“Be careful to leave your sons well instructed rather than rich, for the hopes of the instructed are better than the wealth of the ignorant.”
Epictetus, Greek philosopher
The issue of sexual assault is in the forefront of the news daily, and for good reason.
One in four college women report surviving rape or attempted rape in their lifetime. This translates to 673,000 women currently attending United States colleges having at some point experienced rape, with a full 5% of women on college campuses experiencing attempted or completed rape each year. What diligent parent of a daughter, therefore, has not prepared his/her child with self-defense classes, a reminder that if a situation “doesn’t feel right, it isn’t,” or provided countless lectures about never drinking alcohol from a cup once it has been placed down. Who has not chanted the mantra that there is “safety in numbers,” and forbidden his/her daughter to go home with strangers?
While these preparations and pearls of wisdom are powerful, clearly our approach as parents is inadequate. We are not tackling this devastating problem from all available sides. 98% of rapists are male, and 9% of college men admit to performing acts which meet the legal definition of either attempted or completed rape. Yet how many of us tell our angelic sons “Do not violate women (or men, for that matter)”?
How many of us instruct our sons to treat women the way they want others to treat their sister or mother? How many of us discuss the consequences of sexual assault, not only for the victim, but also the perpetrator? Unquestionably, we are demonstrating a bias; not enough parents are preparing their sons not to be offenders, but instead are preparing their daughters to avoid or escape potentially hazardous situations.
While numerous universities have instituted sexual assault prevention and awareness programs, parents should instill and reinforce values that would prevent molestation long before one’s son contemplates stepping foot on campus. We should be challenging our sons to maintain accountability and to behave in the way we hope and expect they would. We should be telling them that both offenders and bystanders are guilty; time and again, history has demonstrated inaction to be as dangerous as action. We should be reinforcing that there is nothing manly about forcible sex offenses, in spite of the glamorization of sexual violence and dehumanization of women, so abundant in pop culture and media.
Good people (including our revered sons) are capable of performing bad, even deplorable acts. Young adults are greatly influenced by peer pressure and a desire to be accepted, perhaps explaining why fraternity men are three times more likely to commit sexual assault than other college men.
It is important that we, as a community, are vigilant about increasing awareness of one of the most common and least reported of all violent crimes. We must also continue to educate our daughters in techniques to preclude becoming prey. Our third, and in my opinion, equally important obligation is that we must “leave [our] sons well-instructed.” As parents, it is our responsibility to model behaviour respectful of others and to conduct frank discussions in which we are firm about our expectations regarding sexual aggression, not only as tradition has dictated with our daughters, but just as significantly, with our sons; we must ensure that ignorance is never used as an excuse for committing a violent act.
Marjorie Rosenblatt is a physician, wife and mother of three. She enjoys writing about her experiences and passions, including (but not limited to) her family, medicine and karate.
