“Can we keep our sons from conservative politics?”
That’s the question writer Kathryn Jezer-Morton posed in a recent column for New York Magazine’s The Cut.
“In her son’s case, I wouldn’t bet on it,” New York Times columnist Ross Douthat shot back on X.
He’s right.
Jezer-Morton is facing an age-old conundrum of parenthood: Kids rebel against their parents’ politics.
Except, in 2024, the classic trend is being inverted.
Progressive parents are desperately trying to keep their boys from becoming conservative, rather than the other way around.
Teens go against the grain, and the most rebellious thing a young person coming up in this ultra-progressive era — when left-wing politics are shoved down their throats by their schools, marketing campaigns and celebrities — can do today is swing right.
While Jezer-Morton’s concern that her 10- and 13-year-old sons are becoming “oppressors” before her eyes might be hyperbolic, she’s right that Zoomer boys are moving right.
A 2023 survey of 12th graders by University of Michigan found that, while American girls are headed leftward, their male counterparts are twice as likely to identify as conservative than liberal, as they tack toward a new, edgy kind of anti-woke politics.
Is it any wonder Jezer-Morton’s kids might be doing the same, considering she admits to political finger wagging?
As she writes, “My voice raises as I start lecturing a teen about why he needs to recognize the importance of the history of Indigenous people.”
But, rather than open her mind to the possibility that her boys and other young men like them might have legitimate disagreements with her worldview, Jezer-Morton chalks their concerns up to an irrational victim mindset.
“For young men to experience the … narrative of success, they feel they need to start from a position of disempowerment,” she writes. “Blaming women for their troubles is an easy route to that position.”
Jezer-Morton, author of columns headlined Does Anyone Feel Like an Actual Adult? and My Mom Is Selfish. Do I still Have to be a ‘Good Daughter’?, laments that her son is using terms like “sigma” and “looksmaxxing” — controversial slang thrown around in incel forums on the likes of Reddit and 4Chan.
She also says her boys present “TikTok-based information” at the dinner table.
Sounds like being overly online might be the real enemy here, not conservative politics.
The author’s best bet in her shadowboxing fight would be to get her kids off social media, where unknown influences — as well as toxic influencers like Andrew Tate — can take hold of kids.
Jezer-Morton admitted seven years ago, in another column for The Cut, that her then-3-year-old son would say “show me your eyes” when she was scrolling on her phone rather than being present with her toddler.
Call me crazy, but it seems like it might be her own addiction to social media that’s causing her to demonize her kids.
“When you spend your days reading infographics reminding you that being silent means being on the side of the oppressor, having a flesh-and-blood oppressor-in-training eating your spaghetti and meatballs can feel like a waking nightmare,” she writes.
Jezer-Morton also reflects on her time teaching at a local college where, she says, “hetero boys” are “imagining their enemies” and experiencing “a fake problem” of cancel culture and victimhood.
“For young men, and straight white men in particular, to feel like valid participants in the storytelling of selfhood, they feel the need to start from a place of grievance, because otherwise there’s no way to bounce back and beat the odds,” she writes.
She flatly dismisses the possibility that boys could be reacting to some legitimate concerns.
But, considering Jezer-Morton has spent time on a campus recently, surely she’s noticed that a certain demographic is legitimately falling behind.
Some 60% of college students are female, meanwhile boys were seven times more likely to drop out during the pandemic.
Brookings Institute senior fellow Richard Reeves tactfully points out in his 2022 book “Of Boys and Men” that men are actually facing some unprecedented challenges — including falling behind in standardized testing and prematurely leaving the workforce in droves.
Saying as much isn’t reactionary. In fact, men account for seven in ten opioid deaths and four in five suicide deaths.
Perhaps hearing out some grievances, rather than waving them away as “reactionary and unformed pseudo-ideologies” would allow parents and sons to actually learn from one another.
Respect is a two-way street.
To Jezer-Morton’s credit, she is correct about one thing: Continuing to push her own politics on her kids is only going to make matters worse.
“Coming down too hard risks playing right into the paranoid hands of masculinist discourses of male disempowerment,” she warns. “It might feel dangerous to let a teenager argue that sexism works both ways, but it’s far more consequential to make him feel like that position is forbidden.”
She’s right that parents should let kids explore ideas, even those that offend their sensibilities.
The more shrilly that woke parents plead, the further right their offspring will go.
But, whatever their politics, any parent truly concerned about their child being swept up in ideology should be questioning whether the real enemy is competing viewpoints — or allowing their children to construct a worldview on TikTok and YouTube.
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Rikki Schlott
