Something Is Happening With Our Boys — And We Need to Talk About It

Published in honor of International Women's Day

If you're the parent of a teenage son and something has felt… off lately — if he's been ruder, more dismissive, angrier, or more contemptuous than you can chalk up to “just being a teenager” — I want you to know something first:

You are not imagining it. You are not failing. And you are not alone.

I'm a parent educator, a former prosecutor, and a mom — but I don't have a son. That feels important to name. So while I can offer what I know about adolescent development, what the research is telling us, and what Positive Discipline has to say about all of this, I want to hold this topic with some humility. If you are parenting a teenage boy right now, you are navigating something genuinely new and genuinely hard. This post is for you.

Something Has Shifted — And It's Bigger Than Puberty

Parents have always braced for some degree of teenage attitude. Eye rolls, monosyllabic answers, the occasional door slam — we know that territory.

But what I'm hearing from parents lately is different. Moms in particular are describing sons who treat them with a specific kind of contempt: dismissiveness, condescension, a refusal to be “told what to do” by their mothers, and a simmering anger that can flare into outright meanness. Some are also reporting a troubling hopelessness — boys who shrug and say things like “what's the point?” or “the world is already ruined.”

And this week, on International Women's Day, a global study of 23,000 people across 29 countries dropped some data that drove this all home for me. It found that nearly a third of Gen Z men — a generation that includes boys currently ages 14 and up — believe that a wife should always obey her husband, and that husbands should have the final say on important decisions. Shockingly (to me) they were twice as likely to hold those views as Baby Boomer men.

Let that sit for a moment.

These aren't just abstract opinions about future marriages. These are attitudes being formed right now, in your home, by boys who are online every day.

Enter: The Manosphere

If you haven't heard this term, you're not behind — most parents haven't. But if you have a teenage son, understanding it is, I'd argue, now essential parenting literacy.

The “manosphere” is a loose network of online communities, content creators, and social media influencers united by a common ideology: that men are the real victims of modern society, that feminism has gone too far, and that “real” masculinity means dominance, emotional detachment, and control — especially over women.

The most well-known figure is Andrew Tate, a former MMA fighter currently facing charges of sex trafficking and rape, who has built an enormous online following by presenting himself as the man society doesn't want you to become — successful, uncompromising, dominant. Research found that 80% of 16- and 17-year-old boys in the UK had consumed his content — while only 60% had heard of the British Prime Minister.  It is believed that the stats are similar in the U.S.

And here's the part that should stop every parent cold: your son may not have gone looking for this.

Studies have shown that boys searching for completely innocuous content — gym tips, how to build confidence, how to make money — are algorithmically pushed toward manosphere content in almost the same amount of time as boys explicitly seeking it out. The algorithm finds them. It's designed to.

Why Is This Appealing to Boys?

This is the question that matters most, because if we don't understand the appeal, we can't address it.

The honest answer is that the manosphere is filling a void.

Many teenage boys are genuinely struggling right now. Rates of depression and anxiety among teen boys are high. A sense of purposelessness and hopelessness is real. Many boys feel like they don't know how to be a man, aren't sure where they belong, and are hungry for a community that takes them seriously.

Into that void come influencers who say: I know why you feel this way. The world has been lying to you. You're not weak — you've been weakened. Here's the truth they don't want you to hear.

It's a compelling offer to a struggling teenager. And it comes wrapped in content that sounds like self-improvement: hit the gym, make money, be disciplined, stop being a “nice guy” who gets taken advantage of. The misogyny is layered in alongside the hustle content — and by the time a boy has absorbed it, the two feel inseparable.

The research also points to something that may feel uncomfortable but is important to understand: this content explicitly addresses mothers. There is manosphere content that frames mothers as the first people who “weakened” their sons — who raised them to be compliant and soft. The contempt teenage boys are directing at their moms isn't incidental. In some corners of this world, it is actively encouraged.

So What Do We Do?

Here's where I want to be careful, because there are approaches that feel intuitive but actually backfire — and approaches that feel harder but actually work.

What tends to backfire:

Confronting the ideology directly. If you discover your son is watching Andrew Tate and your first move is a lecture about why Tate is wrong, research suggests this may actually reinforce his attachment to it. Part of the appeal of manosphere content is the “they don't want you to know this” framing — and a parent telling him he's wrong feeds right into that narrative. It makes him the enlightened rebel and you the establishment.

Shaming or ridiculing. Same problem, different angle. Contempt from a parent tends to push boys deeper into communities where they feel accepted — which is often exactly where they found this content in the first place.

Abrupt device removal without conversation. Cutting access without understanding what need it was meeting leaves that need unmet. And it damages the relationship you'll need intact to actually help him.

