Post: #1

I've noticed thinking back to my younger days, I always had some friends who barely had any rules imposed on them growing up. Most of them had sisters (+/- 2 years) and I think this may have had something to do with it.

One of my good friends had a very popular sister, she would always have cheerleaders over for sleepovers throughout high school, and he got to hang out with them. I'm convinced this is how he developed his confidence, being only average looking and around 5'6.

A few other things:

He had all the hbo/showtime/cinemax channels, so there would be some porn at night (although wasn't hardcore). This was before "tube" sites and you'd actually have to download the movie, which definitely isn't what you wanted to do at home. Of course he could, since he had his own computer, which wasn't that common in those days given computers in the late 90s were very expensive. Porn simply wasn't a huge deal to him since he constantly had access to it, and most guys had to sneak around somehow to view it.

He was allowed to throw parties, his parents were the type who were always going to Vegas. At these parties, there would be alcohol, weed, loud music - and his parents knew about it and didn't care as long he got good grades. Also, because of his sister he had popularity by default and people wanted to be around him because of his parties (even guys much cooler than him wanted to befriend him).

He always had the latest Abercrombie & Fitch (the brand in the late 90s) stuff and a new Chevy Camaro. Also had one of those flat Qualcomm cell phones when basically everyone had a fat Nokia.

What I'm saying is, it's like his parents wanted to make him as popular as possible, knowing he was small and probably needed some help with it, they knew doing this would only help him in the future. Having an attractive sister only helped, but wasn't everything.

I also knew a lot of guys who were raised the opposite. I'd say the majority weren't allowed to watch HBO and had to wait for the (free preview weekend), were expected to wear whatever clothes was given to them regardless of how it fit, and some were even told to wear glasses over contacts. Most were excessively warned about partying too much - but not even because of the partying - because they might hook up with a girl.

Families that "raise" want nothing more than you to not be sexually active. It even extends to movies (non-porn). You can watch movies that depict all sorts of violence, drug use - just make sure there's no sex scenes in it.

The point I'm making, parents can do a lot more than they realize. This kid may have come from the higher end of upper-middle class, and that could be another explanation.

The boys who are most "raised" are usually the solid middle class, sometimes bordering on possibly first tier of upper middle. Also, when boys are only present, the raising seems stronger. Something about having a sister in the mix seems to loosen even the strictest families.

Lower class, and true upper class simply don't "raise" as hard. He married a woman who is Playmate material, lives in Scottsdale, and is making over 150K a year. Marriage is only beta if she isn't hot (my humble opinion only).

Wondering what others think. Do some guys just have an advantage via their surroundings/upbringing? What if every guy was brought up like him?

Post: #2

I'm not sure what you mean by the word raised. Disciplined by the parents?

Post: #3

(10-22-2013 04:05 PM)la_mode Wrote:  Do some guys just have an advantage via their surroundings/upbringing?

Yes, of course.

That is what makes you who you are.

Some guys win the genetic lottery (good looks, size, muscle, etc.)

Some guys win the financial lottery (born rich, inheritance, trust fund, etc.)

Some guys win the social lottery (born into an environment that cultivated their social skills and charisma)

"It better to be lucky than good"

Post: #4

(10-22-2013 04:26 PM)Giovonny Wrote:  

(10-22-2013 04:05 PM)la_mode Wrote:  Do some guys just have an advantage via their surroundings/upbringing?

Yes, of course.

That is what makes you who you are.

Some guys win the genetic lottery (good looks, size, muscle, etc.)

Some guys win the financial lottery (born rich, inheritance, trust fund, etc.)

Some guys win the social lottery (born into an environment that cultivated their social skills and charisma)

"It better to be lucky than good"

Could it be argued that the average family actually stunts the social development of their boys, without noticing? It doesn't make sense, knowing most boys (besides the star quarterback) need all the help they can get.

It's simply not possible with girls, they get too much attention, especially if pretty. Girls also develop socially faster than boys.

