~by Haley Lynn Gray~
I’ve spent a great deal of time and energy on helping girls defy stereotypes — in Girl Scouts, in schools, and in what I write. I believe girls shouldn’t be limited by their gender, and that work matters.
But a question keeps coming back to me: what about the boys?
The stereotypes cut both ways
While we’ve worked hard to tell girls they can be engineers, leaders and scientists, we’ve been considerably quieter about telling boys they can be nurses, teachers, carers and stay-at-home fathers.
A girl who likes building things is celebrated. A boy who wants to teach kindergarten still gets asked, with a particular tone, whether he’s sure.
Boys are still praised for being tough, discouraged from crying, and taught that emotional expression is a weakness. And then — years later — we express surprise that so many men struggle to talk about how they’re doing, or to build friendships that involve anything more than activity.
Where it shows up at work
This follows people into their careers, and it costs businesses real money.
It limits who applies. Entire professions remain short-staffed partly because half the population was quietly told those jobs weren’t for them.
It penalises fathers. The man who takes full parental leave, leaves for the school run, or asks for flexibility is still treated as unusual — or congratulated for babysitting his own children.
And it damages management. If you were raised to treat emotional expression as weakness, the skills of noticing how your team is doing and having difficult conversations well are ones you’ll have to learn late and awkwardly.
Why this isn’t a competing cause
Some people hear “what about the boys?” as an attempt to change the subject. It isn’t, and the two are more connected than they look.
The reason a woman’s professional care for her team gets read as maternal is the same reason a man’s is read as leadership. The reason women carry the household by default is the same reason men are treated as helpers in their own homes.
It’s one set of assumptions about who does what, and unpicking it for one group while leaving it in place for the other doesn’t work. Girls and boys both reaching their full potential requires dismantling the whole thing.
What to do about it
Watch what you praise. If girls get praised for being clever and boys for being tough, you’re teaching both.
Let boys have feelings out loud. Including the inconvenient ones.
Show them men doing the full range of work. Cooking, caring, teaching, cleaning up — as ordinary, not exceptional.
And if you employ people: make flexibility genuinely available to fathers, and notice whether your own reaction differs by parent.
I want my daughters to grow up without a ceiling. I want my sons to grow up without a script. Those are the same project.
