When I first learned about #BoyMom culture, I wasn’t sure it was such a big deal. My wife and I don’t ascribe gender norms to our children, but it’s not like I wasn’t aware many other parents do so with zeal, including a lot of friends I respect and love.
As a parent, I make a point of not judging other people’s parenting styles or choices. Frankly, getting even one tiny person to adulthood without losing one’s mind is hard enough without wasting energy on criticizing others.
Then I started to dive into the phenomenon more. And, folks, it’s a big deal.
What is #BoyMom Culture?
In one TikTok, an exemplar of the “I’m In Love With My Son” genre of boy mom culture, self-described “Toxic Mum” Anna Saccone Joly (@annasaccone) says, “I love my four kids equally, but that last little boy just hits different.” She looks sweetly at the camera, and continues, “When I think about my daughters getting married, I get excited. When I think about my son’s wedding I wanna cry.”
When her son hits or punches his sisters, there are no consequences—he must be having a hard day, she tells her girls. The video ends with a smiling Saccone Joly saying she and other toxic moms, “gotta realize we are the problem.” Despite this claim, Saccone Joly’s profile features many videos (like this) in which she refers to her son as the favorite and treats him as such.
There are other TikToks that demonstrate this “boys will be boys” genre of boy-mom culture. Many of them show sons following the leads of their fathers or behaving badly—smacking their mother's bottom and other such disrespectful behavior. The videos often will have the caption “Tell me you’re a boy mom without telling me you’re a boy mom.”
These tropes are causing great consternation across the internet. On Instagram, there are over 17.3 million posts tagged #boymom; on Reddit, scores of parents have weighed in on the phenomenon.
Some folks don’t see the problem: “I’ve never seen the negative side of 'boy mom' or 'girl mom.' Everyone I know who uses them are literally just stating they have all boys or all girls,” posted @Shel-Dorado.
Still, many others express offense: “Parents with only boy children are not the only ones who can be worn out by constant roughhousing and mess in the home,” posted @Procainepuppy.
To be sure, there are plenty of self-described 'boy moms' who don’t subscribe to either of these philosophies. Fortune Chalme, a New Jersey mom of three sons, says she enjoys being in a WhatsApp group with other moms of boys.
“[Members] mostly complain about things their boys destroyed in their home, the amount of sports jerseys they have, and how the only crayons that aren't used are pink and purple,” she tells me. Her boys don’t fit into all the boy stereotypes, though, “They’re into art and music, not sports so much,” she explains. “But they’re definitely very physical.”
Issues Surrounding #BoyMom Culture
Stereotyping is a major part of the problem with #BoyMom culture. As Ella Shalvi-Entelis, a mom of a boy and a girl in Ra’anana, Israel, astutely put it, “These stereotypes don’t allow us to see a child as a unique individual, and that’s never good. When I see a mom with a ‘boys will be boys,’ attitude I think it’s a shame. Those kids need help learning to regulate their emotions and behavior.”
I agree with both these points of view. It’s great to find a community of parents you can resonate with and children need help learning social-emotional skills in order to be responsible members of society when they’re adults.
Despite anecdotal evidence, there is actually no scientific basis for the idea that boys are naturally more physical and girls are more nurturing.
According to a 2016 article in Scientific American, “Obviously, girls and boys are not identical at birth [...] But early experience, we now know, permanently alters the chemistry and function of the genes inside cells, leading to significant effects on behavior [...] The different ways parents raise boys and girls may similarly leave their stamps on children's developing brains.”
Likewise, I found plenty of academic literature showing that boys tend to be more physically active than girls. Not one shows a causal relationship between assigned sex at birth and levels of physical activity.
While I am disheartened by the stereotyping inherent in #BoyMom culture, that’s not the part that scares me. What scares me is that this trend is steeped in the broth of rape culture. There is not an ounce of consent in any of the (so many) short videos I watched while researching this article. The children are not consenting to being objectified by their mothers, the mothers are not consenting to being treated poorly by their sons and husbands. The girls aren’t consenting to being princessified by their parents, the boys aren’t consenting to being dudefied by theirs.
Consent is a learned behavior, rooted in the idea of mutual respect for another human. When we do not teach our sons to seek consent, we’re teaching them other people’s bodies are objects that can be used. When we do not teach our daughters to expect respect, we’re teaching them to accept abuse and belittlement as the norm.
A 2018 study found that 81% of American women experienced some form of sexual harassment in their lifetime. If we want that to change we have to teach the next generation something different.
I am a mom of two kids. My eldest, assigned male at birth, loves roughhousing, soccer, and riding bikes. He also loves getting his nails painted and putting on lipstick. When we do our makeup, he looks in the mirror and grins, saying “I’m beautiful.” He loves dresses that twirl and denim overalls. And when he crosses a physical boundary with me, I tell him I will not let him break my body rules.
As parents, my wife and I are keenly aware we’re raising people. The children of today will define the world of tomorrow and, yes, that’s too much pressure. It’s also the truth. We need to take that responsibility very seriously.
So, if you’re a mom of boys who has found a community of other boy moms—that’s great! You do you! If you’re a member of the #ToxicBoyMom club, though, you’re part of a dangerous problem. It’s not a joke, and we’re not laughing.
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