Post: #5

(10-22-2013 04:38 PM)la_mode Wrote:  Could it be argued that the average family actually stunts the social development of their boys, without noticing?

Absolutely.

The average family raises their boy to "fit in", "be a team player", "put other peoples needs in front of their own","be a good boy" etc.

We don't teach enough Masculinity

Post: #6

I'm not sure it's even about masculinity, this kid didn't play any sports or lift weights and was 5'6, maybe 125 by senior year. I think it's more about proper cultivation & environment, although I'm sure this can vary from person to person.

I think a lot of that "be a team player/good boy" mentality is actually shrouded in a common view of masculinity, as "real men always do what is right", "real men always behave like gentlemen", etc".

In other words, he was a weakling. What he had, confidence, a lot of going back to having a nice car, always the latest cool clothes, allowed to party on weekends, sister had hot friends, and his parents weren't the type to make teenage discussions awkward. I remember sometimes being at his house and there didn't seem to be this barrier discussing girls, possibly because of his sister always having friends over.

I would estimate in almost all "male siblings only" households the discussion of girls is very odd and that the parents simply don't know how to go about it.

Post: #7

My parents 's method of raising me: insulting and beating me up. Result: I developed several issues from 6th grade and up way to my adult's life. My father was like 'Oh hey, I beat you up badly the first time you showed interest in women's body because sex is bad. Why you don't have a girlfriend yet? do you have gender issue?'

My younger sister had it easier, way to easy.

Post: #8

I'm convinced this kid had he been raised in the majority of families (regardless of income), he would not have turned out as confident as he did. He probably would have turned out shy, lacking in confidence, and not done well with women. He also had certain factors like having hot girls around via his sister during his formative years, and parents who did everything possible to make him popular and they rarely disciplined him for stuff that most boys would be extremely disciplined for.

His parents maxed him out like a credit card (something most never do), and it ended up working out well.

We went to different colleges in different states, but I remember seeing pictures on facebook of a college graduation party he threw, same rules apply.

Post: #9

(10-22-2013 05:21 PM)la_mode Wrote:  I'm convinced this kid had he been raised in the majority of families (regardless of income), he would not have turned out as confident as he did. He probably would have turned out shy, lacking in confidence, and not done well with women. He also had certain factors like having hot girls around via his sister during his formative years, and parents who did everything possible to make him popular and they rarely disciplined him for stuff that most boys would be extremely disciplined for.

His parents maxed him out like a credit card (something most never do), and it ended up working out well.

We went to different colleges in different states, but I remember seeing pictures on facebook of a college graduation party he threw, same rules apply.

Yeah I agree with this. One of my best friends is short and not particularly good looking, but his parents definitely helped him out. For example (like you said) they let him throw pool parties and even let him grow weed at the house so he can always give out free weed (good way to become popular haha). But I don't think that its a conscious thing, it just depends what your parents are like; for example his parents used to be hippies so are pretty chilled.

Post: #10

I'm not sure how relevant this is to his overall upbringing, but he was allowed to get whatever he wanted for dinner most nights. It wasn't this huge deal if he didn't like what was being cooked at home, he would just order a pizza or goto subway, would get something he liked.

I think a lot of families try to instill "food guilt" in boys. If you don't like something, then you are essentially complaining and being disrespectful, only girls show food preferences.

Post: #11

I was raised with barely any rules at all and I turned out a video gamer nerd. When I was a teenager, my parents would tell me to turn off the computer for the friday night and go out, get drunk and make some trouble like a normal teenage boy without much success.

I wonder if the total lack of rules actually screwed me up as at school where we had plenty of rules and discipline I was always a big rebel making trouble and getting punished all the time. Maybe if I had stricter parents I would have been rebellious outside school as well.

Post: #12

I've always had the ability to question things that were presented before me, unfortunately my middle brother is a complete dud. He got coddled, babied, and was all around a better behaved child than me. I got shafted every now and then and it infuriated me.

I was raised in a very liberal household with an over bearing mom, an absent father figure, and a wimp step dad.

