Of teen sex and suitcases

Posted on February 21, 2012 by Hugo Schwyzer

On this Shrove Tuesday, we start the new term at Pasadena City College with painful cutbacks.

One of my colleagues (who as far as I know has been unaware of the controversy surrounding me) greeted me in the office this morning and said “Good morning, Hugo! You look like you’ve aged ten years.”

But all is well regardless. I’ve got a piece up at Role/Reboot this morning: Teens, Sex, and the Suitcase Rule. Inspired by Amy Schalet’s wonderful Not Under My Roof, the post looks at different attitudes towards teen sex, including my own family’s particular approach to the issue. Excerpt:

American parents, Schalet claims, use a strategy of “connection through control.” By imposing rules (curfews, blanket prohibitions on pre-marital sex), parents seek to demonstrate love and to maintain a vigilant presence in their children’s lives. Parents in the United States pursue connection through control even when they know it won’t work; the American adults Schalet interviewed were often pessimistic about their own ability to regulate their adolescent children’s behavior. Contemporary parents often assume that their kids will have sex anyway; they describe their own efforts as “swimming against the tide.” But because American parents tend to see teenagers as fundamentally irresponsible, they often believe that they have no choice but to continue to do whatever they can to regulate their teens’ private lives, even if they doubt the efficacy of the strategy.

In the Netherlands, according to Schalet, parents also want to protect their teens. But their technique is the reverse: “control through connection.” Like American adults, Dutch mothers and fathers believe adolescent sexual experimentation is inevitable. But rather than grimly soldiering on in the effort to repress teen exploration like their American counterparts, many Dutch parents seek to integrate teen sexual discovery into family life. Teens are expected to bring their boyfriends and girlfriends home to meet the relatives and to participate in family activities. Sons and daughters are encouraged to integrate their romantic lives into communal domestic routines. In due course, typical Dutch families will permit their teenage children to invite boyfriends or girlfriends to spend the night. Unlike in my family, the luggage and the bodies all sleep in the same bedroom. Sexual discovery is private, but it’s also sanctioned. The end result is, Dutch parents hope, a safer and happier experience for their children.

Paternal Age Effect at Role/Reboot

Posted on January 18, 2012 by Hugo Schwyzer

A post up at Role/Reboot today looks at the growing phenomenon of aging dads, and worries about the health issues involved: Patience and the Paternal Age Effect. Excerpt:

… the compensation for reduced mobility is an exponential increase in patience. I know some wonderful young dads, but among my group of graying and thickening preschool papas, we’re universally convinced that what delights us now would have driven us crazy when we were in our 20s or 30s. More certain of who we are, more comfortable in our own skin, we’re better equipped to soothe our own self-doubts for the sake of showing up for our kids.

In his most famous poem, Donald Justice writes: “Men at 40 learn to close softly/the doors to rooms they will not be coming back to.” For first-time fathers in their 40s, the slightly elevated risks of the “paternal age effect” are offset by our greater likelihood of financial stability, our increased reservoirs of equanimity, and, perhaps, a bit more hard-won wisdom. If we’ve done the job of growing up right, we’ve begun to shut some of those doors of workaholism, self-doubt, and indulgent self-absorption to which we were prone in our anxiety-ridden 20s. To put it simply, we’re young enough to kick the ball around and patient enough to do it (almost) as long as our kids want.

We’ll just need to take two Advil when we’re finally done.

Perfectly Pink

Posted on September 19, 2011 by Hugo Schwyzer

My post on Friday at Healthy is the New Skinny looked at the controversy over pink. Excerpt:

It’s only been in the last fifty or sixty years that the strong association between pink and femininity has taken root. Pink has become the commercialized way of signifying something associated with women: think pink ribbons for breast cancer, or the marketing term for selling something to women that was once sold mainly to men: “pink it and shrink it.”

As a result of all that marketing, many girls grow to dislike pink intensely, often because it’s been foisted onto them from the time they were very young. Others hate it because they associate it with a set of limitations that they’re trying to escape. “”I call it the pink prison”, my student Kailee says; “I feel like everytime I put on pink I’m being put in a box that forces me to behave a certain way. Like when I wear pink, my voice gets softer and I don’t get to express myself.”

But as many young women can attest, pink is more complicated than that…

I also wrote about pink back in February 2009.

