I'm Maggie Smith, and this is The Slowdown.

As not only a single parent, but a solo parent, I think a lot about what I can offer my kids, and also how I might be coming up short.

I'm sure I'm not raising my daughter perfectly, but I was a teenage girl once, and I was raised with my sisters.

But what about my son? How do I teach a boy, how to be a man?

I realize that most of what my children need from me has nothing to do with gender.

They need to feel loved, accepted, and supported. They need to feel safe, secure, protected, and nourished.

And I think, I hope, they do.

But I didn't think I would have to teach my son how to shave his face,

or how to tie a necktie.

Then again, maybe being raised in a house with a mother and an older sister

will serve my son in more ways than it will limit him.

For a 13-year-old boy, he's pretty emotionally intelligent and a good communicator. So there's that.

When I think back to my own upbringing and what I learned from my mother and father,

almost none of it has to do with growing up as a girl.

I got my work ethic, sense of humor, and sense of fairness from both of them.

I remind myself of all of that whenever I wonder if my son is getting what he needs from me, and I remind myself that he has a village

around him. Today's poem grapples with parenting and gender and what we inherit, positive and

negative, from the people who raised us.

This is a poem by Isaac Pichel.

When you have to remind me to do the dishes, I try to find a way to tell you I wanted to grow up to be just like my mother,

but you are too tired of living through all the lessons I learned from my father

to give that thought much purchase.

...