By Jessica Penkower Reid

Coming of age in the 80s, my ideas about gender roles were shaped in large part by John Hughes movies—until I had my feminist aha moment in adulthood that Jake Ryan wasn’t really such a good guy and cheerleaders shouldn’t be grossly portrayed as sex pawns. At the time, though (and perhaps surprisingly), I felt relatively safe being a teenage girl. I might be overserved and assaulted by the class nerd, but boys will be boys, right? Anyway, I had Roe v. Wade on my side. And while gender inequity was stark, it seemed the pendulum’s momentum was at least swinging in the right direction. 

I never contemplated being, as I am, the mother of only boys. (Who are now old enough to be part of The Breakfast Club and beyond.) I imagine there would be a lot less performative farting in the house had I borne girls, but despite that and the sad dearth of Disney princess regalia, I was quite relieved to be a boy mom. Mostly because there’d be no expectation for me to be any sort of I-Am-Woman-Hear-Me-Roar role model for a daughter. (My fellow feminists, hear me out.)

I thought it would be disingenuous to try to show a daughter she should and can have it all when I, and soon enough she, would know that’s ridiculous. Instead, I could be a stay-at-home mom and just love my sons to pieces, stow my feminist baggage, and not worry about being less than a perfect woman for a young girl to aspire to. 

Well, it turns out my calculations were off. As their mom, the onus was largely on me to ensure my boys didn’t grow up to be douchebags. Over time and with more confidence, I wanted even more than that. I wanted them to be truly empathetic to the feminist cause. And that meant I couldn’t sit idly by like I’d assumed.

Nope. We boy moms have got to retrieve our baggage from the overhead bin, dump it out on the floor, and painstakingly sort through all of the indignities, heartbreaks, and struggles of our female lives, so we can use it all to educate our sons about the evils of misogyny and patriarchy. We can’t allow any inane utterance of “boys will be boys” or “men think with their penises.” The Handmaid’s Tale should be a mandatory bedtime story for our toddlers. (Lest the next generation of men deem it okay to “grab ‘em by the pussy.”)

I had lunch recently with my brilliant friend Lisa, and we talked about the challenges of raising empathetic sons. She said she employs what I call the percolator method, subtle lessons in feminism, drip by drip. When there’s an item in the news that’s heinous for women, like the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, for example, she’ll say to her son something like, “Can you believe women don’t have decision-making authority over their own bodies?” The question is an invitation to think critically. Genius.

The more drips, the fuller the cup. “Can you believe men get paid more than women for doing the exact same job?” Drip. “Isn’t it screwed up that women are more likely to be injured in car crashes because seatbelts were designed for men?” Drip. Eventually, you should smell the full-bodied aroma of empathy. 

Unfortunately for me, I didn’t know about this method when my kids were younger. Instead, I aimed to pique indignation rather than curiosity. Admittedly, I came in pretty hot. When Dobbs was decided, like millions of you, I wasn’t okay. I felt furious, defeated, resentful, disbelieving, sickened, scared—for myself, for my gender, for humanity.

I knew I needed to say my piece at home. Not just to warn my boys their lives will be utterly destroyed if they knock up a girl in a red state (which I did without batting an eyelash), but to somehow make them feel, not just intellectualize, the injustice of women being treated like second class citizens simply for being women. 

So, we all sat around the dining room table. I called the meeting to order and delivered an impassioned sermon. I talked in my very serious voice, the one usually reserved for tut-tutting someone’s disappointing behavior or warning of impending doom (both of which applied here).

I gave a history lesson on Roe v. Wade. I furrowed my brow, I shook my fist! I expanded my diatribe to rail against harassment in the workplace. I decried victim-blaming in sexual assault cases. Curse the patriarchy! Can I get an “Amen!!” from the congregation?!

Not only didn’t I get an amen, I elicited bored stares and “we get it, Mom, are we done here?” I took it personally that my boys weren’t as fired up as I was. Why didn’t they excuse themselves to call their senators to demand federal protection of reproductive freedom? Didn’t they care? They saw The Barbie Movie, for crying out loud. Apparently, lecturing kids—no matter how important the subject, no matter how well intentioned—is like mixing too much freeze dried Folgers with overly hot water. It just makes a sludgy, indigestible mess. 

It’s tricky business—rousing boys to take up the feminist cause. The fact is their blood isn’t boiling like mine. They definitely won’t be forced to carry a baby to term. It’s also highly unlikely their bodies will be objectified, degraded, or deemed dispensable after a certain age. I’m grateful they won’t have to endure what their female counterparts undoubtedly will.

And I certainly don’t want to vilify them just for being male. But if you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.

The patriarchy is real, the appeal of gender superiority ever-present. While I can accept my sons won’t be Women’s Studies majors, I can’t live with them not being allies. So, I’m taking a new, calmer tack. My older son is home from college for spring break this week. Yesterday, I told him I was writing an essay about a mother’s responsibility to educate her sons about patriarchal oppression of women. I asked him for his thoughts.

Again, he looked at me kind of sideways. “Mom, of course women are equal to men and should be treated that way. It’s crazy what’s going on.” He even said he’d join me at a women’s rally. Well ok.

I’ve observed that my boys have always considered girls and women as nothing less than their equals (and sometimes even more). It occurs to me that their apathy about Dobbs wasn’t a signal they don’t care. It’s quite likely what I was ranting about just sounded foreign. If you grow up where everyone speaks Greek, you will too.

And my boys have grown up in an actively liberal family in a progressive bubble of Los Angeles, where gender equality is most definitely spoken. I imagine Dobbs’ wickedness was so antithetical to their lived experience that it didn’t even compute. Their reaction was actually confirmation that their values were right where I wanted them to be.

While I wasn’t a Super-Do-It-All-And-Make-It-Look-Easy-Woman role model, nor was I a mom who always nailed the hard conversations, I instilled feminism in my boys just by being myself. Someday, my boys may have sons of their own (fingers crossed, but not anytime soon please). And I’m hopeful they’ll be strong, feminist role models for them too.

Jessica Penkower Reid is a writer who spends much of her time trying to find humor in the tricky business of raising two teenage sons in Los Angeles. You can connect with Jessica on Instagram @jessicapenkowerreid.

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