Boys To Men Minus Dad

Boys to men minus dad

By Cheryl Wetzstein
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
August 30, 2005

Single mothers can raise boys just fine -- and maybe even better than families with moms and dads, psychology professor and gender scholar Peggy Drexler says in a new book.

Yes, widespread public opinion says a boy must have a father in the home in order to achieve full manhood, says Mrs. Drexler, an assistant professor of psychology at the Weill Medical College of Cornell University.

But according to her research on 124 parents of boys, most of whom are single mothers or lesbian couples, "I have found there is absolutely no reason to expect that single or gay moms cannot raise sons on their own," Mrs. Drexler writes in "Raising Boys Without Men: How Maverick Moms Are Creating the Next Generation of Exceptional Men."

"Maverick mothers" throw themselves into parenting their sons and "really nurture" their sons' masculinity, she explains. As a result, mother-raised sons are emotionally strong, empathetic, independent-minded and well-rounded -- even more so than sons raised in traditional mother-father families, says Mrs. Drexler.

What matters is not gender, but the quality of parenting, says Mrs. Drexler, a former gender scholar at Stanford University and the married mother of two. "Parenting is either good or deficient, not male or female."


Mrs. Drexler found that sons raised by mothers were self-assured, appropriately boyish -- "not sissies or mama's boys" -- and into sports. Mother-raised sons also participated in chores; had warm, respectful relationships with their mothers; and had male figures in their lives.

"It's not that they feel men are unimportant or dispensable -- quite the contrary. These mothers bring men into their boys' lives," said Mrs. Drexler, who is continuing to study the boys as they progress through adolescence.

Andrea Engber, co-author of "The Complete Single Mother," also is thrilled with Mrs. Drexler's work, since she "always knew" that single moms can raise boys very well.

Boys raised only by moms often talk about how hard their moms worked to raise them and how connected they are and how much they love them, says Mrs. Engber, who now is married, but still runs a Web site for the group she founded, the National Organization of Single Mothers.

Single moms, she says, "never believed these statistics that we're raising these horrible monsters."