How to Raise Boys Who Treat Women Well

My 16-year-old son has lost two friends to the manosphere. One has fully embraced online content about men's superiority. Another has a new friend who puts women down. My son pushes back on all this, as I'd want him to, but it's not changing their minds, and I wish he wasn't encountering this to begin with.

His experience reflects how prevalent manosphere content has become. Nine in ten Americans have seen online content¹ that promotes stereotypes about women. At the same time, boys' support for equality is slipping. Between 2018 and 2023, the share of 8th- and 10th-grade boys who completely agree² that women should have the same job opportunities as men fell from 63% to 45%.

Long before my son's friendships were tested, I was already thinking about how to raise boys who treat women well. I learned from social science³ that the lessons start years before boys go online. I realized that I, like other parents⁴, accidentally made dozens of small choices that steer boys away from anything “girly.” This can teach⁵ boys, without our meaning to, that girly things are worth less.

If we want our sons to grow up treating women and girls as equals, we have to consistently show them that nothing associated with being a girl is in any way lesser. And we need to talk to them about gender equality early and often, so they're inoculated against the manosphere before it finds them. Here's what parents of boys can start doing differently:

1. Don’t police what’s “for boys”

A boy wants a doll? Lovely. He likes dance? Great. He cries easily, hates sports, or wants pink shoes? None of those things make him less of a boy.

How parents respond can seem trivial, but these reactions carry a bigger lesson⁶ for our children. If anything “girly” is to be avoided, boys can learn by implication that girls are worth less than boys. And gendered toys can teach other problematic messages: if dolls, kitchens, and tea sets are “for girls,” then caring for other people can start to seem like something boys don’t do. So give boys permission to like what they like without worrying about whether it’s masculine enough.

I’ve tried to give my youngest son, Declan, this freedom. When he was six, he wanted pants covered in pink and blue hearts, and I bought them. When he wanted long hair like his brother, I let him grow it. I also warned him that other kids might question his choices, and we talked about what he could say. When a classmate asked, “Why are you wearing girls’ pants?” Declan replied loudly, “WHAT DID YOU SAY?” The classmate repeated himself. Declan repeated, “WHAT DID YOU SAY?” They went back and forth until the classmate gave up.

Depending on where you live and your son’s school, you may need to set limits on this freedom, if his choices could mean teasing or bullying.

I once said “no” when Declan asked for a lilac puff-sleeved shirt with a fluffy kitten on the front. I worried he’d get teased, even in California. I was breaking my own advice, so I tried to make the best of it. I told him that things for girls are great and can be for boys too, and that the rule saying otherwise is silly. But ignoring silly rules can sometimes make life harder in ways that aren’t worth it. Declan had his own solution. When he grows up, he told me, he’s going to open a store where boys can have pink and kittens on their clothes, and girls can have dogs and sharks on theirs.

2. Talk about equality from the get-go

In my experience, there isn’t really a time that is “too soon” to start talking about gender norms with kids, as long as you use language they can understand. If your son notices that the store has pink pants for girls but not boys, explain simply that people sometimes have ideas about what boys and girls are “supposed” to wear or like — and that it’s fine to challenge those expectations.

As he gets older, the conversations can get more complicated. Why did everyone laugh when they called that boy a girl? What should he do if a friend makes a cruel comment about a girl’s appearance? Teach your boys that respecting women isn’t only about their own behavior; it also means standing up to other boys when they’re sexist or disrespectful to girls and women. That’s worth doing even when it doesn’t change anyone’s mind. Speaking up shows other boys who are listening that they’re not alone in being uncomfortable, and it may stay with the boy who made the comment longer than he lets on.

And be realistic with boys: standing up to their peers won’t always be easy. That’s part of what makes it brave.

3. Once boys are online, talk about what they’re seeing

Chances are, your son will be exposed to manosphere content whether he looks for it or not. Research suggests⁷ it may now be unavoidable for any boy on social media, even those who search for more innocuous topics like fitness, sports, comedy, or gaming.

Once your boys are online independently, proactively ask what they’re seeing. Ask what they think of it, and share your own views. If your boy repeats a manosphere-style idea, don’t let it pass, but don’t dismiss it either. Experts say frequent, honest conversations⁸ with trusted adults can help boys distance themselves from sexist beliefs.

I’m lucky that my 16-year-old is willing to tell me what he’s seeing and what his friends are saying. I try to keep the doors of conversation open by asking what he thinks and not judging. We’ve talked about gender in shows and movies we watch (including thorny ones like Game of Thrones) and online content (I once asked him what “mogging” is), as well as his own day-to-day experiences.

