A women's responsibility

Isn't it funny how sometimes when you have a realization, you start seeing it more and more in your daily life? For example, I was reading the VOF post of a woman who mentioned that a mother gives her children power by giving them courage. This made me think of other things that mothers pass onto their children, which made me think about boys. Yes, boys. As a believer in the concept that it is indeed the time for women to rise up and get our world out of the many messes it’s in, I often wonder how do we actually do this? Perhaps one way is to look to our boy children. Who raises these children? Who teaches them how to behave, how to love, how to act? Sometimes society enters in when a mother figure is missing. Sometimes, thankfully, a father will understand the need to step outside of societal notions and teach a child of the goodness in their heart. But ideally, a mother is the one that is bonding with and nurturing the soul of her children.

Wouldn’t it be amazing if mothers around the world started imprinting in their son’s heads that the responsibility of a “man/father/human being” is to treat all people with equal respect? That marrying a woman does not mean she is at your beck and call to produce children, cook your food and take care of you while you carouse around or worse, beat her when you feel like it? That love and listening really can solve arguments and problems without having to resort to brute strength? And that, when you feel the need to let some of that testosterone driven physical energy out, there are other ways of doing it than rape, fights and intimidation?

After having this thought, an upcoming event came across my email. It’s called, MenEngage - Declaration - Boys & Men for Gender Equality. I was thrilled to hope that this is the beginning of a wonderful trend. I then realized that even on World Pulse’s PulseWire, there are not only women, but a few men who are seemingly willing to step up and speak out about the inequality that effects women and children everywhere. We need their voices to be heard along side ours.

So because of my own little epiphany, I have come up with this for myself. I have a son. He is still young but not too young to make lasting impressions and in addition to showing him the parts of the world that I love and treasure like the feeling of contenment when the waves of the ocean are crashing and the joy of the sun after a long, cold winter, I am going to make it my goal to show him that it’s possible to be a “man” while also being a caring, concerned and proactive human being. Will you do it to?