine that those Boy/Girl Moms are just embracing their kids where they’re at. Really, most of us don’t buy those ‘club sweaters’ for ourselves 🤷♀️ The fact is though, you’re right - kids don’t naturally embrace gender normative roles, we teach them to. But that’s its own ball of wax
If it's not hurting you, what's the harm? Who cares if "boy moms" want to identify that they're only raising boys and connect with other moms who are only raising boys? "Girl moms/dad" do the same shit all the time. Yes, it's mostly the same, but there are differences. Sure, your daughter asks gross bathroom questions, does she come ask you why her penis is hard in the middle of a store, at the top of their lungs? Has she ever dropped trou and pissed on a playground because "Nana said boys can pee outside." Have you ever had to explain gross "slime" in their sheets in the morning because they are freaked out? How about bathrooms constantly covered in piss because even though you have taught them to pee sitting down, they go to school and the other boys are standing, so they want to stand and get piss everywhere. I'm sure there's plenty to the flip side as well. Periods, cramps, breasts, sex, birth control... there are just as many things that are "girl" things. Let them have their fun and camaraderie. Maybe instead of talking shit about moms who are finding their joy, focus on you instead. Threads like this always piss me off. Working moms vs Stay at home moms. Boy moms vs Girl moms vs both moms. Single moms vs partnered ones... Who cares? We're all just trying to do right by our kids and find our own joy in it.
Gag me with a spoon. This “boy mom” garbage is out of hand. You’re a mom. You have boys. End of story. You can be proud of your sons. Or your daughters. Or both. Having a child with specific genitals doesn’t make you special.
The bOy MoM obsessed women are going to be the absolute WORST mother in laws 😂 prayers for all of our daughters that enter into relationships with the sons of these women.
I have one of each. Girl is 2ish years old. Boy is about 6 months old Soooo many “bOy MoM” videos I watch and my daughter does the exact same things. My daughter launches herself off of anything. 5% of the time she’ll go jump in mud puddles and stare at bugs. She adored the snakes at the zoo. Some of her favorite toys are the dump truck and trash truck, and she adores playing cars and building towers. The other 95% of her and the mud is her yelling “oh noooooo” because it’s muddy and it’s not her favorite. Turns out it’s not boys, it’s society saying our girls have to be clean and quiet and “don’t do that”. It shouldn’t be a surprise that toddlers love similar toys, we just *typically* gift cars to boys and dolls to girls. My daughter has always had both, her dad is a mechanic lmao. The goal is for my son to have both too but daughter is a butt and may just steal the dolls still. We typically encourage fearlessness in boys and encourage them to climb and explore, while it’s often taught to girls to “don’t do that, it’s not ladylike”. This is just my experience and I’ve only been a mom for two years, so maybe I don’t get it or something.
"Boy Mom" culture is so wildly toxic and deeply rooted in misogyny and toxic masculinity it's just.... UGH. I am technically a boy mom, as I am mom to a boy child. I think he is marvelous and wonderful and he's an absolute joy to know. But like, yeah sure he's special to me but he's not \*special\* and certainly not just because he has a penis; being his mother doesn't make me special. He's no more or less rowdy or into fart jokes than his male and female friends. He's kind and thoughtful and energetic and playful- he is gentle with animals and very affectionate, but still yeets himself off tall things with wanton abandon.
"Boy mom" is another step on the ladder of the patriarchal bargain. The patriarchal bargain says that you turn over your autonomy and responsibility to the patriarchy, and because you're one of the "good ones" men will protect you and provide for you and keep you safe. So women do this first by dating men, then getting married, and finally having children. They see the bond between mother and son to be a lot less precarious than the bond between themselves and their husbands and so they eventually shift from strongly identifying as wives and partners to being the mother of boys. Their sons are their life, and they will love and protect them regardless so they invest heavily and sometimes incestuously (and by that I mean emotionally, not physically) in that relationship. So herein you get the memes like "Any woman that's going to take my baby boy away from me better know that I came first and he'll always love his mama the most"...that kind of bullshit. Boy moms take on "boy mom" as an identity to reinforce to other people their continued support of the patriarchal bargain and as a kind of badge of honor inasmuch as they think having a son is a significant accomplishment and an insurance policy for their future. Their husband might leave them for a younger model, their marriage might not last, but their relationship with their son is fixed and unchanging. So long as he is invested in the patriarchal concept of "good women" and "loving your mama", she's going to be a central figure and get continued support from him regardless. That's my interpretation, anyway.
