Babies always cry, boys or girls. Crying is their means of expressing their needs be it being hungry, hurt or sick or just wanting attention, needing to be picked up.
A mother knows by the kind of cry what those needs are. A loud demand for food is different from a whimpering hurt or a whining for attention.
A loud outburst could be an expression of anger for a thwarted need, a toy grabbed by someone else or prevention of an action that could have caused harm.
As the child grows up and becomes capable of verbalizing his needs crying lessens. The parents and other caregivers express appreciation for the lessening of crying and tell the child so.
Often the child is told “you are a big boy (or girl) now”, to make the child stop from crying.
At a certain point, probably when the child starts to go to school, the attitude towards crying changes. If the child is a boy, he is often told when he comes home crying ”Huwag kang iiyak, magpakalalaki ka.!”
In my childhood and teen days, I remember the boys who cried were laughed at. They were considered weak, a sissy. It was considered normal for girls to cry.
These attitudes toward crying as an expression of emotion, have undergone a slow change in all these years. The altering of the tolerance of tear from the males may have been a part of the rise and growth of feminism.
The awareness of women that they are capable of doing what were formerly considered man’s jobs only, started in earnest during the last two world wars. Men had to enlist and leave their homes to fight for their countries.
Women were left to earn a living and take the places of men at work. They proved to be capable in undertaking jobs that were done only by men alone in the past. Jobs that need the brawn have slowly been undertaken by machinery.
In majority of cultures all over the world, women were considered the weaker sex. Men were considered the leaders and trustees of responsibility. This attitude has slowly evolved much faster probably in the latter half of the 20th century, and even faster in the 21st.
To this day, however, several nations in the world still consider women inferior to men and are not entitled to the same rights as education and positions of leadership.
The prevalence of violence against women may be traced in part to this belief in the inequality of the sexes.
Violence is a way of maintaining power and control. In a situation wherein women are aware of their rights and have means of finding freedom from a controlling force in the home, the situation sometimes ends in tragedy,
It is not easy for some males, especially those who were raised in homes wherein the male is the king of the castle, to give up male privileges within own homes.
The swift growth in social media in the 21st century has been a means in dissemination of information and views that tend to break the long-held boxes wherein the sexes had been arbitrarily held. There were traits that were considered solely men’s – tough, decisive, hard-working, strong, leaders. Women were supposed to be gentle, nurturing, caring, loving and obedient.
It cannot be denied that women also possess those traits that we only attributed to men in the past. There is no question that women like Margaret Thatcher, Mrs. Gandhi of India, Cory Aquino and Gloria Macapagal Arroyo of the Philippines and Angela Merkel of Germany, to name a few, possess toughness and leadership to lead their countries. Several international corporations have females at their helms at present.
It is true that the numbers are very much in the minority as compared to men but the upward female rush continues. The fight for equal pay on the same work done by both sexes has not been fully won either, but we will get there.
. Just the same as we do not see anything wrong on seeing men crying!
Crying does not reduce one’s ability to be tough and decisive. Crying is a means of giving an outlet to one’s emotions, be they be happiness, sadness, anger, or gratitude and thanksgiving.
President Barack Obama shed some tears when he was thanking his supporters in Chicago after the last presidential elections. They were tears of gratitude.
The father of one of the victims of the Sandy Hook massacre cried when he talked on television how much his daughter meant to him. We shared in his grief.
When one of the accused in the rape of a sixteen year old girl in Steubenville broke down after he was found guilty, some observers felt sorry for him while others wondered if he was sincere in his regrets for what he had done.
Pope Francis had tears in his eyes when he got elected as Pontiff of the Catholic Church. They were tears of thanksgiving.
Everybody has a right to express one’s emotions through tears without fear of being laughed at or considered weak.
Men, like women, or anybody else, can cry.****
