Mom Worried Revealing Son’s New Hobby To Husband Will End Their Marriage
The fact she's even asking for advice means she already knows the answer.
cottonbro studio | Pexels I often joke that all the wrong people have kids, but the longer I'm alive, the more convinced I am that it's true, especially after delving into online advice columns. Admittedly, I don't have children, so perhaps there's some secret arcane knowledge I'm missing. But the questions many parents ask in these columns are often so ludicrously obvious that it makes my head spin.
Take, for instance, a mom who recently wrote into Slate's "Care and Feeding" marriage and parenting advice column. She is worried that her husband is going to be so angry about their son's new hobby that it will end their marriage — and she's willing to put her child in harm's way to avoid the conflict.
The mom is worried her husband will divorce her for enrolling their son in tap dancing classes.
Gregory Hines. Savion Glover. Sammy Davis Jr. That completes the list of famous tap dancers I can name off the top of my head, and you'll note a common theme: They are all men who were or are, as far as we know, straight.
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The idea that a dance class somehow makes you some kind of girly-man is as stupid as it is outdated. For starters, if you hate women and femininity so much, then why are you even a straight man in the first place? None of this ridiculous gender panic nonsense that so much of this country is embroiled in makes an iota of sense.
Being as dedicated to it as this woman's husband seems to be makes even less sense. It's to the point that she has to sneak around behind his back to let their son John have a tap dancing hobby. He watched his sister's class one day and fell in love with it. Now it's become a family secret because his dad is some fragile masculinity weirdo.
And if you think I'm being a bit harsh here, it's on purpose. This thinking is stupid, and it should be treated as such, especially because of how damaging it can be to children.
Her husband is adamant that their son does nothing 'girly,' including eating cupcakes.
The problem arose when her husband was deployed in the military. While he's been gone, 7-year-old John watched his 9-year-old sister's tap dancing classes and was immediately intrigued. After giving it a try, he "absolutely loves" the hobby.
But her husband is due to return home soon, and it has sent the mom into a bit of a panic. "David has always had an attitude about John not doing anything he deems 'girly,' despite my protests," she wrote. This bizarre obsession with masculinity even extends to cupcakes — her husband forbade their son from having one at a Valentine's Day party because it had pink frosting.
"David is guaranteed to be furious when he finds out about John’s lessons — and he’ll demand they stop," she went on to say. So she is wondering whether to keep the lessons secret until his next deployment, "or is it time to tell him that this [BS] obsession with our son avoiding supposedly 'girly' things has to end — or else our marriage does?"
This mom needs to do what's best for her son instead of avoiding conflict.
I already said I would be treating her husband's masculinity issues as the farcical stupidity that they are, and now my tough love is coming for this mom. To her, I say, the fact you're even asking this means you already know the answer. But the actual question is this: Do you care more about your child's well-being than your own comfort?
Because, unless your husband is legitimately dangerous, what you are actually hemming and hawing over is whether or not to avoid conflict with your husband by tolerating his idiotic cruelty toward your son.
I apologize for being so blunt, but we are living in an era when men are so panicked about masculinity that social media is full of stories of men who won't even wipe their backsides because they're afraid it will make them gay. And the knock-on effect is situations like this, in which a kid is being placed in emotional danger to appease their father's idiocy.
Kids need to know they have their parents' support and acceptance. That is part of how they form their own self-esteem and self-concept. Railing against their deeply loved hobbies is one of the quickest ways to telegraph that you don't, in fact, support or accept your child.
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"Actions speak louder than words" is a saying for a reason. You can tell a kid you love him all you want, but if the things he loves to do make you go ballistic, he will quickly do the math that you don't hate tap dancing. What you actually hate is HIM, or, at least, you don't love him nearly enough as you love your stupid, outdated ideas about masculinity.
And because a kid has no agency to do anything with those feelings (What kid is equipped to deal with an adult's emotions in the first place, let alone his own father's contempt?), he will likely turn them inward on himself. Any therapist will tell you that is basically what mental health conditions like depression are — negative emotions turned inward.
This big, strong alpha dog (please read that with the heaviest of eyerolls) can hate tap-dancing all he wants, but a real man puts his kids' needs before his own childish, fragile masculinity temper tantrums. It's time for this dad to man up, grow up, stop being such a crybaby, and be a father instead.
It's also time for his wife to stop enabling his abusive weakness, even if it does end their relationship. Because if she doesn't, managing her husband's ridiculous hysteria about masculinity and tap dancing is going to eventually fall on her son's shoulders. Putting a child in that position is frankly unforgivable.
Marriage and parenting are both choices, and they are choices that require doing hard things. It's time for everyone here to do the jobs they signed up for, and put the child who had no say in the matter first. No parent should need to write into an advice column to figure any of that out.
John Sundholm is a writer, editor, and video personality with 20 years of experience in media and entertainment. He covers culture, mental health, and human interest topics.