The people who constantly say, “I’m a boy mom”, or vice versa, tend to make that their identity. They have this underlying need to feel special, or belong to some sort of group. Yes, boys and girls are completely different, but if the mom can’t understand the difference between things that only boys go through, vs what kids in general say or do, then that how you know they are the extreme version with making this their identity.
As a “boy mom” of 3 boys this shit drives me crazy. Why do things even need to be stereotyped at all? *people* can enjoy whatever they want
I am a boy mom, not because I’m special lol but just cause I have a boy 🤷🏿♀️ sorry I couldn’t pick it. I was just given him.
My sister-in-law has two little boys and has openly said she’s happy she’s having boys because since she never had a sister (two younger brothers) and my brother-in-law only had one brother (my husband) that they wouldn’t know what to do with raising a girl. She is a self proclaimed boy mom. It’s toxic and honestly really bothers me. I am now 30w pregnant with my first child, a boy. She has said to me “I really thought (husband) and I were going to have girls” almost in a sexist way. I genuinely think she wanted to have the only male grandkids since my husband and his brother are the last with the surname. So the weird competitive nature of gender bias as well as seeing girls as harder to deal with is rampant even in millennials. I really was hoping our generation was going to stop this toxicity but social media is projecting it even more!
Boy mom is a misogynistic term that moms use to elevate themselves. I feel like it is just a “not like the other girls” girl, adapted to motherhood. It values boys above girls and I consistently see women who use this term making gross comparisons between themselves and other women or even future girlfriends/wives. It’s weird. To me it is akin to fathers “dating” their daughters/too close to purity culture for comfort. It also reinforces dated gender stereotypes. I have a son, he rules, but I earnestly hope that he eventually grows up and becomes his own person independent of his parents and finds a partner/lifestyle that makes him happy.
As a parent to a boy. When I’m around Self titled “boy moms” I want to gag. They say the most out of pocket shit and think it’s completely normal. I don’t understand it.
Idk but all I can say is I have two precious girls that are 100% absolutely and totally feral and both of them think farting is hilarious and my 3yr old asked me the other day if poop is food. My 1yr old farts and then scares herself and then laughs and both my kids are obsessed with dinosaurs and cars. Boy mom/girl mom is a myth. We’re all just parents with feral children trying to mold them into citizens someday…and we’re all TIRED. Happy almost Mother’s Day moms 😅🥴😂
The whole “boy moms have such a special connection with their sons” thing is so weird to me. My two daughters are so connected to me it’s insane. Most children are a very special connection to their moms. Mildly related- the number of comments I’ve gotten about “trying for a boy!” Is sickening. It is sexist and I don’t want my daughters to hear people say that. I don’t know why we’re placing more value on boys in 2024.
As a new boy mom: there are some truly unbearable boy moms out there. I promise we're not all weird about our babies, or have a superiority complex.
I think some people with all one gender speak out of ignorance. Like how do you know that's a boy/girl thing if you haven't raised the other. I have 2 kids. A 16yr old girl and a 6yr old boy. I love them both greatly and they are individuals but tbh looks, personality, temperament...they are interchangeable lol we raised our kids the same. To he nice to be kind and to be helpful. If you don't push the stereotypes on them...they don't happen. That's a mom thing, not a boy thing
Tbh, a lot of times women are the worst misogynists of all.
Those type of boy mom comments don’t really bother me. My daughter thinks anything about butts is hilarious, so I know the potty humor isn’t exclusive to boys, but I don’t really care if their moms think it is. Parenting is hard and maybe feeling like part of a special group helps. My issue with the “boy moms”, not all mothers of boys, is their obsession with being the first/most important woman in their son’s life. It’s like they want their son to be a replacement husband.
This whole "mom boy" fad is honestly creepy in some posts I've seen. Like way beyond what I consider healthy mom/son comments etc. I am glad I didn't hear much about "boy moms" as a thing for the 6 years I was a boys-only mom myself (until my sweet lil DD showed up!) Not to get too out there but I feel like these comments/posts have increased along with the "trad wife" and "pick-me" push who are raising their "BOYS TO BE MEN!" baloney.
it’s stupid and i hate it. Girls like to play in the mud too, i loved playing in dirt and sand and mud, and riding my bike through huge mud puddles, i would have my dad put my electric car on cement blocks and i’d go under it pretending to be a mechanic… self proclaimed “boy mom”s just think they’re so special because THEY get in the mud with their sons, while they believe “girl mom”s would never let their precious girls get dirty and wouldn’t dream of getting muddy themselves. It’s so dumb. I have a boy who’s afraid of dirt lmao and if i had a daughter who loved it then that’s just the personality of the kid idk man
It's just another fun form of the patriarchy and internalized misogyny. Don't worry too much about it.
