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First Person digital short: Visit tgam.ca/firstperson to see a video adaptation of the essay "How I became the fool on the hill."
Once upon a time, I could, as a parent, rely on male politicians, actors and athletes to be good role models for my sons. Not all of them and not all the time but, in general, yes; I relied on them. I would pass on an article for my boys to read or share a video clip that showcased the person being a great human being. I say "once upon a time" because lately it feels likes ages ago that I was able to do this without also holding my breath waiting for the seemingly inevitable role model's "fall." I'm so exhausted by the endless list of men behaving badly, that it almost seems safer to stick with female role models. Of course, on the other hand, this moment in time also provides the time and space for all of us to have difficult conversations, perhaps most especially between moms and sons.
The scores of powerful men toppled by brave women was, if you are a mom to sons as I am, doubly difficult. As a woman, it brought up memories (though mine were mild, hardly worth mentioning in comparison), but as a mom to sons, it did something else entirely.
It's not reasonable to think that mothers should be held to account for the misdeeds of their fully grown sons. I know this and believe this. And yet, by November, I couldn't help but feel that it was my duty to dwell on precisely that idea at least for a moment. The mothers of these men must previously have been quite proud of their sons who seemed to be, by almost every standard, successful. They had probably not given the body parts of their sons even a thought for at least 40 years or more. I mean, most boys stop pulling the thing out and displaying it to an unsuspecting audience at about three years of age. Before that time, however, there is a lot of, "No James, we don't do that" or "You can only look at it in private." The fact that your son could learn this at 3 but then unlearn it later in life had probably not occurred to those moms.
A mom in 2018 doesn't have that luxury. It occurs to us. Or at least it does to me.
My sons are 9 and 11 and we've been having the "birds and the bees" talk since they were toddlers. Beginning with body parts and, because they would always toddle after me into the bathroom, with female biology.
The real birds and the bees conversation, however, would come when they were 6 and 8. My eldest simply asked "but how are babies actually made?" The "actually" indicating that he wanted and needed to know more. I had always imagined that it would be my husband that would tell them, but that day he was busy. I covered it all. Well, almost. We didn't talk about sex as recreation. Just sex as procreation. Nevertheless, I had done, I thought, a good job.
But what you say and what they hear are sometimes different. They had nodded and giggled and then fell silent for many hours. Later the questions started coming. The older wanted to confirm that since this must be a messy process, was it done in the bathroom or the hospital? The younger wanted to know if you had to completely remove your underwear. This last question made me realize that we'd be having more than one "birds and the bees" conversations and that I had better read up. We would go on to have dozens of conversations over the course of the next few years. Usually, one of them would hear something on the playground and then ask about it. Why do people need condoms when you said sex was for when you wanted a baby? What's porn?
Yes, the questions grew more difficult, but I had read somewhere that it was important to end each conversation about sex with the central message that you wanted them to remember. So, my husband and I talked about it and decided that every talk would end with something about how this was an activity to be shared between two people who loved each other.
This seemed completely reasonable in 2013 but seems quaint and downright dangerous in 2018. Something that could lead your son to marry the one he loves, start a family, but still somehow show up on Casual Fridays in a loosely fastened bathrobe. The difference between lust and love is as wide as an ocean when you are in your 40s. But as a teen, it's as narrow as a spring stream. Forget love, it was consent that I actually cared about. What did it matter if the boys ended up sleeping with people they only liked as long as they had a sober and fully committed "yes" to the act itself?
Not that I had neglected talking about consent. It's hard to responsibly raise boys and not talk about consent. Boys express themselves physically from almost the moment they can sit up and most mothers I know start this conservation early around tickling and wrestling. Talking about consent is a constant assignment, but it's also not enough.
The tough part, I now think, is not the birds and the bees or even consent, but talking to our sons about what happens after the sting of a "no." That's the real talk because the person who just rejected your son doesn't simply teleport away. They are both stuck there, whether in a dorm room or a boardroom, in varying degrees of dress and with a plethora of emotions waiting for what happens next. The way that our sons deal with that "no" is everything. Whether we end up raising a plumber, a professor or a producer, the true test of their character will be whether they handle the "no" with grace and even humour or with anger and aggression. We won't be there to witness it (thank God), but after recent events, I don't think we can be so naive as to think that for each of our sons the right response will come naturally.
KJ Ohlsson lives in Toronto.