May 16 was the International Day of the Boy Child. I was not with Tieri.
He is four years old — this son who came to me at fifty-one, fifteen years into my marriage. My gift. My daily reminder that God is not in a hurry but He is never late. And on that day, without him beside me, I found myself thinking: What would I tell him if I could?
This is what I would tell him.
Tieri, you are being raised in a Girl’s Age. And I need you to understand exactly what that means.
The Age We Created
I am not calling this a Girl’s Age to diminish the girl child. I am saying it to diagnose a condition we created and must reckon with honestly.
For generations, across many societies, we placed the boy child on a pedestal. Not because God decreed it. Not because nature demanded it. We did it, a social construct built from stereotypes, sustained by ignorance, and dressed up as tradition.
We assigned the boy a status. Not earned. Not deserved. Ascribed. We called him the heir. We called him the future. We said he did not cry. We said he was strong. We said he would be fine.
And because we said he would be fine, we stopped being intentional about making him fine.
The Paradox of the Pedestal
The boy child was never superior. The girl child was never inferior. Both are members of the human race, created with equal worth. The only thing unique to the boy is his biological and physiological makeup and the same is true of the girl. Everything else, the hierarchy, the dominance, the entitlement was manufactured by us.
Scripture does not make the man the head of his home so he can dominate. It places him there for order and accountability before God. The strength assigned to a man is for protection, not oppression. The leadership of a boy is about formation and responsibility, not privilege.
But we taught him the world already owed him something. We handed him a crown he had not earned and expected life to respect it.
Life does not work that way.
Why the Girl Rose: Two Reasons We Must Name
The girl child did not rise by accident. Two distinct reasons brought her here.
The first is abandonment. We gave the boy a pedestal instead of a plan, a title instead of training. All the intentional support, advocacy, and attention flowed toward the girl child because we had convinced ourselves the boy did not need it. He was strong. He would figure it out. So we left him to figure it out. Alone.
The second is motivation. The girl child was underestimated, undervalued, and handed a ceiling. That indignity became fuel. She had a point to prove and she proved it. The underdog always has something the pedestal-holder does not: hunger.
The data confirms it. Girls now outperform boys in seventy percent of countries studied globally. The United Nations reports girls exceed boys in school completion at every level. The World Bank notes boys are 3.7 percentage points more learning-poor than girls worldwide.
Fathers who once desperately wanted sons now say quietly that they trust their daughters more. That their daughters show up. That the boys they put on pedestals are nowhere to be found.
The pedestal became the trap.
Those Who Benefit from the Lie
The stereotype did not survive this long by accident. It survived because people benefit from it.
When a man and a woman bring the same skills, work the same hours, and produce the same results and the man is paid more, promoted faster, and credited louder somebody is drawing profit from that lie. The benefit is economic. It is political. It is social and spiritual. It shows up in who gets appointed, who gets heard, who gets funded, and who gets overlooked. It gives some men an unearned advantage and calls it order. It suppresses women’s contribution and calls it tradition. It neglects boys’ formation and calls it strength.
This is why the stereotype will not dismantle itself. It has too many stakeholders. We must be deliberate, because the system is not going to reform out of good manners.
Things to Keep In Mind
So if you are raising a boy today, this age, in this world here are the things we must keep in mind.
Take your eyes off the pedestal. Stop telling your son he is great simply because he is a boy. That is not formation, it is flattery. And flattery has no muscle. Greatness is not inherited. It is built.
Give him formation, not just a title. A crown without character is a trap dressed as a gift. Plan for his growth the way you would plan for a daughter’s, deliberately, intentionally, and daily.
Teach him that life answers to contribution, not gender. Not to entitlement. Not to the noise of voices selling him a counterfeit masculinity. What he builds, gives, and sustains — that is his value.
Teach him that his tears are not weakness. They are evidence that he is alive. That asking for help is not surrender, it is intelligence. The boy who cannot ask for help becomes the man who cannot be helped. And that man is dangerous, to himself and to everyone around him.
Teach him to rise, not to resent. The girl beside him may well be ahead of him. That is not a threat. It is a fact. His response to that fact will define the kind of man he becomes.
Name the world for him. If you do not, the world will name itself to him, through algorithms, peer pressure, and the loud men who have built empires on the confusion of boys. Your voice must be louder. And earlier.
What I Am Doing with Tieri
This is the world in which I am raising Tieri. And I am raising him with my eyes wide open. I am not raising him to inherit a crumbling patriarchy. I am raising him to understand that nothing accrues to him because he is male. No inheritance of respect. No automatic authority. No free pass. Life answers to contribution. Full stop.
What Masculinity Actually Means
Masculinity is the capacity to show up. The discipline to keep your word. The courage to protect what you love, not by crushing it, but by standing between it and harm. The wisdom to know that your value is measured not by who you can overpower, but by what you can build, give, and sustain.
That is what I am building in Tieri. Not a boy who is told he is great. A boy who is growing into greatness, slowly, consciously, value by value.
A Word to Every Parent of a Son
We are in a Girl’s Age. We built it, and we must be honest about that.
The answer is not to panic. It is not to fund the rage of men selling our boys a counterfeit masculinity. It is not to swing the pendulum back toward a patriarchy that was never of God.
The answer is formation. Deliberate, daily, values-anchored formation.
What are you building inside your son? Not what are you telling him he already is. What are you building?
I waited fifteen years for this boy. He came to me at fifty-one.
I am not about to hand him to an age that does not know what to do with him.
Do have an INSPIRED week ahead with the families.
