Some mother's son

"I'M preparing them to be boys, to be responsible in the ways they'll deal with women, even to the point of understanding about contraception - and now I'm anxious they'll be viewed as the enemy. You talk to mothers' of 13 year old girls, and they talk about 14 year old boys with the same tone of suspicion as if they were 40 year old men."

It starts off quite simply, with a mother determined her boys will know how to iron, wash dishes, do their fair share of the housework and talk openly about their problems in preparation to be the perfect new man. But sometimes it seems they can never win, as their sons become teenage boys, victims of their own hormones and society's general prejudice that they are all loutish lads, at best tolerable, at worst, dangerous.

Anne, the mother of two sons aged six and nine, fears that her two sons will have a tough time negotiating their way through modern adolescence. "You see young girls wearing their micro minis and their crop tops sending out all kinds of mixed signals, and our sons are supposed to understand."

It is not teenage girls who worry her so much as their parents, who in her view, lump all boys together as bad news, and don't appear to have much sympathy for them.

It is a bitter irony for a generation of feminist women to realise that they may have to switch sides to defend their sons in the unfinished battle of the sexes. As issues like date rape and sexual harassment come and go in the headlines, they realise that boys, like men, are vulnerable, but have few people to fight their corner.

Sex therapist Mary O'Conor, mother of two sons herself, understands why Anne might be worried, but believes that in practice, teenagers learn from each other how to behave. "My sons tend to have a lot of friends of both sexes. Teenagers nowadays do go hunting in packs, it's a new-ish thing, but there's a lot more interaction between the sexes. So teenage boys will understand that a girl might wear a micro mini, simply because it's fashionable."

Tony O'Brien, chief executive of the Irish Family Planning Association, believes that it is no more or less difficult for boys and girls today to learn codes of sexual behaviour than it ever was.

"NO MATTER what age, country, or culture you live in, it's always hard for boys and girls to learn what's accept able and unacceptable, things are never as straightforward as they appear to be."

If you think that Anne is worrying about all this a little too soon. O'Brien probably wouldn't agree. If there is any real change in relationships between young Irish boys and girls, it's that dating is becoming part of their social life at a younger age at 12, sometimes even at 10, he reports.

Interestingly, both O'Conor and O'Brien say there is anecdotal evidence to suggest that many boys and young men nowadays are under pressure from girls who take the sexual initiative, or expect them to take the initiative - when the boys themselves may lack self confidence and not feel ready for a sexual relationship. The IFPA gets phone calls every day from young men with this problem.

"We use the basic rule of consent in discussing the situation with them: basically, you don't do anything unless you're comfortable with it, or force anyone else to."

O'Brien also believes that parents should use news stories about date rape and sexual harassment to discuss acceptable sexual behaviour with their sons, rather than worry about the negative images of male sexuality that the stories convey.

"I'm in my early 30s and when I was growing up, men and boys all believed the myth that women used the word no as part of foreplay. Now that it's out in the open that no means no, mothers should feel happier that their sons are less likely to do awful things to women.

No matter how tenderly you rear your sons, however, it seems probable that in adolescence, they will feel pressured to conform to the macho stereotype that is still the world's definition of what a man is, according to Dr Brendan Doody, senior registrar in child and adolescent psychiatry with the Eastern Health Board. Like girls, boys have to break away from their parents to grow up; unlike girls, they're unlikely to have a "best friend" to confide in times of stress, and confiding in mother is frowned on by their peer group. So boys are tempted to deal with problems by using drink, drugs, loutish behaviour, or retreating into themselves - and perhaps becoming, at least for a while, that teenage boy that parents of girls have problems with.

WHAT to do? Well, for one thing, start long before adolescence (age 12 to 14 in boys, compared to 10 to 12 in girls) to encourage boys to express emotions, talk about problems, and cry if they want to; best of all, give them a father willing to solve his own problems by discussion. Discuss the strong pressures on men to be macho. Consider sending them to co ed schools where it appears that boys develop better socially and emotionally than in single sex schools.

And then don't be surprised if they become macho in adolescence anyway. "Men can feel that without that, what have they got, feel a sense of being emasculated. And boys will also see that girls seem to be attracted to the strong, silent, confident stereotype, and only want sensitive boys as friends. And they will try to conform," says Doody.

All things being equal, however, you're lad won't turn into a lager lout. And as he starts to grow out of adolescence, he will become if not exactly Daniel O'Donnell, at least a boy mothers of girls will be delighted to invite home for tea.