Whenever I’m asked to give talks, the same thing happens at the end; I get surrounded, mobbed practically, by concerned parents, particularly boy-mums, wanting to ask me questions. Full transparency – I’m not a dad; and beyond listening to my niece chatter away for hours, or swinging my nephew around like a bag of spuds, I haven’t the faintest idea of how to be one. But sadly, amongst the clamoring masses of worried parents, such an honest admission means little. However – There is one piece of advice I do think it’s safe to give in such situations, wise words that I think every parent of a boy ought to hear: “Don’t lecture him”. Because, to do so, is the surest way to never win him back. I remember a former, particularly odious radical feminist colleague of mine doing exactly this to her younger brother. She’d smuggly tell me about it, lecturing me about how she’d lecture him; her endless berating and finger-pointing, so as “to make him the perfect feminist brother”… a strategy that I am certain would only achieve the exact opposite. I think about her poor brother often, too young to let her ignorant words wash over him, as I had learnt to. Because, between then and now, I have come to understand that boys are nothing like she, and the media, often portrays them. And that is: boys are not monsters. They are smart, discerning, compassionate people. They are not ‘r*pists in waiting’, who are part of some cabal of young misogynists; and the more we treat them as such, the more we create the very reality we fear. So please stop. Stop with the endless clamoring, pearl clutching hysteria, that bludgeons and berates them. “Stop talking about boys, and start talking to them.” I’d say. “Just talk to your boys.” Because if you do, you’d realise what I have known for quite some time – boys are good. Boys are good. And the data backs it up. Let’s take a look… ~ Full survey https://yougov.com/en-gb/articles/52863-young-men-masculinity-and-misogyny

2026-08-11