Excerpt: Raising Boys Without Men by Drexler

The following is an excerpt from the book Raising Boys Without Men: How
Maverick Moms are Creating the Next Generation of Exceptional Men
by Peggy Drexler, Ph.D., with Linden Gross
Published by Rodale; August 2005; $23.95US/$33.95CAN; 1-57954-881-4
Copyright © 2005 Peggy Drexler


Chapter Six

The Mental Work of Mothering



"The most important thing as they're growing up is that you believe that
they have what it takes to cope, to survive, to grow, to build themselves
physically and emotionally to get through life. If they feel that from you,
it means everything."
--Divorced mother Helen Lewis



Daily care of a child extends well beyond the physical into the realms of
empathy, emotionality, play, and nurturance. Child-rearing skills in these
areas necessitate more than just being an able-bodied adult. Mothering is
work that requires not only complex physical and emotional but also
cognitive commitment. A wealth of evidence tells us that men and women are
very different from each other on that front. In almost all families, Mom
functions as the overseer, the organizer, the list maker, the keeper of
inventory. Beyond overseeing practical activities, mothers are also able to
look out for and interpret patterns and rhythms in the child's daily life
and respond accordingly.

In my work with two-mother families, I had the privilege to observe
courageous mothers on the front lines of our society. These mothers -- alone
and in pairs -- are undertaking the emotionally and culturally fraught work
of raising boys without a father in the home and doing it well. Their
success depends on the recognition that as mothers, they have the innate
power to raise their sons right and that they must move from disempowerment
and betrayal into a renewed acknowledgment of that power.

True maternal assurance, the kind that doesn't have to prove itself, spawns
a freshness and an immediacy that is expansive for both mother and child.

Pam Ingalls's love affair with Cody began the moment she saw his picture.
"He's a beautiful child," she told me with pride. "Gorgeous skin. Thick,
long black hair. Black eyes. Very petite in his features. Very tiny. He was
only 5 pounds, 10 ounces, when he was born . . . I think everyone
immediately fell in love with him who saw the pictures. I definitely did."
At last, when he was 6 months old, she was called to pick him up in
Guatemala. When the baby was finally brought to her hotel, she held him, so
overcome with emotion that she was unable to speak. "I had been warned that
[newly adopted babies] might cry for hours or even a couple of days, being
with unfamiliar people, [but] you'd never know he'd made any kind of
transition. He has a very even temperament . . . He was just a very lovable
child. I'm sure that contributed to it, but I had pretty much already
accepted him, through pictures. I'd gotten one video of him. He was already
Cody to us."

Cody continued to wriggle his way into Pam's heart, eventually adopting his
mother's personality traits, down to her penchant for organization and
tidiness. When he was about 3, she came to pick him up from the church child
care he always attended while she was at choir practice, only to find the
teachers laughing. He and two little boys had been playing together. When
the other boys went home, Cody just sat in the middle of the room, shook his
head, and said, "Oh, what a mess." Then he cleaned up the whole room. "He
put everything away," his teachers told Pam. He did the same thing when they
visited Pam's sister, an unrepentant pack rat and a slob. As Cody went
around closing cabinets and tidying up, Pam's sister looked at her and said,
"Oh, my gosh, it is environment, not heredity!"

During the 3 years since, Pam has figured out that we can learn to use our
children's eyes to see the world as a realm of possibilities and explore it
with them, experience it as they do, and regain some of the wonder we may
have lost as jaded adults. "I think having Cody around has given me a
renewed outlook on life," said Pam, whose 7-year marriage ended well before
Cody came on the scene due to her former husband's lack of family
commitment. "We go to the park more. I'd never do that if I didn't have him.
We sit down and talk about things. We go eat ice cream on the back porch.
Taking time to do things has definitely changed me. And I'm more
spontaneous. I'll say, 'Okay, let's just go do that.' One of my good friends
who has helped with Cody a lot is very spontaneous. Before I got him, she
knew that if we were going to do anything, she had to plan it. Now she can
call and say, 'I'm going out to the farmer's market. Do you and Cody want to
go?' And we'll go. I know she knows that I've changed because Cody might
like to go out there and see the vegetables and the flowers. I do things now
knowing that would be something that Cody would enjoy. And I find myself
then enjoying it, too. Like going to the county fair. I grew up in
Albuquerque in the city. We were three little girls. We never got dirty. We
never got out and played with the animals and stuff. So taking him to the
county fair the last 2 years and walking among the cows and sheep and
chickens, and him riding horses -- you suddenly see that this is kind of
fun."

My research on parenting among two-mother and single-mother families engaged
me intellectually and produced provocative results that I believe and hope
will move the conversation about how to raise children forward in
significant ways. I spent hundreds of hours with these mothers as they went
about the daily jobs of mothering: making decisions, agonizing about whether
or not they were right, sharing in the magnification of the moments in life
with their sons. I saw the pride they took in raising these fine boys. I
watched them standing back to let their sons make choices that they were
afraid were wrong, intruding on choices they made that were right, worrying
about being too strict or too permissive, wondering whether they said too
much, too little, or just enough. I saw them suffer guilt for not being
there, as well as guilt for being there too much. Whether these moms were
single or partnered, however, I rarely heard them complain about the role of
motherhood that they'd chosen and pursued only after painstaking planning
and effort.


Reprinted from: Raising Boys Without Men: How Maverick Moms are Creating the
Next Generation of Exceptional Men by Peggy Drexler, Ph.D., with Linden
Gross © 2005 Peggy Drexler. Permission granted by Rodale, Inc., Emmaus, PA
18098. Available wherever books are sold or directly from the publisher by
calling (800) 848-4735 or visit their website at www.rodalestore.com.

Author
Peggy Drexler, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of psychology in psychiatry,
Weill Medical College of Cornell University, a former gender scholar at
Stanford University, and former board member of New York University's Child
Study Center. She and her husband of 36 years have two children, ages 12 and
26. They live with their almost teenage daughter and two yellow Labrador
retrievers in New York City.

Linden Gross, former special features editor of the Los Angeles Times, is an
accomplished ghostwriter with several notable books to her credit, including
Julia "Butterfly" Hill's The Legacy of Luna. She lives in Northern
California.

For more information, please visit www.peggydrexler.com.

Jane Smith wrote:


Whether these moms were
single or partnered, however, I rarely heard them complain about the role of
motherhood that they'd chosen and pursued only after painstaking planning
and effort.

Well, no problem then. Every mother in the whole world will now make
absolutly certain that they only have a son "after painstaking planning
and effort."

Dennis