Where the Boys Are

By Michael

Last week, I attended a bris, the 3,500+ year-old rite of circumcision that connects every newborn Jewish male to hundreds of generations that preceded him. It’s a bit unnatural to see a friend’s kitchen transformed into an operating room, but there’s also great comfort in considering the unbroken line of families that have shared in this ritual since the time of Abraham.

Outside of the act itself, everything about the gathering is relaxed, from the reconnection with friends to the foods to the classic comedy. (Why are Jewish men the world’s biggest optimists? Why are mohels always poor? A man is in a strange town and finds his watch has stopped running….) All classics of comedy. You can pick up quite a collection of humor over 3,500 years.

Watching my friends become grandparents, I was reminded of the two most important words in all of parenting: Don’t blink.

I was also reminded of how the world is so different for this newborn in comparison to the newborns we brought home just, um, a few years ago. Little Adam might never remember having a land line in his home or recall a time when television screens and computer screens were two different devices. So much has changed in so little time.

One change that should concern us is the relative risk of being born a boy these days. When our girls were born, I worried about sexism and glass ceilings and how they’d need to have inner strength to overcome various biases ingrained in culture. Today, I wouldn’t have those worries with daughters, but I would with sons. In many ways, the biases have simply moved from one gender to another.

Guys are kinda complacent about this stuff, but we die younger and we’re outnumbered in college enrollment and soon we’ll be a minority in both the work force and medical school. The only places men lead by a big margin are the unemployment line and prison.

When the girls were young, we worried about media messages that females were toys. Now the prevailing message is that men are idiots. It’s great for gender politics, but not necessarily so good for our children. The idea was to get rid of sexism, not to trade one form for another.

I wouldn’t give up the opportunity and cultural change that has benefited my daughters and all the daughters of the last generation. I’m just wondering if we haven’t been asleep at the switch as our sons started falling behind.

Moms?

Michael Rosenbaum is 5 Minutes for Parenting’s first dadblogger. He is a business consultant, playwright and author of Your Name Here: Guide to Life.

Michael blogs on life issues at Your Name Here Guide to Life and manages the Adult Conversation discussion group on Linked-In.