Strollers, High Heels, and Raising “Masculine” Men

My husband and I are raising two boys. We each have brought our lifetime of experiences, baggage, and ideas to the table. There are times when what he or I believe bump heads with the other. Those are hard times; sometimes hard conversations are had. Sometimes those conversations make one of us address that baggage we have stored in our mental closet. Raising two boys will do that. Shit, raising two dogs together will do that!

It’s at those times where our differences create a fork in the road that we sensitively sort through our views and do our best to come out on the other side in agreement, with a healthy compromise on how we will move forward in parenting. We’re almost eight years into these discussions, and they happen much less frequently now than they did in the first few years. Back then, parenting was new and vulnerabilities abounded, so navigating differences could touch unforseen insecurities. Early on, we weren’t used to the emotional tax that the exhaustion of parenting adds to your life. We now know to make considerations for stuff like that so discussions are quick, effective, and efficient.

One such discussion we had before our first son was even conceived was such a convoluted, deeply cultural, and philosophical one that it took two years into parenthood for us to come to an agreement. That was the topic of what masculinity would include for our son.

Children spend their lives imitating the behaviors and thoughts of their parents. It comes out most readily through play in the first seven years of life, at least. Children process and explore their experiences, express feelings, and test limitations through the tools they understand best, which is behavior or play. And because language is not their strongest tool yet, how they communicate using play has layers.  

Of course, play is mostly just play — nothing deep. But there are times where something happens or comes out in playtime that makes us adults take a step back and think of what layers lie beneath that behavior.

When necessary, I’ve seen that it’s best to observe and try to understand the child’s experience or message that comes out through play BEFORE applying the jaded, limiting, socially-constructed definitions we adults have to explain what the meanings are.

Fatherhood and motherhood require a softening of the things adulting has calloused. The same aggression that many of us attack careers, education, and social-moving with has no place in parenting and would be maladaptive in most respects of being a parent. There’s nothing that will break down your walls like the smell and sweetness of holding a baby you made with the one you love most. When you think of that being the healthy future your son is practicing for, I’d think we would run out and buy him any stroller and doll he chooses, with the same fervor that we do with little girls. How do you reconcile the future you want for your son with the present judgment he would face for his current desire to pretend to be a great daddy?

After all those conversations, the stroller thing never materialized as our son simply wasn’t a stroller aficionado — go figure. But when he was two-and-a-half or so, he LOVED playing in my high heels. He would stand in front of my shoe rack and ogle my shoes before choosing the highest, sometimes shiniest heels he could reach.

This one day he was rolling around on the floor, heels in the air, lost in his own world of playing. I watched him and wondered what the uncles and grandfathers would think. I already knew what his father thought: It was a difficult thing for my husband to see, and he would lovingly redirect our son to another activity if this started to happen in his presence. I kind of think he would have happily given our son a stroller to distract him from the high heels, LOL!  Anyway, this one day, our son was rolling around and walking in these high-heeled, patent leather booties. Out of nowhere, he declared, “I LOVE these tall shoes! They make me a big man like Daddy!”

And right there, I laughed. All the adult definitions and limitations were thrown away — in his mind, these shoes, these heels, were tools to be big and tall like his father.

Times like that, and many more that have happened over the years, are times when we could have imposed ourselves on his play and negatively changed what it meant to him as a future, healthy partner and man. In situations like those, the best thing we can do for our own children, the children of those we love and strangers alike, is keep our eyes on the bigger picture.

We can think beyond the limitations of our adult imaginations and be receptive to ways that play reflects what our children understand about examples the adults in their lives are modeling. We can realize that as parents, or as part of a parent’s village, we will be challenged to reconsider what defines manhood from an early age.