Tell Your Daughter She’s Not Too Much to Love

Posted on September 12, 2011 by Hugo Schwyzer

Today’s column at the Good Men Project has a slightly misleading title: Loving Your Daughter Doesn’t Make You a Pedophile. Excerpt:

Just as so many men (often deliberately) misread a young woman’s façade of sexual sophistication, many more are intimidated by the sullen displays of exasperation that are so common among girls in their early-to-mid teens. Teen girls can seem like such a different species—even to their fathers—that many dads find it easier to withdraw. “Everything I do annoys my daughter”, one guy told me recently, “it’s just easier to give her the space she seems to want.” But just as a miniskirt on a 15-year-old isn’t a sexual invitation, neither are her angry assertions of independence proof that she doesn’t need and want her father—or, perhaps, another safe and reliable older man—to be active in her life.

…

One of the greatest fears with which we raise young women is that they are “too much” for the men in their lives. Over and over again, teen girls are told that they are too demanding, too idealistic, too sexual, too ambitious, too hungry, too loud. In countless ways, well-meaning adults push girls to lower their expectations, to disguise how deeply they feel and how badly they want. In particular, they’re told that too much candor and raw emotion will scare off men—all of whom are supposedly all too easily intimidated by strong female emotion.

Young women need fathers and father figures with the courage and the discernment to engage with them, to mentor them, to love them. Our daughters need men strong enough to stand up to what is often an unhealthy culture of suspicion, and they need safe adult men who aren’t intimidated by the intensity of their emotions and their wants. That’s neither too much to expect, nor too much for which to ask.

Men, MILFs, and the Madonna-Whore Complex

Posted on August 19, 2011 by Hugo Schwyzer

Eira and I are home from our trip to Israel (I’ll try to write something about that soon). We’re off to Montana on Sunday, so the summer travels aren’t entirely concluded.

I do have a quick piece up at Good Men Project today: The Real Meaning of MILFs. Excerpt:

Though we had planned to have a home birth, in the end my wife needed a Cesearean in the hospital. (Our daughter was wedged into a breach position, and few obstetricians will support a vaginal breach birth these days.) I was at my wife’s side during the procedure, holding her hand and whispering encouragement, while watching with great interest as the surgeons did their work—blood and viscera galore.

I got to see the amazing moment Heloise was pulled (butt first, of course) from my wife’s body. I was there when our daughter latched on for the first time to Eira’s breast. I was awed and humbled by what I saw. And though I wasn’t turned on by watching the birth and the 15 months of subsequent breastfeeding, witnessing my wife’s transition into motherhood did nothing to reduce my attraction to her. That doesn’t make me unusual or heroic.

Read the whole thing. For an older piece on a similar subject, here’s my 2005 blog post Men, Childbirth, Lust.

“Cuckolding is the worst thing that can happen to a man”

Posted on July 13, 2011 by Hugo Schwyzer

If the comments below my last two posts (based on my “13 year-old son?” piece from Monday) seem hostile, you should see the ones that were deleted in the moderation queue. The Men’s Rights Activists (MRAs) have stirred themselves into quite the tizzy, with posts like this one representing some of the more moderate response.

Leaving aside the admittedly complex specifics of the Hugo/Jill/Ted/Alastair situation, what strikes me is the way in which so many of the MRAs have framed this as a cuckolding issue. The term “cuckold” is a very old term for a man who unknowingly raises another guy’s biological children, thanks to an unfaithful wife. (See the wiki.) It’s not an accurate term to use in my scenario, but the fact that this is such a profound fear for some men is worth exploring.

One classic theory of patriarchy assumes that men’s desire to control women is rooted in the fear of being cuckolded. A woman is never in doubt as to who the mother of her child is, but for reasons of basic physiology, men can never have that same reassurance. The need to control women’s sexuality (insisting on pre-marital virginity and post-marital fidelity; female genital mutilation; the insistence on modest dress) may well all be rooted in responses to this ancient, fundamental masculine anxiety. It’s a cruel calculus: the more I can control the women in my life (and the less sexual expression I permit them), the greater the likelihood that my offspring will in fact be “mine.”

I don’t think I’d realized how alive and well this fear is. See this comment from Amir, whose words I noted yesterday:

I have a beautiful son and if he was not mine my world would end. And
yes, I would no longer love him if he didn’t have my genes. My genes
makes him my son before all the environmental influences.

Another MRA commenter at GMP compared cuckolding to rape, only worse. Daniel writes:

This is horrifying.

Cuckolding is the worst thing that can happen to a man. If my son would have the genes of another man my life would end. This is much worse than a rape and is accepted unpunished by the justice system. Rape can last for several minutes but this is years and years of deceit and lies. I despise all the men and women supporting understanding this.

