I am a boy mom. James is five, and Sean is three months old. I love my boys desperately. But I admit that ever since I found out I?d be a boy mom, I?ve worried about the future.
?A son is a son ?til he gets a wife, but a daughter is a daughter all her life.? Ever heard that delightful little rhyme" For many moms, it comes with the territory of having sons?the deep and real anxiety that one day, when your son is grown and enters into a committed relationship, you will be largely abandoned in favour of that partner and their family. This widely accepted idea that in the not so distant future, your little boy will no longer love you quite as much, or necessarily want to even be around you, is a brutal one to live with.
Since the day Sean was born I?ve been plagued with these fears. When I?m changing his diaper, ogling his increasingly chubby cheeks and thighs, or rocking him to sleep, holding in my pee to the point of risking a UTI so as not to wake him, I find myself tearing up more often than I care to admit. Instead of basking in the bliss of these moments, I?ve been terrified that somehow this relationship is finite. It?s an almost laughable thing to worry about from the time of a child?s inception, except that I don?t know one boy mom who doesn?t carry this fear around with her like a too-heavy purse. Do girl moms have these fears" I don?t know any, even though it is of course equally possible that female children can grow up not wanting to hang around with thei...