I had this great moment of realization and reassurance awhile back.
My oldest was asked to babysit for a friend. Her boys are at just the right age for his first experiences babysitting for someone other than his siblings all on his own. I was impressed to see how enthusiastic he was in this adventure and her boys were happy to have a “boy babysitter”! The thing is that I recognize how rare of an opportunity this is. No matter how much of a natural instinct boys have for caring for children it is always going to be the girls that will get a call to babysit first. I get it…when Sam and Jake were still young enough that they needed a sitter and the girls were just little I didn’t feel quite comfortable having another young man in the house to make sure they got into their jammies, tucked them in and give them a snuggle if they needed it. Somehow that worked okay for a young woman to take care of those things with my boys but not the other way around. Having said that I have met a few guys over the last few years that I may have reconsidered for and my experience as a momma of older boys has given me some perspective on that as well.