4. Let your sons see men treating women well

Young men’s beliefs about masculinity are linked⁹ to those held by their father figures, including beliefs about emotional control, violence, relationships with women, and division of household work¹⁰.

Children don’t only learn gender from what we tell them. They learn from watching us — especially the adults closest to them. My kids believe that dads do the cooking and the ironing, dads clean the house, and dads volunteer weekly at school.

Father figures, in other words, have a powerful opportunity to shape their sons’ views of women and gender. That means taking responsibility for their part of household work. It also means talking about women as equals, not belittling a partner or making sexist jokes. It means showing that anger doesn’t have to mean yelling or losing control. It means apologizing when they’re wrong and being affectionate and kind.

Boys are paying attention to what the men around them do. Show them something worth copying.

5. Give boys a version of masculinity they want to grow into

Research on boys, masculinity, and mental health¹¹ specifically cautions against shaming boys. Instead, we can widen the definition of masculinity while challenging dominance and disrespect toward women.

Tell boys there are wonderful ways to be a man. Being strong enough to stand up for somebody is masculine. So is being brave enough to admit you’re frightened. Telling your friends that something they’ve said about a girl isn’t funny is strength.

Ultimately, raising boys to treat women well isn’t about giving them a long list of things they must not do. It’s about giving them more: more emotional range, more freedom from other boys’ judgment, more experience sharing responsibility, and more models of men who respect women without feeling diminished by women’s strength. I want that world for all of our daughters. But I want it for my sons, too.

Notes

1. Lean In, Manosphere and Tradwife Content at Work: New Lean In Data (2026), https://leanin.org/articles/findings/manosphere-tradwife-data-women-work/.
2. David Waldron, “American Boys Have Become Less Supportive of Gender Equality,” Waldron’s Blog (Substack), 2025, https://blog.waldrn.com/p/american-boys-have-become-less-supportive.
3. Christia Spears Brown, Sharla D. Biefeld, and Michelle J. Tam, Gender in Childhood, Elements in Child Development (Cambridge University Press, 2020), https://www.amazon.com/Gender-Childhood-Elements-Child-Development-ebook/dp/B08K3N5JFY/.
4. Judi Mesman and Marleen G. Groeneveld, “Gendered Parenting in Early Childhood: Subtle but Unmistakable if You Know Where to Look,” Child Development Perspectives 12, no. 1 (2018): 22–27, https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/cdep.12250.
5. Alina Morawska, “The Effects of Gendered Parenting on Child Development Outcomes: A Systematic Review,” Clinical Child and Family Psychology Review 23, no. 4 (2020): 553–576, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10567-020-00321-5.
6. Emily W. Kane, “‘No Way My Boys Are Going to Be Like That!’: Parents’ Responses to Children’s Gender Nonconformity,” Gender & Society 20, no. 2 (2006): 149–176, https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0891243205284276.
7. Catherine Baker, Debbie Ging, and Maja Brandt Andreasen, Recommending Toxicity: The Role of Algorithmic Recommender Functions on YouTube Shorts and TikTok in Promoting Male Supremacist Influencers (DCU Anti-Bullying Centre, 2024), https://www.dcu.ie/antibullyingcentre/recommending-toxicity.
8. DVACT, “The Manosphere: Preventing Harmful Attitudes in Young Men and Boys” (2024), https://www.dvact.org/post/the-manosphere-preventing-harmful-attitudes-youngmen.
9. Francisco Perales, Ella Kuskoff, Michael Flood, and Tania King, “Like Father, Like Son: Empirical Insights into the Intergenerational Continuity of Masculinity Ideology,” Sex Roles 88, no. 9–10 (2023): 399–412, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11199-023-01364-y.
10. Alyssa Croft, Toni Schmader, Katharina Block, and Andrew Scott Baron, “The Second Shift Reflected in the Second Generation: Do Parents’ Gender Roles at Home Predict Children’s Aspirations?,” Psychological Science 25, no. 7 (2014): 1418–1428, https://www.psychologicalscience.org/journals/psychological-science/0956797614533968/.
11. Simon Rice, John Oliffe, Zac Seidler, Rohan Borschmann, Jane Pirkis, Nicola Reavley, and George Patton, “Gender Norms and the Mental Health of Boys and Young Men,” The Lancet Public Health 6, no. 8 (2021): e541–e542, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34332667/.