If you read through the lengthy and often vile comment sections at GMP and Jezebel (or at the “Voice for Men” site), you’ll see that Amir and Daniel are, alas, far from unusual in their insistence that love depends upon shared DNA.

As a father, I have nothing but contempt for any man whose love is contingent as Amir’s and Daniel’s so clearly is. If I were to find out that Heloise was not my biological daughter, I’d be stunned (and shocked at my wife’s deception.) It might change my relationship with Eira — but it sure as hell wouldn’t change my relationship with Heloise. Coming from an extended family where half-siblings and adoptees and step-children abound, I know how absurd it is to link devotion and biology. What makes Heloise “mine” has damn all to do with my DNA — and everything to do with the energy and devotion and commitment I have put into my relationship with her since she was in her mama’s womb.

There is nothing wrong with expecting a partner who has promised to be faithful to keep that promise. (A reminder, Ted and Jill were not in an exclusive relationship when she last slept with me.) It’s perfectly reasonable to be devastated by betrayal. But there’s a world of difference between the hurt of infidelity and the fear of being cuckolded. Eira made me a promise when we were married that she wouldn’t sleep with other men. If she broke that promise, it would alter my relationship with her significantly. But Heloise made no such representations. The circumstances of her conception (and the sperm used to conceive her) have nothing — nothing — to do with my devotion to this remarkable little girl, whose sweetness would be no less delightful if she didn’t have my DNA.

It’s telling that the atavistic fear of cuckolding still runs so strong in the men’s rights activists. And given that so many of them are associated with the “father’s rights” movement, it’s telling as well that their definition of “father” is so fragile, so contingent, so limited, and so utterly narcissistic.

Do I have a 13 year-old son? Responding to some questions

Posted on July 12, 2011 by Hugo Schwyzer

I can’t recall a post or an article I’ve written that’s caused more consternation — and such wildly divergent reactions– than my column yesterday at the Good Men Project: I May Have a Son, But I’ll Never Know for Sure. Both at GMP and at Jezebel, where the piece was reprinted, there’s been an outpouring of criticism (and a fair amount of praise) for the decisions a woman I’m calling “Jill” and I made 14 years ago.

A sample of the emails I’ve gotten:

You are a horrible human being and should face the consequences of
your actions. You and Jill conned another human being into a fake
life, giving his love to a child which is not his. Who are you to
determine what fatherhood is for Ted and what is it relation to
genetics.

I have a beautiful son and if he was not mine my world would end. And
yes, I would no longer love him if he didn’t have my genes. My genes
makes him my son before all the environmental influences. This is my
love it is my choice who to give it to. — “Amir.”

On the other hand:

This may be my favorite thing you’ve ever written. I had respect for you before, of course, but it’s been doubled. You and Jill made the right decision. I hope you never have a moment of doubt about it, and I hope that Jill doesn’t either. Love to you and your family, and love to that family in the Midwest which is stronger because of what you didn’t do. — “Naomi.”

And of course, lots of comments fall in between these two extremes. (In general, the most virulent and hateful comments and emails have come from men, but plenty of women have taken issue with what I did — and, especially, what Jill chose to do.)

A few clarifications below the fold, based on questions that have come up in emails and comments on the two versions of the column. Continue reading →

The Son Who May — or May Not — Be Mine

Posted on July 11, 2011 by Hugo Schwyzer

My Good Men Project column runs one day early this week, and it’s turned out to be a controversial one: I May Have a Son, But I’ll Never Know for Sure. It’s a true story I tell, one I’ve not written about before. I had wanted to write a piece on the Casey Anthony trial, focusing on the anonymity of the father of little Caylee, but I thought better of stoking that fire.

Excerpt:

In a medium-sized city in the Midwest, there’s a boy who will turn 13 next month. He lives with his parents, who were wed three months before he was born. He is tall, with dirty blonde hair and blue eyes. His name is Alastair*, and he may –- or may not -– be my son…

Fourteen autumns ago, I was casually dating a woman I’ll call Jill*. We had unprotected intercourse a handful of times in late October and early November. And just before Thanksgiving, Jill discovered she was pregnant.

She didn’t tell me until after New Year’s Day. While Jill and I had been in a “friends with benefits” arrangement, she’d also been growing more serious about another man, Ted.* She’d first slept with him for the first time two nights before she had last slept with me. It was that week that Jill got pregnant, and as she would later tell me, there was no way to know for sure which one of us was the father.

