Thursday, February 11, 2010

Mums of sons - where have we gone wrong?

It seems to me that there’s a crop of Mums who currently have a lot to answer for.

Who brought up Vernon Kay, for instance, to disrespect women to such a degree that he felt it was OK to sex text 5 women whilst a married man and father of two?
And what about Tiger Woods’ mother, or John Terry’s? What kind of messages did they impart to their sons about how to treat women, and wives in particular?
And think about Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross. What seemed to outrage most people about that sorry saga was the message left on Andrew Sach’s answer-phone. What outraged me, though, was that two grown men felt free to discuss publicly - on the radio! - a private sexual experience......with apparently no thought to what the woman involved would feel, and without allowing her any say in it.
It bothers me that the mothers of these men are likely to be from a generation of women who had to fight for their rights - for equal pay and equal opportunity. And yet they’ve bred a generation of men who not only have no notion of equality but instead treat their partners like chattels and objectify the rest.
This is a generalisation, I know, but I’d love to know what these mothers were up to. Surely it’s incumbent on women when bringing up sons to encourage them to treat women with respect and to do nothing that demeans them?