“I love my girls, but a girl, like, steals your clothes and has an attitude, you know? There’s nothing like being a boy mom. Like, seriously, it’s the best.”
In an October 2023 episode of “The Kardashians,” reality star and television personality Kim Kardashian was asked to describe her four children. Though she has an equal number of sons and daughters, Kardashian immediately began praising her sons and deprecating her daughters. And unfortunately, Kardashian’s words don’t exist in a vacuum — similar sentiments on the dynamics of sons versus daughters’ childhoods have found a new home on TikTok, where the hashtag #boymom has over 18 million posts and over 31 billion views.
A “boy mom,” as the phrase suggests, describes a mother with sons. Though the term first seemed to refer to that definition alone, it has since migrated to describe a mother who blatantly favors her sons over her daughters or states her preference for boys in general, and has an uncomfortable obsession with them. Beyond just the peculiarity of a boy mom, gendered parent norms are tired and rely on toxic, cringy gendered expectations.
Kardashian’s words echo these stereotypes through her conviction on daughters having too much of an attitude and being too high-maintenance compared to her sons. Gender norms for children rely upon the idea that boys are wilder and easier to care for compared to girls, who are harder to raise and more uptight. Though boys are stereotypically more prone to play violence and getting dirty, compared to girls who are stereotypically fragile, overly emotional and needy, boys are contradictingly seen as “easier to raise.”
A new trend on TikTok features mothers posting videos with their sons, captioned, “How do I explain this to a girl mom?” Often, the videos simply feature young boys dancing to explicit music, roughhousing or cuddling with their mothers. These are not activities isolated to boys, and the implication that they are is ignorant.
When girls are continually told that they are just too much work or have too much drama by social media and their parents, it enables the idea that they are too much of an emotional burden on their parents compared to their fun brothers. The favoritism of sons leads the forgotten daughters to experience leftover neglect and trauma. Using sentences like “I love my daughter, but my son has my whole heart and soul,” as TikToker Avery Woods did, doesn’t even make an attempt to mask favoritism. It embodies the idea that sons are easier to love and bring more joy than a daughter.
There is no tangible need to gender who you’re parenting — calling yourself a “boy mom” with daughters isolates your daughters. Considering Kardashian’s two daughters, it’s horrifying to imagine that clip and the subsequent media coverage living on the Internet forever, eventually making its way into their hands. For the daughters living in those toxic households, it’s a repeated message they see time and time again.
Because these mothers favor their sons over their daughters, this leads to sons escaping discipline more easily as well. Boy moms reduce their punishment for sons, believing they will always be their “baby boy.” It’s boys smacking their mother’s rear with the brush off that “boys will be boys” — a disgusting, regressive phase that has no place in schools or society today. It’s sons getting out of the scoldings for the same incidents daughters are forced to pay the full price for. From a young age, girls are taught to mature and take responsibility for their and men’s faux pas through blame being passed on to the females rather than the males. It’s always “protect your daughters” but not “teach your sons.”
All of this eventually produces men who weren’t raised properly. Tired stereotypes lead to mothers taking it upon themselves to do everything for their sons, from cooking to cleaning to doing their laundry. In truth, cooking and cleaning are basic life skills that should be taught to all entering society, yet when boys do it, it’s applauded and celebrated. It raises a staunch double standard where girls are expected to master basic household skills but boys are the only ones acknowledged for it.
Perhaps the most damning trait boy moms hold is their incestuous obsession with their sons, with phrases like “No woman will ever be good enough” or “I was his first love” running rampant on TikTok. The constant rhetoric of no woman being “good enough” for a man leads to a loss of emotional maturity later on, where men believe they don’t need to accomplish the same feats as women because they are intrinsically better.
More concerningly, the sexual undertones that follow discussions of a 5-year-old’s first love or his future relationships highlight the over-sexualization of children, even though it’s painted in a doting, motherly light. No one, especially not parents, should describe “sharing” their child with another female — to place gender standards and adult themes onto young, unconsenting children is repulsive.
When it comes to toxicity within a family environment, we often choose to study the stereotypical signals. However, it’s vital to recognize and call out toxicity in different forms, even if it’s lovingly painted as benevolent and maternal. At MVHS, as we take a deeper look at our own family dynamics and the way they operate, it’s crucial to look at the implicit consequences of certain relationships or ideas that family members often perpetuate.
Gender parenting in such a way that excludes daughters and exploits sons is a tired trope that leaves children unprepared for the real world and creates unproductive members of society. Boy moms’ treatment of girls leads to men being praised for the bare minimum — a “girl dad” (a father with daughters) doesn’t need to be celebrated for letting his daughter paint his nails or play dress up. He’s parenting. The same skills that girls are taught and expected to take on shouldn’t be the achievement of a lifetime for a man. Boy moms not only deny their son’s emotional maturity, but they also create a generation of entitled, pretentious boys.
