Maybe he's born with it, maybe it's Boy Mom Syndrome
Rihanna is like the rest of us, i.e. not immune to gender essentialism!
Britannica defines confirmation bias as "people’s tendency to process information by looking for, or interpreting, information that is consistent with their existing beliefs. [...] it results in a person ignoring information that is inconsistent with their beliefs." This psychological habit explains society's prescriptive approach to parenting boys and girls in children's most impressionable years. And it is what blossoms into continued sexism, homophobia, and transphobia systemically when they become adults.
On social media, everyday parents and family vloggers alike have created identities around binary parenting, often claiming the identity for their opposite gendered child, i.e. “#boymom” or “#girldad.” Searching thiese hashtags on any app will provide you with a glimpse into cisnormative culture created by (usually) straight parents. You’ll see videos of boys playing messily as a mom looks on in disbelief, and pictures of dads sitting for tea time with their daughters. On an absolute surface level, this is wholesome content. But scratch that surface with some critical thinking and we can see how gender essentialist parenting is the start of children’s skewed understanding of themselves and the roles they’re “supposed” to play in society based on their genitalia.
As the mother of a son, I am unfortunately somewhat in community with #boymoms, though I reject the label intensely. I parent a boy, but I am not a Boy Mom. I don’t subscribe to the idea that my son’s rambunctiousness is inherent to his XY chromosomes, nor do I allow him to run wild because “boys will be boys.” I acknowledge the stereotypically masculine traits he displays, but also the gentler, softer, feminine ones that people will grow to ignore as he gets older. The latter traits are ones that I will be sure to nurture, rather than pummel out of him through shame as most boy parents do.
The socialization of men and boys is ubiquitous, though, which is why I was unsurprised when I saw a rare personal post from Rihanna with the caption: “being a boy mom is an Olympic sport.” The short video showed her son trying to climb out of a playpen, struggling with the determination that all toddler parents know so well, until he finally escapes. The caption was ended with a face palm emoji, blue heart emoji, and shrug emoji.
The post itself didn't particularly annoy me — I expect nothing less of a billionaire who is inevitably becoming less in-touch with social discourses. I am also a sucker for most baby content1, so I gave it a like. What annoyed me was people being obtuse about the term "boy mom," suddenly forgetting the connotations that we've collectively created around this "identity."
Which is why I've decided to write about it. I know, I know, I am thinkpiecing something pretty innocuous, but! This is an excellent opportunity to discuss how our casual assumptions about people based on gender reinforces patriarchy!
I am tired of women "aw shucks"-ing their sons when they display perfectly normal, developmentally appropriate behaviors. Children climb regardless of gender, not because of it. Rihanna and other Boy Moms simply believe this adventurous behavior is special to boys because we've been socialized to discipline this behavior out of little girls, whether they're our children or not.
Just the other week, one of my family members posted that she was living "boy mom life" because her toddler son has taken a liking to monster truck shows. Yet in this same post, she admitted to instilling his enthusiasm by introducing it to him in the first place. It is this phenomenon that is so irksome: the fact that parents intentionally steer their sons in the direction of "masculine" behaviors/interests, but speak of their eventual continued interest as an inevitability of being a boy, as if they didn’t all-but-force them to like those things. Vice versa with girls.
If Rihanna had a daughter, would she have chalked her daughter's spidey moves up to being a girl? The answer is no. We all know this. Hell, she probably wouldn't have even posted about it online. Just like she wouldn't have posted the same caption of her son doing something stereotypically feminine, like pretend cleaning or cooking.
These comments are small, and also they snowball into the larger gender roles that literally govern our society. Microaggressions must be challenged; changing how we think in small ways can also snowball our imaginations to consider the big ways these comments affect us on a societal level. What happens to girls who we tell not to be messy, to never play rough, to not climb because “sweetie you’re wearing a dress”? Does she become a teen girl that plays sports but doesn’t push herself as hard as she could? Does she become a woman who can never get her hands dirty — literally or metaphorically — because “women don’t do that”? Does she learn to shrink herself in other ways? Conversely, do the boys we allow to climb and play rough learn to take up more space, to be more audacious in their life pursuits, to carry that physical roughness into contexts it isn’t needed? Pause on that last one.
Yes, Rihanna may only have experience parenting boys. However, the implication that parenting girls would somehow be so different that she felt compelled to specify she’s a “boy mom” is the issue here. It’s not what she said, it’s what she didn’t. It’s the idea that parenting a girl would be less exhausting in the way of energy and athletic prowess, as if girls are less energetic at the ripe old age of 2 or 3.2
I’m no leader in the philosophy of non-gendered parenting; I still dress my son from the “boy” sections of stores and will likely cut his hair in a “boy” style in a year or two. I am not immune to the same patriarchal ideas that led Rihanna to caption her post as she did. But we all have unlearning to do, and we can start with the everyday language we use to separate boys from girls. Through more intentional language, we can help the venn diagram of gender become a circle.
In a vacuum. I do not support family vloggers who consistently whore their children out for views. Expand the Coogan Law!!!
This is the ONLY way a majority of cishet parents claim boys are harder, btw. It’s a generally held belief that girls are more difficult to raise in basically every other way. Is that because we make it harder to be a girl on purpose by putting additional responsibility on daughters over sons? Or is it because we all know deep down that being a woman in society is harder, and as a result daughters encounter more complex social barriers as they come of age that parents must confront? (Both. It’s both.)