“Moms Love Their Sons, But Raise Their Daughters.”
Maybe it’s time to look at mothers when it comes to the rise of broken men.
Recently, I had to revisit a situation that was quite prevalent in my childhood. Back in the day, my mom was friends with a person she met at a local church event — a woman we’ll call Tanya*.
Tanya had two kids around my age, a girl name Sasha* and a boy named Alex*. We all used to hang out while our parents would gossip over their notorious three C’s: coffee, cigarettes, and chocolates.
Even when I was nine years old, I noticed something strange about Tanya’s dynamics with her two kids. Alex, the 12-year-old boy, could do no wrong in her eyes. Sasha, my fellow 9-year-old, was held to as strict a standard as me, if not more so.
Alex, at 12 years old, was a royal terror. He’d beat kids up, steal from his mom’s purse, and also dunk his sister’s hair in maple syrup. Sasha was oddly stoic. If a 9-year-old could sound elderly, she fit that bill.
Sasha did two things: study and clean up the messes her brother made. Oh, and she’d occasionally get into very fierce arguments with him. We would quietly hang out in her room, talk about clothing, what we read, and do art together.
For a while, we grew up together.
Tanya was always tough on Sasha, and it showed by the time we were preteens.
Sasha was abnormally serious for a preteen. She dressed conservatively, even matronly. She had to cook and clean up after Alex when Tanya wasn’t home. Going out as a teenager? Nuh-uh. Not happening.
Meanwhile, Alex was running amok as a teen. Tanya’s father, Eugene*, bought Alex a sports car so he could pick up girls. We could always tell when he was coming home by the screeching of the tires.
At one point, Alex decided to “impress” a girl by driving very recklessly. A police car followed him for 20 minutes. He ended up with 16 points on his driving license from that night and had his driving suspended for two years. That was the beginning of his criminal career.
Tanya expected Alex to nail every girl he could. She also expected Sasha to remain a virgin — to the point that she would not even allow her to have male friends. Like me, Sasha was not a girly girl. This angered Tanya.
Sasha worked tirelessly. She cooked and cleaned, and she became a serious, if not downright stoic, member of the intelligentsia. Eventually, she became a high-end professional in the hospitality marketing industry and stopped talking to her mom.
Even my bubbly persona couldn’t seem to knock some carefree fun into Sasha. It affected her. And the clear double-standards gave her a growling, simmering resentment toward men.