What We’re Teaching Our Sons

What they mean. Where they come from. Where they’re headed, as individuals and as a gender.

We remind our sons that their mothers are women, that their cousins are women, that their aunts are women, that their grandmothers are women. The mothers of our sons confirm their status. They’re intrigued to know where we’re going with this.

We take our sons to art galleries and museums where they can look at women as they have been depicted for hundreds of years.

In the art galleries the security guards eye us warily, watch to make sure our sons don’t go too near the valuable paintings and sculptures. There is a security guard in every room, sitting in a chair, keeping an eye on the art. The security guards are all different ages and sizes and shapes. At least half of them are women. There are arty young women and middle-aged women with glasses and older women with severe, asymmetrical haircuts.

Our sons stand in front of the works of art, under the watchful eyes of the security guards. In the works of art young women in various states of undress alternately have mostly unwanted sexual experiences or recline on and/or against things. They recline on and/or against sofas and mantelpieces and beds and picnic blankets and tombs and marble steps and piles of furs and ornamental pillars and horses and cattle. Some of the women are giant-sized. They sprawl across entire rooms in the museum. Their naked breasts and hips loom over our sons like thunder clouds.

‘Is that what all women look like with no clothes on?’ our sons ask us, nervously.

‘Some of them,’ we say, nodding, relying on our extensive experience. ‘Not all.’

Our sons gaze up at the giant women, awed. They sneak glances at the women security guards, try to make sense of it all.

‘What do women want?’ our sons ask.

We notice the women security guards looking at us with interest. We consider our words carefully.

‘Maybe the same as the rest of us?’ we say.

The women security guards are still staring at us.

‘Somewhere to live,’ we add. ‘A sense of purpose. Food. Dignity, most likely.’

‘What about adventure?’ our sons ask. ‘What about fast cars? What about romance?’

We look over at the women security guards, hoping for a sign.

We’re not getting out of this one that easily.

Money (#ulink_51bc8ee9-7d5f-5d16-889a-69f0c4a3a0c5)

We’re teaching our sons about money.

We’re teaching them that money is the most important thing there is. We’re teaching them that they can never have enough money, that their enemies can never have too little. We’re teaching them that money has an intrinsic worth beyond the things that it can buy, that money is a measure of their worth as men.

Alternatively, we’re teaching our sons that money is an illusion. That it doesn’t matter at all. That, most of the time, it doesn’t even exist.

‘Look at the financial industry,’ we tell them. ‘Look at derivatives. Look at credit default swaps. Look at infinite rehypothecation.’

Our sons nod at us, blankly. They’re not old enough for any of this. What were we thinking?

Together with our sons we go on the run, hiding out in a series of anonymous motels. The receptionists accept our false names without asking any questions. At three in the morning we peer out through the blinds or the heavy curtains, look for the lights of police cars out in the rain while our sons sleep.

‘Who’s out there?’ our sons ask in their sleep. ‘What do they want?’

We can’t remember the last time we slept in our own beds, cooked a meal in our own kitchens. The mothers of our sons have indulged this nonsense for far too long.

Most importantly, we’re teaching our sons how to make money. We’re putting them to work as paper boys, as child actors, as tiny bodyguards. We’re turning them into musical prodigies, poets and prize-winning authors. We’re getting them to write memoirs of their troubled upbringings. We’re using them to make false insurance claims. We’re training them to throw themselves in front of cars and fake serious injuries.

And the cash is rolling in. We’ve had to buy a job lot of counting machines.

We sit up long into the night listening to the constant whirr of the counting machines as they sing the song of our growing fortune, and we watch the rise and fall of our beautiful sleeping sons’ chests.

Geology (#ulink_38a8ca59-3a8d-5143-a04d-4eb095261885)

We’re teaching our sons about geology.

We’re teaching them about sedimentary, igneous and metamorphic rocks, about plate tectonics, about continental drift. We’re teaching them about the history of the earth, and the fossil record, and deep time.

It’s making us feel old.

Our sons want to learn about volcanoes, so we book an out-of-season holiday to Iceland. We stand on the edge of the Holuhraun lava field, staring down into the recently re-awoken inferno. Swarms of separate eruptions throw magma across the blackened, stinking landscape. Dressed in their silver heatproof suits, our sons look like an army of miniature henchmen.

We tell our sons about Eyjafjallajökull and Mount St Helens, about Krakatoa and Pompeii. We tell them how the eruption of Mount Tambora in 1815 led to a year without summer around the globe. We tell them about the supervolcano under Yellowstone park that may one day wipe out half the continental United States.

The spectacularly beautiful Icelandic tour guides – who are called Hanna Gunnarsdóttir and Solveig Gudrunsdóttir and Sigrun Eiðsdóttir – explain to our sons about Iceland’s geothermal energy infrastructure, how a quarter of the country’s electricity is generated using heat that comes directly from the centre of the earth.

Our sons try to get each other to run towards the lava flows, to see how close they can come before they burst into flames.

We are gently admonished by the spectacularly beautiful Icelandic tour guides for the behaviour of our sons. We are all a little bit in love with the spectacularly beautiful Icelandic tour guides. The mothers of our sons, of course, instantly become best friends with them and invite them to have a drink with us in the thermal pools.

In the thermal pools we drink incredibly expensive beers and watch the snow fall on our sons’ shoulders, settle on their hair. Our sons shiver in the brittle air, splash and jump on each other. They remind us of Japanese snow monkeys.

Hanna Gunnarsdóttir and Solveig Gudrunsdóttir and Sigrun Eiðsdóttir explain to us about the geothermal systems that heat approximately eighty-five per cent of the country’s buildings. They remind us that, geologically, Iceland is a young country: like our sons it is still being formed, as the mid-Atlantic ridge that splits the island right down the middle slowly pushes the North American and Eurasian tectonic plates away from each other.

We tell Hanna Gunnarsdóttir and Solveig Gudrunsdóttir and Sigrun Eiðsdóttir that we know how it must feel to be the western half of the country, helplessly watching the east speed towards the horizon at a rate of three centimetres a year. If only our sons were drifting away from us that slowly, we joke.

But they’ve already stopped listening.

Sport (#ulink_77af8cf0-e5da-522b-a226-25ab497a2ca1)

We’re teaching our sons about sport.

We’re teaching them how to ride a bike, how to kick a ball, how to run at and go round and pick up and jump over stuff. We’re giving them suggestions on how to choose a team to support.

Ideally we’d have outsourced a lot of this. It’s not an area we have much expertise in. We don’t tell our sons that.

‘Throw the ball!’ we shout at our sons, trying to get into the spirit of things. ‘Catch it! Pass it! Hit it with the racquet/bat/stick!’

Our sons stand in the middle of the sports field, looking at their hands like they don’t know what they’re for. Our beautiful, brilliant sons.

Our sons getting hit in the face. Our sons getting upended into the mud. Our sons getting trampled on. Our sons crashing their bikes into walls. Our sons falling off their skateboards. Our sons falling off trampolines and vaulting horses. Our sons missing catches, in slow motion. Our sons unable to climb ropes. Our sons with water up their noses, gasping for breath. Our sons slicing golf balls and swinging wildly at pitches and hooking penalties wide. Our sons tripping over their own feet. Our sons, gamely, getting back up again and again.

Our brave and magnificent sons.

We can’t take it any more. We sprint onto the field, knocking small children flying in all directions, and scoop our beautiful sons up in our arms. Wipe the mud out of their eyes, the snot from their bashed-up noses.