"My Son Wants to Play with Baby Dolls!?"
ReaderQs: June 30, 2022
Young Boys Playing with Baby Dolls –is this something we should worry about?
As Adults, we tend to make simple things complicated due to so messy with their many messy years of fears and failures and worries alike.
ReaderQs:
My son asked me to buy him a baby doll, what do I say?
Dear Mr. Jonathan, I would like to know what you think I should say to my son who recently asked for me to buy him a baby doll like his sisters have. I don’t know what to think or what I should say. I’ve only told him that “we can talk about it tomorrow” but its now been 3 days and his question is still eating at me.
I’m not homophobic or believe in parenting without some sort of aligned family system, but I was more than just a little surprised when he asked me the question out of the blue. I think that I think I’m partly to blame for him not having a high-quality father figure in his life right now though I know I shouldn’t overly criticize myself as a single mom with 3 kids. I’m trying.
I’m trying to do the best I can, and that includes trying to do the best I can to help my son grow into an honorable, respectful man and potential future husband and father.
How do you think I should or could handle this without feeling all this weird pressure and stress I feel right now worrying about this strange question that came up? Any advice you might have would be appreciated, thanks!
First of all dear reader, thank you for your question and entrusting me with your heartfelt experience and open-minded curiosity. For that, and much more, I commend you above all else. Being willing to listen and learn and hear from other people’s perspectives is one the most valuable and most overlooked traits of a free and open society, which I believe we are all striving towards together. I suspect I can learn so much from you as it relates to motherhood, how to carry two toddlers and cook a home meal to nourish your own needs, how to walk a stroller with a kiddo and a family canine at the same time.
For these little yet significant things I know about you, I salute you.
Now, onto your question at hand. What can we do to handle the situation when our sons or daughters ask to participate in non-traditional gender-norm playtime ways? In reality, this is our big-picture question that encompasses the principle that can lead most more specific questions such as with your son and baby dolls or someone’s daughter fancying monster trucks or rugby football I suppose.
So, what can we do in these kinds of scenarios when perhaps the way we grew up was either left alone without any sort of values or principal guidelines or we were raised so incredibly rigid and constrained into perfectionist boxes that outside expectations still rattle our cages today?
First I think it is important to set the stage to showcase some pretty special context here. Context is key my elementary English teachers would always say. Your son is your son, so he is going to hold your affirmations and acceptance to high esteem. Your son sees his sibling sisters playing with dolls and he has no toys of similar kind to join the fun.
Instead, he’s left to his own devices you might say, such as monster trucks, frisbee golf, playing his playstation or old-fashioned solitaire I suppose. So, it’s not all that crazy to see why he might ponder the question about having a baby doll, especially he observes your natural inclination affirming the play style of your daughters with their dollies.
Now, as for the impactful void of not having a positive male role model in this young child’s life, this is another important layer of consideration. I am not sure who his secondary or tertiary attachment figures may be or may become but currently it sounds like he may only have image bearers to reflect upon as you his beautiful mother or his beautiful sisters, all naturally more feminine of course. For him to explore his own path with and within masculinity will be a challenge without a male role model as I’m sure you know. His ask about dolls may be as simple as him just wanting to play with his sisters and unsure how to jump in!
Now, to address a deeper question here that I think is worthy of diving into since so many people seem to wonder this themselves. “Is it okay for my son to play with dolls?”
My short answer is yes. My long answer is yes, absolutely and let me explain why.
Kids engage in pretend playful imagination as they practice their ideas and exercise their understandings of general principles of modern living.
Dogs don’t walk the humans on a leash along the sidewalk, though kids certainly have a tendency to play roles as dog and dog owner interchangeably without ever altering their identity into a chihuahua. They ought to have the chance at free expression and freedom of learning to explore these ideas, given consistent value-aligned guidelines along their journey. Playing with dolls a few times is quite a few leaps behind auditioning for a drag show, becoming a pimp, or becoming a father.
My point is this, America today has the highest rate of single parent households across the world with nearly 1 in 4 children growing up in single-parent homes, while the vast majority (80%) of those homes are single moms. Obviously, something is going wrong if men are becoming more and more absent in the lives of their young offspring.
While families may split for many different reasons, most men today are brought up with cultural expectations holding such weight on their shoulders for their role as father to a child it can nearly leave them crumbled and terrified before the baby is ever born. They run away from the opportunity to be a father and the blessings it can entail because they have no freaking clue what it means to be a father, to love and nurture a child, and some are honesty more scared of failure as father.
In 2020, there were about 15.31 million children living with a single mother in the United States, and about 3.27 million children living with a single father.
Practicing fatherhood with a loving heart, nurturing nook, and caressing soft kiss on the forehead of a little one could very well begin in our years of early childhood development.
Yet, in most of our society today we have behaved in such a destructive and ignorant way around how to handle our kids learning, growth, achievement, and identity it’s no wonder most graduate high school and college without ever having a clue as to who they really are.
Dear reader, your curious son who may want to play with baby dolls may be desiring the practice of being the loving, nurturing, bonded, and brave father for a newborn like he himself never had the chance to receive. He may desire leadership. He may want to practice the role of protector, provider, guide, director, and honestly, he may just want a new toy to match his siblings. Who knows?
But what I can say for certain is that most young boys are never given a chance to practice their potential role at becoming a strong and noble father figure later in life when the time may come.
Thus, most men who become fathers feel ill-equipped and petrified by the thought. If your son has a few hours of practicing fatherhood with a soulful bond to a baby doll, then I think he’ll be well on his way to being a wonderful father someday and one you will be very proud of, I am sure.
The questions of his sexual orientations will become much more involved later on in life. Rest assured your role is to maintain your house, example your values by being principled in your mission as it sounds like you are. Whether straight or gay, married, or single, by blood, surrogate, or adoption, your son may become a marvelous father figure someday.
I do believe moments to get acquainted with what it feels like to hold a baby in your arms and take care of a baby doll is worth being honored for children in our culture today.
What do you think? This is a conversation worth having in my opinion!