Mothers of boys close to a nervous breakdown

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Michèle Binswanger speaks from experience and says that it definitely makes a difference whether you bring up girls or boys. Boys already show what makes them tick in infancy. They drink their milk faster than girls and want more. Before they can speak, they can already distinguish between car models - especially vehicles that are needed on building sites - and are impressed by diggers and concrete mixers.

Michèle Binswanger's insights into the education of boys:

• While girls' mothers can instinctively understand the problems, worries and hardships of their daughters, boys' mothers have a completely different journey ahead of them.
• No matter how hard you try as a mum of a boy, in the end your son will take his dad as his role model.

You can readMichèle Binswanger 's full column with further insights and perspectives on the subject of raising boys here.

In the exuberance of the anticipation of having a baby soon, many pregnant women answer the question of whether they want a girl or a boy: "Oh, it doesn't matter, the main thing is that the little one is healthy.

But you're wrong. It does play a role. Mothers of boys are different from mothers of girls, or rather: they have to deal with completely different things. I've had years to observe the whole thing. I know both types, I've been able to observe what they have to deal with over the years. And I have a girl and a boy at home myself. And I have come to the following conclusion: If parenting were a bike race, then girls' mums would cycle neatly around the oval of a six-day race track. Boys' mums, on the other hand, have a breakneck downhill course ahead of them. And the course isn't even defined yet.

One thing is clear: they face the bumpy task of preparing their sons for the diverse demands of an emancipated society. In which the position of the real bloke, the manly man, is vacant, or at least only has a vague set of duties.

It starts like in philosophy: with amazement. How the baby moves so violently in the womb that it can hardly be captured on ultrasound. That he later empties his 250ml bottle in the manner of a beer drinker and slams it down on the table with the desire for more. Amazed that although he doesn't speak a word yet, he obviously already distinguishes precisely between different categories of motorised vehicles, especially those found on construction sites. Where, by the way, he can spend hours lost in the sight of excavator shovels and concrete mixers. The amazement at the information apparently encoded in the male genetic code is inexhaustible.

Mums of boys are dressed differently: Stilettos are a bad way to race to the scene of an accident, not to mention the devastating blood stains that mishaps leave behind on fine clothing.

As a child, I would also have liked to have been a boy, because boys - and occasionally girls too, I realised - do interesting things. They have adventures. They take risks. This doesn't always go well, as can be seen even in toddlerhood, when boys like to dig their teeth into the kerb, race through the barbed wire on their sledge or thunder backwards off their bunk beds, while the girls argue about who has to tell their mother that their doll's hair has been cut off. Incidentally, these differences are also the reason why boys' mums often have something of a boyish air about them. Stilettos are a bad way to race to the scene of an accident, not to mention the devastating bloodstains that such mishaps leave behind on fine clothing.

Of course, girls can also have accidents or carve their hands into a bloody mass trying to make a flute out of a stick. But they are simply less likely to do it.

Nevertheless, it's great to be a mum to a boy, even if you have to forget any romantic notions of later exchanging clothes and cosmetics with your offspring. After all, the boys allow us to share in their ideas with touching naivety, at least in the beginning. For example, when they talk about their fervent desire to be allowed to kill lots of enemies as warriors. Or when they assure us that they will protect us from those very enemies when we are old. This always brings us back down to earth: namely that people and especially the opposite sex are a mystery.

This is also evident when it comes to happily integrating the son into society through education. As a little field research among mothers shows, this is one of the biggest challenges. Because while girls' mothers can instinctively understand the problems, worries and hardships of their daughters, boys have a completely different journey ahead of them. One that we women may have an influence on, even if we will never know what it is. Ultimately, no matter how hard we mothers try, in the end the son will take his dad as a role model. And that is a good thing, despite any offended narcissism.

Read more from Michèle Binswanger:

• Guerilla-Erziehung
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• Der leise Neid auf pubertierende Teenies
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• Ich bin ein Teenie, holt mich hier raus!
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