This week on the Where Parents Talk podcast, host Lianne Castelino speaks to Ruth Whippman, journalist, cultural essayist and mother of three about raising boys today.
RUTH WHIPPMAN
Journalist
Cultural Essayist
Former Director and Producer, BBC
Author, BoyMom: Reimagining Boyhood in the Age of Impossible Masculinity
Mother of 3
“There’s a lot of research that supports this idea that we treat boys and girls slightly differently as parents, and this starts right from birth. And the way we treat boys is slightly less emotional, slightly less tender. We give them slightly less attention in all these different domains. We give them slightly less of that, talk to them less. Parents talk to them less in general, and talk to them far less about their feelings and their emotions. So there’s this sort of different way that people parent boys and girls, and once I was aware of that and the sort of impact that has long term for boys, I started to really try to correct for that in my own parenting.”