Nature and Nurture - best blended!

I have to thank Mr. Mouse for shaking loose the thoughts I will express in this blog, and I have to strongly agree with him here, that society's rules on how men and women should be raised differently has affected the way the world is run - with war and destruction, rather than with love and compassion.  It doesn't have to be that way, and I hope any mother or father who reads both of our blogs will take the messages to heart that we are sending out here.

At the same time I have to thank my Mother for breaking with tradition for at least one person - my Son.  You see, she wouldn't treat my son any different than my daughter.  She helped raise them in their very early years and again in their teen years (probably spent more time with them than me).  So when my son expressed that he'd like to stir the cookie dough or help with some other thing, regardless that he was still small and likely to make a mess, my Mom let him help.  Because she kept my kids rather sheltered, he participated in many tea-parties and could make mud-pies with the best of them.  He also learned how to be a gentleman, and developed a compassionate side not seen in many men (and I am doubly-blessed, because my son-in-law also developed those qualities, although perhaps from different circumstances).

Robert-2006

Today my Son is the one that does the heavier housework, does his share of the cooking, washes dishes, and works a full-time day job as a quality control inspector in a heavy metal manufacturing environment where he lifts and moves around blocks of material twice his 250 pounds weight.  He is not afraid to cry, alone or in compassion with someone else.  He has a sense of fairness toward women that is rarely exhibited by other men I've known.  He is gentle and considerate always with his wife and his own son.  Yet, he is also extremely masculine in his interests - boating, fishing, riding motorcycles, sports - definitely NOT a wimp!  And put in the position of needing to defend someone or something, I wouldn't want to be the one getting in his way!  So, I do believe the point of this blog - that nurture is as big a part of how men turn out as nature.

It used to make me so angry when my second husband mis-treated him (as step-dad's sometimes do), under the guise that he didn't want him to turn out to be "gay" because my son was so gentle and kind.  Funny that, because the ex-hubby was AC/DC himself!  And definitely knew how to be cruel - because he was abused as a child himself by his own mother.  So you see, there is definitely a contrast there in how nurture can affect nature.

Now, as we all grow older in our family, my Son has matured into such a wonderful, intelligent, fair-minded individual that any mother would be proud to say "He's MY son!". He also does his part to look after me - along with my Daughter (who deserves her own blog for her part in that).  So, as my son approaches his forty-first birthday in about a month, I just want to put him forward as one of the best examples I know of to show that raising a boy to be gentle and kind, doesn't necessarily make him a sissy.  It makes him a MAN!!!