Post: #18

Oh wow, I wish I'd known about this thread back when I was pondering some other important mysteries of the universe.

Anyway, today I was thinking -- what was the role of daughters back in more traditional times? They would help around the house till puberty, and then be married off and become some man's property. It wasn't really all that important what happened to them, because it wasn't like they were going to be expected to carry on the family name or anything like that. Sons, on the other hand, would be trained in the father's trade and eventually take over the business and become heir to the estate.

Today, we see a role reversal. With stuff like "Take Your Daughters To Work Day," it's the girls who are being trained for the corporate world. Meanwhile, boys are regarded as defective for not being able to sit still in a classroom. They're more likely to get kicked out of school for getting rambunctious or pointing an L-shaped piece of bread at the teacher and saying "Bang, you're dead!" If/when boys reach college, they're subject to being falsely accused of rape and ending up on the sex offender list like Brock Turner. People ask sometimes, "Shouldn't women get concerned about the future their sons will face?"

My theory is that these days, sons are increasingly just serving as exotic pets for women. It's like when someone buys a baby alligator off the black market and says, "Aw, it's so cute!" Their friend might ask, "What are you gonna do when it grows up?" The answer of course is, "When it gets to be too big for the terrarium, I'll just take it down to the creek and release it."

Similarly to how the exotic pet owner gives her alligator inadequate preparation for its future life in the wild, single moms give their sons inadequate preparation for their responsibilities as men. They are just going to be set loose to fend for themselves in a hostile environment, without knowledge of the ways of women or how they're supposed to act as a man. Just like the alligator is going to discover that the wild doesn't have designated feeding times like the terrarium did, the son will discover that other women don't love him unconditionally as his mother did.

But the son will have served his purpose, which was to be a cute, cuddly companion for his mom while he was young. It's just like the alligator: "Aw, look at his wittle teeth! He's so adorable! Let's feed him a crawfish!" It shouldn't be too surprising that, without strong male role models, in many cases there's a failure to launch, and that alligator just has to be taken care of for life.