It takes a village to raise a man

For most people, watching your little one grow into a well-adjusted young adult is greatly fulfilling. And while parenting is difficult in and of itself, it can be made complicated if your child is of the opposite gender from yourself.

For the most part, children model gender behaviour from their same-gender parent, which can present a challenge if the child of the single mother is a son. How do different single mothers approach this issue?

SMOTHER LOVE

When raising a child on her own, especially if the father chooses not to be a part of their lives, most mothers resort to being overly affectionate in a bid to compensate for his absence. While this may go down well with girls, when boys are concerned there is the worry that loving too much will emasculate him.

This was Rachel’s biggest fear initially where her nine-year-old son was concerned. When he turned seven and she saw that he had become particularly interested in her, she found it sweet at first – but she began worrying when he began asking questions every time she got a phone call or looked unsettled. She feared that she would make him feel like the man of the house, and that he would grow up too fast.

“The challenge was finding a way to protect him from the harsh realities of life while at the same time equipping him to deal with these things alone,” she says.

Rachel isn’t sure that she has found this balance yet, but she is trying to show him that she can take care of herself, him and his two siblings so that he doesn’t feel a need to step into those shoes.

EMOTIONS

When children are younger, they all cry when they are hungry, wet, or other wise uncomfortable, and it is easy to communicate with them.

Anita, a mother of one, only realised that her six-year-old boy had begun expressing himself differently when her mother, with whom the boy shared a very close relationship, passed away. “He was pretty shaken when I told him, but I noticed that he hid his tears when he cried.”

At a loss on how to get him to express his emotions in a healthy manner, she sought the help of a counselor from whom she learnt that the eye to eye conversations they’d had when he was younger wouldn’t work for them now because he was learning other ways of processing and expressing emotion. She adopted different styles of communicating with him.

“I now bond with him when we are doing things. I understand that he may not want to talk about everything and sometimes just hugging him seems to lift his bad mood.”

DISCIPLINE

After her separation from her children’s father, Peninah, a mother of two, shares that the most challenging part of parenting for her has been the deterioration of her four-year-old son’s behaviour.

When they were together, she played the role of nurturer who hugged him to make him feel better while his father was the stern one. On her own, she found that she had trouble playing both roles and it got increasingly difficult for her enforce discipline.

“He is aggressive and stubborn, and I found myself stepping outside myself and veering towards the masculine to step into the commanding presence that his father had,” she says. She admits it hasn’t been easy getting him in line but becoming more assertive and authoritative, and not mincing words have gone a long way.

TEACHING HIM TO BE A MAN

Perhaps because of the fact that news of her pregnancy was received with a lot of negativity from her family and friends, Linda Ngari, a single mother of an eight-year-old boy, says that at first, she was determined to prove that she could raise him perfectly on her own. And from her experience thus far, she has found that while it isn’t impossible for her to raise him into a man, it’s definitely harder.

While there are things she can do perfectly, like be the breadwinner and pay for his health and education, when it comes to teaching him to be a man, she has no memories that would allow her to intuitively understand his needs. How could she teach him to ride a bike when she had never ridden one herself? She could talk to him about being nice to women but she couldn’t help him develop interest in male-oriented pursuits like sports.

Her wake-up call came when she began seeing in him a need for recognition from a man in the form of him repeatedly attempting to strike up friendships with strangers, and she realised it was time to involve men in his upbringing.

“Luckily, I have several brothers and male cousins and all I need to do is make a conscious effort to ensure they interact on a regular basis. I cannot do it alone.”

Drawing from their experiences, it is clear that that raising a boy as a single woman is a big undertaking which seems to become easier when she involves other people. Like they say, it takes a village to raise a child.