Boys Need Fathers to Protect Them from Their Mothers

The research we're ignoring about how father-son relationships buffer boys against "boy mom" culture and maternal harm, including enmeshment, abuse, and narcissism

Some boys do not need Andrew Tate and the manosphere to teach them misogyny; their mothers got there first. Many boys don't learn misogyny from social media. In fact, they learn it at home from their mothers. Candidly, this is extremely uncomfortable to talk about, but one of the key roles of fathers is to establish healthy boundaries between their sons and their mothers. Social science research makes this clear, yet we refuse to discuss it. Boys raised in single-mother and/or households with overbearing mothers are acutely vulnerable to maternal neglect, verbal and physical abuse, emotional enmeshment, poor mental health, and substance abuse. This can also happen in homes where passive fathers adopt the motto "Happy wife, happy life.” That is, where mothers become the dominant drivers of all emotional regulation in the home. As a result, what we don't want to acknowledge is how neglectful, abusive, or enmeshed mothers can raise sons who grow up to become misogynists. Again, you don't need the manosphere when you're living in a home with an overbearing, controlling, manipulative, or abusive mother.

Obviously, many single mothers love their sons sacrificially and heroically. That is not the point here.

Let me be clear: mothers are not the enemy. The silence is hurting boys and young men. We have made motherhood so sacred in our churches that a son can be wounded by his mother for years and still be treated as ungrateful, bitter, dishonoring, or disloyal for telling the truth.