But there was no question which one of us was a better bet as a romantic partner. Jill had broken things off with me as soon as she and Ted had decided on an exclusive relationship (just before she found out she was pregnant.) Ted was several years older than I was, professionally and emotionally stable, and clearly falling in love with Jill. I was drinking, partying, with some time to go before I’d hit my rock bottom. Jill wanted to be a mom. Ted wanted to be a dad. I wasn’t sure what I wanted. In her mind, these facts settled it: the baby was Ted’s. Or it needed to be Ted’s…

At the Good Men Project and at Jezebel, where the piece was reposted this afternoon my choices — and the choices of a woman I slept with many years ago — are under intense debate. (The only thing I’m regretting at the moment is the pompous phrase “fourteen autumns ago”.) Not surprisingly, the GMP and Jezebel commenting communities don’t always agree.

Read the whole thing here or here.

Fashion isn’t frivolous: the importance of engaging our girls about everything

Posted on June 30, 2011 by Hugo Schwyzer

My Thursday column is up at Healthy is the New Skinny this morning. Let’s Talk to Girls about Beauty, Too was written as a response to this generally excellent Lisa Bloom essay at the Huffington Post. An excerpt from my piece today:

…we also need to remember that fashion isn’t the enemy. Cruel and narrow standards and impossible ideals are. Ignoring subjects like clothes and hair does nothing to equip our daughters and little sisters (and, let’s face it, ourselves) to deal with the pressure to look good. All it does is leave many girls feeling shallow for still caring about beauty.

It’s not evidence of superficiality to take an interest in clothes or shoes or make-up. Girls can care about fashion while also caring about books, about sports, about nature, about making a difference in the world. We need to get past the myth that an interest in beauty makes you vain and frivolous. Girls need to be reassured that it’s okay to care about clothes and hair, but they also need reminders that they are valued for so much more than their looks. Let’s lose the false choice that says we either validate little girls for their brains or for their beauty. We need to be fearless about praising both.

This is personal to me. I’m not just a college professor and a writer. I’m also a father to a little girl. A day doesn’t go by that I don’t tell her how beautiful she is. But I also praise her for the other things she does, and as she grows more vocal, I engage her in conversation in a host of other topics. I read to my daughter every night – and I help her pick out her outfit for the following day. My little girl loves clothes as well as books. And I want to encourage her in both passions.

Read the whole thing.

Letting kids play on the gender spectrum: a partial defense of “Egalia”

Posted on June 28, 2011 by Hugo Schwyzer

Several people sent me the link to this story that ran on Yahoo this weekend: No ‘him’ or ‘her’; preschool fights gender bias.

At the “Egalia” preschool, staff avoid using words like “him” or “her” and address the 33 kids as “friends” rather than girls and boys.

From the color and placement of toys to the choice of books, every detail has been carefully planned to make sure the children don’t fall into gender stereotypes.
“Society expects girls to be girlie, nice and pretty and boys to be manly, rough and outgoing,” says Jenny Johnsson, a 31-year-old teacher. “Egalia gives them a fantastic opportunity to be whoever they want to be.”

It’s a rather innocuous project, but judging from the hand-wringing comments below the piece, it’s an initiative that’s misunderstood. The school doesn’t, for example, deny biological difference (the children play with anatomically correct dolls.) The school doesn’t force little boys to play with dolls while insisting that girls take up sports. Rather, as Johnsson says, the whole idea is to give kids the “fantastic opportunity to be whoever they want to be.”

Having a daughter in preschool has reinforced something I already knew: gender happens on a spectrum. Some girls are “girlier” than others. Our Heloise wants to play with dolls more than soccer balls; her friend Ruthie prefers rough-housing. Some of the boys prefer playing house with Heloise; some of the boys prefer to tumble about with Ruthie. At this stage in their little lives, Ruthie and Heloise (like their preschool classmates) find themselves at different points on the spectrum of stereotypical gender behavior.

Gender essentialists insist that there are certain immutable truths: boys are violent, girls are nurturing. Anyone who spends time with little children will notice that at best, that’s only partly true. As a group, the boys do seem rougher and the girls gentler — but invariably, on close examination, a healthy minority of the boys are more tender than an equally noticeable minority of the girls. It’s not a binary, it’s a spectrum — and on that continuum between ultra-masculine and ultra-feminine, little kids are scattered at virtually every point. Furthermore, Tuesday’s rough-houser can be Wednesday’s little nurturer.

Biology isn’t destiny, but it isn’t irrelevant either. Rather, it’s one factor among many that goes into making children who they are. The Egalia pre-school seems committed to allowing children to find themselves without being forced too soon into rigid gender roles. That’s healthy and good. Continue reading →