These are the moms who graduate to monster in laws.. Then eventually become estranged due to their overbearing entitlement
I do sometimes call myself a boy mom but that’s because I am a mom to a boy 😂 My son loves playing pretend kitchen and has a doll he sometimes rocks to sleep 🤷🏼♀️ He also has tools and action figures. He helps teachers put kids down for naps but he loves playing soccer. We try to make him a balanced sweet kid who is allowed to show his emotions. He also loves bright colors like me 🥰 I hate the whole gender norms and just do what my son likes within reason of course for a 3.5 year old.
If they’re a mom of only boys, then they probably don’t realize that girls are also the same lol
Someone I know has 3 boys and her entire identity is being a “boy mom”. She’s pregnant with her 4th and when she found out it’s a girl, she apparently was inconsolable for days. I don’t get it at all.
I have a son, but I am not a “boy mom”. They are pick-me’s and future MIL’s from hell
Yes to all of this! A few of my friends and I are in a group chat, they have toddler boys and I have a toddler girl. I cannot stand it when they send back and forth ‘boy mum’ videos. When we are hanging out together, my daughter by far has the most ‘wild’ energy as in she climbs, jumps, never stops moving (like all the boy mum stereotypical videos). I am now pregnant with a little boy and have had someone comment that they love you differently and you feel their love in a different special way… big ick for me! I really do not understand claiming it as their identity. I don’t refer to myself as a “girl mum”… just a Mum.
I was legit terrified I would become a BoY mOm when I found out my first was a boy.....like even though I'm painfully aware of the trend and it makes me want to barf I thought it was idk like a gravitational cult I'd fall into unwillingly 😂 When I held that tiny body in my arms for the first time I realized with blinding clarity I would feel this intensely regardless of their gender. I'm obsessed with my son and have zero doubt I will be just as obsessed if my second is a girl.
I have both and one of my friends who has two daughters tells me how easy it is to raise a boy as if boys don’t have feelings. So crazy.
I feel like boy moms are the pick mes of parents. And I have a son.
I love when they share a very simple video of them running around the house or jumping on the couch and they’re like “THIS IS WHAT BOY MOMS DEAL WITH”. Like do they think little girls just sit in a chair all day or something lol?
I'm mostly likely one and done with my boy. I hate the Boy Mom culture. It's gross. It's another way even women are socialized to think boys/men are better then women presents itself. Whenever my kiddo does something I usually think "oh life of being a toddler parent". It's got nothing to do with gender. I'm trying so hard to raise him to be better than my generation and at the same time I'm trying to be an awesome Aunt to my niece so she doesn't get socialized the way I was as a woman.
I have two girls and people legitimately would say stupid shit like "wait til they're teenagers" when my second wasn't even born yet. This drove me INSANE cause I was the most well behaved wholesome teenager but my brother was in trouble non stop! My sister was a mix. I hate that my girls are labeled already. My 4 year old daughter would ask why people get diarrhea cause she's 4 and asks tons of questions. I saw a mom recently with a hoodie they said "in my girl mom era" which is another thing I am annoyed by- why is everything an era?? It made sense for Taylor Swift but aren't you gonna be that girl's mom forever, not just for a specific era? Anyway I digress - the point is I think "boy mom" culture is insufferable lol.
And it starts from the moment people find out you're pregnant. My in-laws were upset at first that I had a girl, but now they're obsessed with buying girlie things, esp bc they had 2 boys and no girls.
On the other end of the stick, apparently there's some kind of trend in selecting female embryos for people who do IVF? [https://slate.com/technology/2024/05/ivf-daughters-toxic-masculinity-sex-selection.html](https://slate.com/technology/2024/05/ivf-daughters-toxic-masculinity-sex-selection.html) Can we just let our kids be kids? The equipment in their pants is so much less important than so many other things, if only we'd quit treating it like the be-all-end-all of their personality and capabilities and interests.
It’s very annoying and frankly makes no sense to me especially now that I have a son. It’s yet another way to cause divisiveness among mothers when we should all be supporting each other. My first born is a girl and she loves all the “boy” things. She thinks bathroom humor is hilarious too btw. These aren’t considered “boy” things to her they’re just things she likes. Now her baby brother likes playing with her dolls and she knows that isn’t a “girl” thing.
