Parents of boys should read Charles Martel on How My Parents Raised a Sissy
In the 1950s when I was a grade-school kid, my father was a heavy equipment mechanic with lots of hair on his chest and a blue-collar fondness for spending much of his time out in the garage. I remember the time I walked out there and found him sewing a hole in one of his overalls. Until then, I has assumed that sewing was something only girls and women did.
“How come you’re sewing your overalls, Dad? Shouldn’t Mom be doing that?”
“Well, son, they’re my overalls so they’re my responsibility,” he answered. “Besides, I already know how to sew.”
“Where’d you learn that?” My voice indicated that I thought the person responsible for teaching him this skill should be boiled in oil for violating some basic law of nature.
“In the Army,” he said. “Everybody learned a little basic sewing so he could take care of himself out in the field.” My father paused, this former paratrooper who’d fought Hitler in North Africa, Sicily and Italy, and then said something that has stuck with me ever since. “The Army didn’t want a bunch of sissies running around out there. You know, men who can’t take care of themselves.”