Men as Role Models

I'm a man. I'm a parent. I'm a dad. I've worked in a day care. I teach two-year olds at church. I play with my children and others. Before we had kids of our own, my wife and I took balloons to the local mall's play pit for other children to bounce around and play with.

I'd like to think of those things as helping to make me a role model for my own kids, and for other kids as well. To some, though, it makes me a potential predator.

I struggle with this one. I guess I fall into the same trap as many other people when I tend to feel safer if my children are talking to a female stranger than to a male stranger (always within eye sight in either case). Maybe it's because men look more ominous strictly by their physical characteristics. More rugged. More strong. More threatening. Versus the more laid back, primped, softer image portrayed by most women. I'm not a psychiatrist and I've not seen any studies, but it makes sense to me. Add to that the real statistics about who predators are, and the cards are stacked against those of us of the male persuasion.

Jeff Zaslow, from the Wall Street Journal, wrote a couple of articles related to this recently. The first one, Are Are We Teaching Our Kids To Be Fearful of Men? talks about what we're teaching our kids about males. The second one, Avoiding Kids: How Men Cope With Being Cast as Predators, talks about how us guys have to limit ourselves lest we be labeled as potential predators. This certainly does nothing to aid all of you women out there asking us to be more open and to express our feelings.

It's a fine line, I know -- on both sides of the sword. The only way for us guys to reverse the stigma is to show that we can be nurturing and loving with little ones and not be stalking our prey at the same time. That might not sit right with some. You know what though? I don't care. Those that I care about how they perceive me, will see the real me and not a predator.

On the other hand, I too need to deal with how I treat and teach my little ones to treat unknown men. The Stranger Danger posting I made just the other day was about a woman, not a man. But that was pure chance. Had it been a man that had given my child candy, would I have felt differently. If I'm to be honest with myself, reluctantly, I'd have to say, "Yes." I don't like that, but, "Yes. "

I teach my kids to look past someone's appearance, their speech impediments, their skin color, their clothing taste, etc. Look at their inside character, not their outside character I teach them. But looks can be deceiving both ways.

I guess I need to take a few lessons on character myself... for all of man-kind.