#raisingason

"Momming" During the "Me Too" Era

Being a mother during the "Me Too" era has got to be one of the scariest things in the universe. I'm not afraid or concerned that my son might one day be falsely accused. I'm worried that my son could potentially slip up because I haven't done my job as his mother. If you have a daughter, due to the times we're living in, you have to arm her with the knowledge to protect herself should she ever get into a dangerous and/or predatory situation. If you have a son, there's any overwhelming pressure to start thinking about how you'll teach him about safe sex, consent, and respecting women's personal boundaries - all things missing from modern sex education programs.

Not only am I a mother, but I'm a sexual assault survivor. It is very important to me that my son understands his future peers/partners boundaries. I've been trying to think of a way we can facilitate prevention of incidents, especially those among young people, involving sexual assault.

The first and most important way to me is a much more vast sex education program. We need a program that teaches kids more than just to wait until they're adults and married to have sex because no matter what, our youth are going to experiment. We need to teach students more about birth control. We need to teach students more about healthy sexual relationships and how peer pressure into sex before their ready is manipulation and abuse. We need to teach kids that gender and sexual orientation are infinitely more complex subjects to talk about at this time, but they still need to be discussed and we still need to teach tolerance so they know that people who identify as queer people do not need to be "scared straight". Sexual assault affects transgender and non-straight people in a much different and more violent way.

We DESPERATELY need to teach more about birth control for a variety of reasons including but not limited to preventing unwanted teenage pregnancy, the spread of disease, and for young women to develop and begin having control over their bodies.

We need to teach boys and young men about respecting women. When sexual assault occurs, it's generally an entitlement or dominance issue. If we were doing a better job at teaching our boys to respect women, they wouldn't grow up believing that women are the weaker, insuperior sex. We need to start teaching our boys that women and men should be considered equally valuable to society. Yes, there are situations where men are usually superior to women and vice versa. The contributions of one gender do not take away from those of another. We often forget that as a whole.

Last but not least, we need to teach our children about consent. We need to teach them how to report (all crimes but specifically) sex crimes. My son will start being taught early on that physical touch is not okay if he doesn't know if he is allowed to touch someone or not, especially girls. He'll grow up knowing that when a girl says "no", she'll mean "no" - not keep trying until I give up. My son will grow up knowing that rejection - romantically or sexually - does not make a woman a "bitch". My son will grow up never hearing sexist phrases like "well, boys will be boys" or "nice guys finish last" because it gives men entitlement we don't even realize we're handing them.

More than anything, I'm going to do my best to raise my son to know that he can always trust me enough to tell me the truth and that he can always come to me with difficult questions about sex, assault, and everything in between. I'm going to do my best to teach him that when he sees something is wrong, he needs to do his part and report it to me or someone else who can help him. I'm going to teach him to be an advocate for women who suffer trauma and I'm going to teach him that it's up to him and his generation to make a change because god only knows our generation and those before us are seriously dragging our feet when it comes to a revolution like this.

Its been 4 and a half months of this journey.

Raising my son, Leon whom I call my lion. he survived the womb, growing, developing and becoming that precious baby boy I call my own.

The question is, why did I not start this blog sooner? Everyone says, 'the first three months are a blur', I challenge that, and say that first five are.

You learn to breastfeed, change nappies, survive days with 4 hours sleep at best, you survive worrying about them, are they ok? are they developing? you learn their cries, you worry about if you did something wrong, if you are feeding too much, and why aren't they sleeping full nights? you try to gain some of your normality back - and realise this is the new normal.

The spew on your top? Normal The bags under your eyes? Normal That cute top you love but can't wear as you can't get the boobs out? Normal The lack of intimacy both physically and emotional with your husband? Normal The worry, the love, the centre of your world being in a tiny person? Normal.

In today's world, every mum is swamped by 'what you should do' or 'what we recommend' or 'this is what I do/did.'

It's hard to know, what you are doing is right. But all you need to know - is your love for your child is right. You know them the best, you know their soul completely, and you are the one raising your own little lion or lioness.

I have decided, for both sanity, and keeping a good memory, I am going to start sharing my own journey with the blogging world - keep that creativity following, talk outloud to my son while do so (who just farted), and also give myself something to look back on and think ' I did it! I survived and I thrived!'