But even your bit here supports what I'm saying; that all genders are equally capable of learning good parenting/nurturing skills, however men are held back by social judgment that begins when they are boys, the idea that maternal instinct is socially constructed, etc.
Well, let me begin by stating that I have read the article you have based your post on. Men aren't "held back" - they are still as capable as women are.
That social construction and judgment begins with giving girls dolls and encouraging them to play house and nurture, and giving boys action figures and encouraging them to be competitive and aggressive. We've gotten to the point that girls who want to be competitive and aggressive are encouraged, but we are lagging horribly at encouraging boys who want to be nurturing.
That is not how the social construction is begun. And that is not something we are doing by the very specific and differentiating toys we are giving to boys and girls. The article clearly states that :
One reason we might think that women are more compassionate than men is that we think of compassion in only one way: nurturance, kindness, softness, gentleness, and emotional warmth. We think of compassion in mostly feminized terms. It may be that women are conditioned to think of compassion as involving caring and nurturing and that, for men, it takes on a fiercer more protective appearance. From the author's work with veterans and active-duty personnel, she has seen deep expressions of compassion that do not have nurturing and maternal features. Think of the many heroic acts that happen daily in which people throw themselves into dangerous situations to help others. These are fierce, courageous and even aggressive forms of compassion.
I believe it's going to be a generational thing. We may be doing better with the current generation of boys, but the man that started this whole issue is from a previous one
it's a bit of a generational thing (which I will get into further below) but more so of a generalization thing.
Generalizations are generally never accurate. We often all engage in both nurturing and fierce expressions of compassion. Think of a mother who yells and roughly pulls her child away from oncoming traffic (fierce compassion) or military service-members who hold each other in grief after the loss of a friend (nurturing compassion). Love, compassion, kindness are natural to all of us in their varied forms of expression.
Rather than asking whether men or women are kinder or compassionate, the question should rather be: What are the myriad beautiful forms in which compassion expresses itself?
I'd say your pet theory (by which I mean theory about pets, lol) is a great way to sneak in nurturing training for boys in a socially acceptable way. But we still need to broaden what is socially acceptable. I think it's going to be a long time before we have equal numbers of men and women in daycare providing professions, for example.
I think this is where we are clashing heads. In the past, women stayed home and men worked. The law used to be that men would automatically get custody. However, feminists, changed that, and women were also able to get custody then. With women mostly staying home and men working, it made sense for women to have custody - they were with kids home full time anyhow. Society changed, and more and more women worked and stayed away from their kids. As Jusdge McDERMOT J. stated on Fraser v Fraser, 2015 ONSC 4640 (CanLII)
shared custody is becoming increasingly frequent, especially in light of the fact that in todays world both parents often work and equally share care of the children.
So, the original social mindset and norm that women would stay at home and look after the kids, is how it started - not with the playing of the dolls as kids.
You have still not provided any researched evidence that girls playing with dolls teaches them nurturing skills - or that it makes them better parents according to society - if it does so then why do we have women taking parenting classes as adults?
No need to "sneak " in nurturing skills to boys. Aside from pets, Boys can also have younger siblings who they look after. but once again, carefully re-read the quotes about compassion.
More women being in daycare and a social norm stems from the outdated conception that women stay at home and take care of kids - while men go out and work IMHO. This does not automatically translate to society believing that women are more nurturing than men. There are a lot of single moms who are putting their children in daycare. So while there are more women than there are men who are in the
profession of looking after kids -the irony is that the customers ( a.k.a. the "moms" ) are clearly away from home and working - and not with their kids.
