Why we need to raise men

Last year, I got a notice from Delta saying that my Skymiles were about to expire and the only thing I could get with them was magazine subscriptions. I looked over the list and didn't see any familiar names, but choose "Cookie" magazine since it was supposed to be for moms. I have been greatly disappointed by everything in the magazine, but this recent article took the cake. To sum it up, a "mom" was trying to decide whether she should tell her son he couldn't wear a dress to preschool. She finally decided to let him and, in the end, another mom from school called her and asked if her son would rather tie-dye a dress or a t-shirt for the next arts-and-crafts activity.

This article epitomizes so much of what is wrong with our society. We aren't raising our boys to be men. And whose fault is it? The "moms" in our country. I say this because I think it is our responsibility. Our husbands and fathers will only be as involved as we let them be and too often we are emasculating them and relinquishing them of their duties. I think it is no accident that my children would all rather have "Daddy- time" rather than spend time with me. If we are ever in two cars, everyone wants to ride with Dad, although someone usually says, "I'll ride with Mama so she won't be lonely. And it's not because Tyler has the cooler car =) I encourage that because I know that there is not a replacement for time spent with their father.

I am ashamed to admit that I have been almost embarrassed to tell people, in some social settings, that we are expecting our fourth child (although now I don't have to announce it... my belly says it all). Tyler and I just aren't the "type" that has a million kids. But I was humbled when I read this in last month's Ensign from E.T. Sullivan.

“When God wants a great work done in the world or a great wrong righted, he goes about it in a very unusual way. He doesn’t stir up his earthquakes or send forth his thunderbolts. Instead, he has a helpless baby born, perhaps in a simple home and of some obscure mother. And then God puts the idea into the mother’s heart, and she puts it into the baby’s mind. And then God waits. The greatest forces in the world are not the earthquakes and the thunderbolts. The greatest forces in the world are babies.”

I hope I am raising my children to be powerful forces in the world. I recognize that some of their greatest work will be in the kind of parents they become. Mostly I hope to raise my boys to be men that will say, as the stripling warriors in the Book of Mormon said, "We do not doubt our mothers knew it." (Alma 56:48) It terrifies me to know that my little boy wants to go into the armed forces, but I am proud that he wants to be the kind of man that "saves people." In a world that embraces genderless qualities, I am working to teach him to be all that he can be... and that is a MAN.