Son, the idea of a man is not what it seems

I remember the day when the midwife handed you to me. A small little delicate thing you were, crying into my arms and then settling into my warm body. I watched you sleep, I watched you feed and then as time progressed into months, I watched you marvel at the taste of food, your ability to roll, crawl and now the attempts of you walking. My goodness how incredible you are.

You see my son, a life comes into this world at its purest form and then somewhere along this life you start to observe, you begin to learn and you will ask the complex question of, ' WHO AM I?". It's an amazing thing to be able to explore this life. Your exploration will be invigorating, exciting and fulfilling but it also comes with disappointment and at times heartache. That's just life.

One thing that you will notice and while you grow up to be this wonderful human being is the idea on what a good man looks like. The world of media and people will hold you back in allowing you to truly immerse yourself to be you.

You see, Societal gender rules tell us that to be a good man you are not allowed to;

- Like pink

- Dream to be a dancer

- Play with dolls

- Cry

Because if you do, you are seen as weak, you are seen as less than a man.

My son, I want you to live in a world where you can choose pink without a flinch in the eye of fear of someone judging you. I want to see you tell a friend that your dream is to be Beyonce's back up dancer and be damn proud of it.

You might not like any of those things but the point is, I just want you to be you. While there's a lot of conversations in my current time to reshape what it means to be a man, I hope it becomes reality when you start building the idea on what a man

means to you.

Written by Chanh Kien from Little Mindsets