this post was submitted on 07 Mar 2026
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That is the “toxic” in toxic masculinity: the utter failure of society and the dads within it to teach these men this isn’t normal or ok.
Why the dads? Sounds like you're singling them out. If you're parents, please teach your children basic lif skills. Your sex or gender as a parent doesn't matter.
Part of the toxicity is refusing to listen to advice from "females"
Ye, that's all cool and good. But people aren't frozen images. A guy without sheets was a baby, a boy, a teen and then an adult. Imho saying it's the dad's fault that a guy doesn't have sheets is overly reductionist.
And it's imo also wrong to willy-nilly attribute it to toxic masculinity, because toxic masculinity isn't about men per se. Everyone, all sexes and genders, can exhibit toxic masculine behaviour. That's the "neat" part, which I think everyone should have down by now.
Part of - or rather the main job of - being a teen is refusing to listen to advice from your parents. Yes, disclaimer here, dislcaimer there, there will be endless cases where it's actually toxic masculinity manifest. But why water down the terms, when there's many other more simple explanations.
Another part of it stems from raising boys this way.
We can do better for boys to help shape them into better men is the point.
It’s a progression through the male lines. Again, a piece if which is simply being born into a societal structure that nods at this and says “of course”.
No offense, but I think you're completely over-politicizing a simple thing. If you're a mother and you notice your son doesn't have sheets, you very well better tell him. Else you're probably part of the problem, completely (or atleast partly) separately from toxic masculinity.
How do you think this plays out in a boys life? Do they spawn and then they're auddenly mid twenties without life skills and it's down to how the dads didn't instill all of those skills in them?
If anything, if it was down to the toxic masculine dads, they would have forced their mothers to teach their boys, because sheets are house work. But that's obviously f'd logic.
That thing that happens where the woman of the house has to manage the lives of the men who’ve never been taught? Or who have been taught a different level of behavior? That is additional burden and labor placed on the woman. Life management resting on the shoulders of women. Having to tell anyone, daily, or even weekly, to get their shit together is labor.
If dad isn’t capable because mom is still teaching him what was failed, then things aren’t just going to get missed, there will be a “lead by example” effect happening in the house. The male role model demonstrates how it works to male children and the same goes for the female role models. When this behavior set is reinforced at their friends house, on tv, by figures in the news, society reinforces that, say, mom picks up your dirty socks and puts them in the hamper for you, chastising you to do better. But she still picks up your dirty socks and puts them in the hamper for you.
Or makes sure the bed sheets are washed more than once every 6 months.
Alternatively, it’s learned that if you water long enough, a woman in the house will take care of it for you, thus reinforcing entitled, lazy behavior, and all the excuses that reside therein.
Women doing this assists in the internalization of this, among women as maybe not normal, but expected, and thus the cycle continues.
These behaviors are inherited. It’s not 100%, nothing human ever is, but we are talking middle of the bell curve numbers.