What the research — and Positive Discipline — tells us actually helps:

Stay connected. I know. He's being awful to you and I'm asking you to stay connected. I hear how hard that is. But the relationship between a parent and a child is genuinely protective against radicalization. Boys who feel seen, valued, and genuinely connected to at least one adult are significantly less vulnerable to being shaped entirely by online communities. You don't have to be perfect. You just have to keep showing up.

Get curious before you get concerned. This one is worth dwelling on, because curiosity is genuinely one of the most powerful tools you have — and it's completely free.

“What is it about that guy that appeals to you?” asked with genuine (not strategic) curiosity is more powerful than any argument you could make. Not “what do you see in him?” with thinly veiled alarm. Not curiosity as a setup for a correction. Real curiosity, the kind that communicates: I actually want to understand you. The kind of curiosity that is hard in this age of polarization.

You might not like what you hear. You'll almost certainly feel the urge to jump in and push back. Resist it, at least at first. When a teenager feels genuinely heard — not managed, not corrected, but heard — something shifts. He becomes less defended. And you get a window into what need this content is meeting for him, which is the only information that will actually help you help him.

Curiosity also quietly communicates something that all the manosphere content in the world can't offer: you matter to me, exactly as you are, right now. That's not nothing. That might be everything.

Name the real needs underneath the content. Boys drawn to this material are often dealing with real things: fear about the future, loneliness, confusion about identity, a hunger for belonging and purpose. Those needs aren't wrong — the vehicle addressing them is. When you can reflect those underlying needs back to him without shaming the behavior, you become someone he might actually talk to.

Acknowledge the hard things about being a young man right now — without validating the misogyny. The world genuinely is uncertain. Economic anxiety is real. Figuring out your identity and place in the world is hard. You can affirm all of that without agreeing that women are to blame for it.

Talk about healthy masculinity proactively — not reactively. What does it look like to be a strong, capable, good man? Who are the men in your life and beyond who embody that? These conversations, started early and continued over time, give boys something to compare the manosphere's version of masculinity against.

Bring in other trusted adults. Sometimes boys need to hear things from a coach, an uncle, a mentor, a therapist, a youth pastor — someone who isn't Mom or Dad. That's not a failure. That's how humans work.

A Note for the Moms

If you are a mom reading this because your son has been treating you with contempt, I want to speak to you directly for a moment.

What is happening is not a reflection of your worth, your parenting, or your relationship with him. You are likely the safest person in his life — which is precisely why he's directing this at you. That's not an excuse for the behavior, and it doesn't mean you should absorb it without response. But it's worth knowing.

You may also be doing this without the partner you need beside you. Maybe you're doing this alone. Maybe you have a partner who isn't alarmed, or who brushes it off as “boys being boys.” Maybe — and I know this is the hardest version — you're in a home where a partner actively relates to some of this content. All of those situations are real, and all of them are exhausting in different ways.

I also want to name — genuinely and warmly — the dads and partners who are showing up for this. The ones who are alarmed too, who are having hard conversations with their sons, who are modeling a different kind of masculinity every day just by being present and emotionally available. That work matters enormously. If that's you, or your partner: thank you. It is not going unnoticed, even when it feels like it is.

On International Women's Day, I want to hold both of those things at once: gratitude for the people who are trying, and honest acknowledgment that the weight of this moment is falling unevenly. The rise of this ideology is landing on women and girls — not just abstractly in culture, but inside our own homes, in our relationships with our sons, our brothers, our partners. It is one more thing women are being asked to notice, name, manage, and carry.

That is worth saying out loud, today of all days. And you still get to decide you're going to try.

The Bigger Picture

This article is really about one question: how do we raise boys who will be safe and whole — and who will treat the girls and women in their lives with the respect and autonomy they deserve and are entitled to as humans. This article is really about one question: how do we raise boys who will be safe and whole — and who will treat the girls and women in their lives with respect?

The answer isn't to shame teenage boys, or to panic, or to assume the worst about every kid who has absorbed some of this content. Most of these boys are not lost. They are searching. The manosphere found them because it showed up with answers before we did.

So our job now is to show up — with honesty, with connection, with a compelling alternative vision of what it means to be a good man. Whether that means getting there before the algorithm does, or showing up after it already has.

Because here's what the algorithm cannot offer him: you. Your history with him. Your knowledge of who he is underneath all of this. Your stubborn, inconvenient, still-here love.

It's not too late. Even now. Even today.

I'd love to hear from you — especially if you're in the thick of this. Are you seeing this with your son? What has helped? What hasn't? Drop a comment below or join us to share and get support in The Heartful Parent Academy.