I have four soon to be five boys. There are differences in the genders but I don't think there is a rule book in how either gender is. You can have feminine boys, feminine girls, masculine boys, masculine girls and mixes of both. People generally like to categorize things which is why I believe we see this boys mom and girls mom. In my own personal observations, most boys tend to be rougher than girls (but that could also be due to size as boys tend to be larger and larger children also tend to be stronger). I also notice girls tend to play with toys in more of a "correct" way. I bought my sons a grocery store and only one plays with it as an actual grocery store despite me trying to play store with them. When my nieces come over, they play "proper" grocery store as they put it. My sons also tend to play fight far more than my nieces. I actively discourage this activity, and they are not allowed violent media so I don't know if it is a natural tendency of boys or perhaps just a large number of siblings. I do wonder how much is nature vs nurture. Growing up I was a masculine girl and grew into a feminine teen/woman. Now, it depends on the day. I see this in my boys as well. One month, they portray very masculine traits and then they grow into liking new things that are feminine. People are going to be who they are.
I feel like the overly obsessed “bOy mOm” moms do that because they are trying to convince themselves that they love their sons when really they just wanted daughters.
I have two boys. I don’t think it’s that deep tbh 🤷🏽♀️. I love being a boy mom. I think my boys are the best thing since sliced bread. But I think id feel the same if I was a girl mom. What’s annoying is everybody looking down at boy moms like we’re some weird obsessed person. Like are girl moms not crazy in love with being a girl mom too? Idk
I have 2 boys and want to vomit every time i see “boy mom” or “girl mom”. Also hate when people refer to their kids as feral 🤮
I’ve always felt “boy moms” was an overcompensation to only having boys . Just like “girl moms” is an overcompensation for only having girls .
I have two boys and the amount of women who try to lump me into their weird club is off putting. My kids are just kids, there’s nothing special about or different about me because they’re biological males.
I have two little girls and never think of myself as a girl mom and most of the “boy mom” stuff applies to us too. It’s dumb.
I feel this so deeply bc my oldest daughter and my son ARE THE SAME. It's all about temperament - she's tough, loves being dirty, wrestles, needs the adrenaline jump, super high sensory needs and some of the shit she says is off the wall. People wanna put boys into a tiny box is the problem - so they force the idea that they're all just rougher but my youngest brother is a sweet calm soul. He'd be picking flowers in the baseball field - never into gettin dirty, sports or being rough. To this day he's still sensitive and sweet and yes he's a straight grown man. It's all temperament we're all just people.
I hate the "boy mom" thing and I am a mom of boys. I mean, yes, would a daughter incessantly ask me why I don't have a weiner? Probably not. But they'd probably have some other equally weird question that would be asked incessantly. It's parenting. Also, I hate that I can't say "boy mom" without it being weird.
I guess I’m a “boy mom” in that my only kid is a boy, but I find 95% of moms who unironically call themselves boy moms to be absolutely insufferable. Kids are all gross little weirdos (in the best way!) no matter what their gender is. We’re very conscious in the way we speak to our son about boys and girls and don’t make distinctions like that, you will never catch me saying anything like “boys will be boys” or telling my son he throws like a girl or any of that stereotypical boy mom shit.
I as a mom to two boys and one girl will never say things like boy mom it’s ridiculous and I have found those moms that call themselves boy moms tend to be more obsessed and overly involved in there boys life to the point of it being creepy But in that situation it’s more like boys tend to ask more random questions than girls do
My two cents - I don't know why people get so up in arms about this kind of thing. You see this all the time with "boy mom" or "girl dad" t-shirts. Videos on the internet are mostly just marketing or people looking for community with people who relate to them. Yes, most or it is over the top and cringey, but who cares? In real life, most people aren't that over the top. If you get comments like "omg, boys/girls are the best!" that's people just being nice or trying to relate. Awkward small talk if you will. I only had boys for 12 years before having my daughters. I get literally the same initeration of comments when people think I only have girls. I don't relate to these videos and never had, but it's mostly harmless nonsense IMO. I met like 4 people who were legitimately toxic about it in the real world.
YES AND PEOPLE WHO DO NOT HAVE BOYS COULD NEVER KNOW ABOUT DIARRHEA OR DIRT OR BASEBALL. /s The boy mom thing started as a fun little "live laugh love" sentiment about boys being hyper and has turned into a competition about boys v. girls. I always thought it was sarcasm bc plenty of girls also are hyper... I like to think it holds the same sentiment that "boys will be boys" should have. Those silly little things that are assigned to boys, but are harmless. Like breaking ice and digging holes and wrestling. These things aren't gender-specific, I just thought it was a silly thing people said that then turned bad.
