In Our Pursuit of Equality, One Group Is Consistently Left Behind
But it’s not who you think.
I just finished reading Glennon Doyle’s Untamed. It’s a book written by a woman for women. Its culturally feminine cover screams, this is not for men!
Few men would even dare to pick that book off the shelf. And if one did, he would carefully look around to make sure no one noticed and then shuffle off to a quiet corner to speedily read the front flap.
I ordered mine off of Amazon, you know, to save myself from all that.
About halfway through, there’s a chapter titled, “boys”. In it, Glennon confesses she raised her son differently than her daughters. While she taught her daughters the importance of serving their family, she taught her son to value external rewards, instead, like grades and athletic achievements.
After this realization, she admitted this mistake to her son and told him that things were going to change. She said, “I don’t give a rat’s ass how much respect you earn for yourself out in the world if you are not showing respect to the people inside your home. If you don’t get that right, nothing you do out there will matter much.”
This statement made me pause. How often do we say things like this to our sons? Our partners? Our fathers or brothers?