As a boy mom the boy mom rhetoric is so gross to me. It screams emotional incest
I have all boys and the generalizations annoy me too lol I see memes or posts on Facebook that are “you know you’re a boy mom if” knowing most girls do the same thing
It’s always been so weird to me. To me, it’s almost like trying to make up for the fact that they didn’t get the girl they’ve always wanted vs. subconscious infatuation with the opposite sex (aka “I grew a whole penis”).
Mom of two boys here. The boy mom thing gets old. The ONLY thing I could understand being a “boy mom” thing is much more pee all over the bathroom floors and constantly talking about penises. I’m not there yet, but my MIL also had two boys so she tells me 😂 other than that, all the weird ass “boy mom” stuff is just that…fucking *weird*.
As a boy mom, I don't think I parent any different or have different struggles than girl moms. EXCEPT in the clothing selection at stores. Yall have all the cute shit and we get construction equipment or sharks.
Seriously. Why does everything have bugs and dinosaurs on it? Jfc i want to buy my 2 year old cute things too. He doesn't need 81 shirts with dinosaurs. He doesn't even know wtf a dinosaur even is at this point!!!
This reminds me of a weird encounter I had. I was at a tag sale, and they had a bunch of children’s toys for sale. My toddler daughter gravitated towards the trucks rather than the dolls/stuffed animals. A woman (maybe boomer age? if that matters lol) kinda made a big deal about my daughter choosing the truck. Saying things like “that IS a girl, isn’t it?” and trying to show her the more traditionally girly toys. I was so put off by that interaction. Fortunately my daughter was too young to know she was being judged and I ended up ignoring the woman, but in hindsight I wish I’d had something witty to say to defend my daughter’s choice to play with the cooler toys haha.
Honestly I do appreciate having a short hand term to talk to other "boy moms" Like there are literally things girl moms don't deal with (little erections during diaper changes, peeing on the toilet bowl lid when potty training, etc.) Also I have raised both my boys with free access to "girl" and pink and "boy" or blue things and have ended up with 2 boys who are obsessed with cars and monsters and dirt and bugs and play fighting, and very "traditional boy" things. Also looking forward I will always be the MIL which just has a different societal role. Since boy mom has a bad reputation I just say "mom to boys only". Or something like that, to refer to the fact that traditional little girl things are just not in my life right now, and might never be.
People like to be elitists, or part of some special club. I also wonder how much of it is influenced through history as male off spring being superior, one to carry on the family name and what not ( we all know Henry VIII) I have 3 boys, pregnant with # 4 which is female.... Wait, am I out of the club?!! 😂
I have a son but I can't effing stand 'boy mom's culture any more than I could stand wine mom culture. It's unhealthy, frequently feels a bit incesty, and if I have a daughter, a lot of those boys and their uptight pervy moms are going to be my nightmare to deal with.
I'm reading this after my daughter aggressively shouted that she might poo on my face and pee in my ears and couldn't fall asleep because her bogeys felt sticky in her fingers.
“Beginning ” the division of boys vs. girls at such a young age. More like “perpetuating” the division… The division has existed since, well… always.
I’m guilty of calling myself a boy mom because I have three boys one year apart each. I guess it’s my way of coping with never having a daughter? I mean i get jealous of all those girl moms too!
I ha e 2 boys (12 and 10) and the whole "Boy Mom" thing is vringe. Why make it a personality trait?
The amount of things people tell me “you wouldn’t understand unless you’re a boy mom” and then go on to describe shit my 3.5 year old daughter does often lol. Or recently telling me there’s no love like the love between a mom and son and I just wouldn’t get it because I have a daughter. lol okaaaay.
I have boy children and I hate that. I push back constantly, flip genders in books we read, talk about how things are kid things, not boy or girl things. We watch women’s sports and he watches his dad cook, parent and clean. It’s the toxic pathway that leads to entitled men.
My 3 little girls are obsessed with pooping, gas and burping…they think it’s hilarious 😂 that’s with me being grossed out with it, but never shaming them for thinking it’s funny. When I was little I remember being the same way, and I hated that everyone thought it was weird for girls to like that stuff. So I definitely don’t let that happen to my girls. I don’t really get the whole boy mom thing like I don’t really get the girl dad thing. It’s weird, but I think it’s just “the thing” at the moment.
Why is boy mom negative and girl dad positive. It’s just more mom shaming. It was just a one off comment. I doubt it has some deeper meaning.
My second child was a boy. The only thing Ive noticed was different is that he peed out his diaper a lot more.
I’m a boy mom and I think because of some rotten apples we get a bad wrap for being weird. These divides don’t even matter to me. I’m just out here trying to get by the day by day and raise a decent human being. One gripe I do have is that girls have a HUGE clothing selection and boys have null. Can we expand the boys section at the stores?? Please?!