I was a social liberal for a very long time and would tote the democratic party line. Now, it makes me sick and I very much resent what was fed to me. The whole ideology promotes reliance on a more powerful figure and frankly that disgusts me. Boys should be taught self reliance. It is so very important to know how to take care of oneself in society and life. I don't care if you want to be liberal or whatever -ISM but you will live on your own and know how to wake up to get to work on time.

Everyday I get infuriated with liberal messages that I can see why my father became a die hard republican. It's better than the alternative but dear lord it is painful.

The whole ACA thing makes me even more angry. I'm all for equality and the like, but not when women get free tests and I get stuck with a stupid copay. That alone has made me question the whole thing.

Post: #13

I've always thought that not having a sister did a small but not insignificant amount of damage to my prospects with girls. Combined with very protective and unmotivating parents, the effect was probably icing on the cake.

Glad to see social/environmental lottery being recognized in the same vein as genetic lottery.

Post: #14

(10-23-2013 12:09 PM)jaakkeli Wrote:  I was raised with barely any rules at all and I turned out a video gamer nerd. When I was a teenager, my parents would tell me to turn off the computer for the friday night and go out, get drunk and make some trouble like a normal teenage boy without much success.

I wonder if the total lack of rules actually screwed me up as at school where we had plenty of rules and discipline I was always a big rebel making trouble and getting punished all the time. Maybe if I had stricter parents I would have been rebellious outside school as well.

I don't think European countries are quite as strict regarding the upbringing of boys.


The strongest raising is usually from never-divorced, slightly-to-very conservative middle-class households. This particular group of middle-class America (regardless of race/politics) generally wants boys to behave a certain way and will do nothing to stop them from basically acting like boy scouts all the time.

Wealthy kids usually come from somewhat conservative backgrounds as well, but seem to have more leeway with their behavior, i.e. a lot of "rich kids" tend to be a bit cocky, where middle-class kids are told this is wrong.

Post: #15

(10-23-2013 02:00 PM)la_mode Wrote:  

(10-23-2013 12:09 PM)jaakkeli Wrote:  I was raised with barely any rules at all and I turned out a video gamer nerd. When I was a teenager, my parents would tell me to turn off the computer for the friday night and go out, get drunk and make some trouble like a normal teenage boy without much success.

I wonder if the total lack of rules actually screwed me up as at school where we had plenty of rules and discipline I was always a big rebel making trouble and getting punished all the time. Maybe if I had stricter parents I would have been rebellious outside school as well.

I don't think European countries are quite as strict regarding the upbringing of boys.

I grew up in a pretty conservative, rural area, though, and you could easily see how strict religious upbringing screwed up a lot of guys. I'd have schoolmates who'd be badly upset if someone merely mentioned sex in the presence of women - extreme white knights. The town was strange in having a large dam and power plant supporting a tiny bit of industry so there was a working class colony in the middle of farmer land and the contrast between the working class guys (practically none of whom had religious or strict families) and the conservative raised was amazing.

Quote:The strongest raising is usually from never-divorced, slightly-to-very conservative middle-class households. This particular group of middle-class America (regardless of race/politics) generally wants boys to behave a certain way and will do nothing to stop them from basically acting like boy scouts all the time.

Wealthy kids usually come from somewhat conservative backgrounds as well, but seem to have more leeway with their behavior, i.e. a lot of "rich kids" tend to be a bit cocky, where middle-class kids are told this is wrong.

I'd be pretty hard to classify in class origins though. My great-great-grandfather made a fortune during the industrial revolution and a lot of my relatives are still millionaires through inheritance. Not us, though: I grew up in an absurdly large house with acres and acres of garden and rotting statues of ancestors when my dads share of the inheritance didn't exactly produce the income to maintain all that. So everyone in town thought I was born with a silver spoon up my ass while we were actually broke... I guess I learned to fake stuff pretty early on.

Knowing my family, I find resentment of rich kids pointless, since I did have one of those fabulously rich ancestors and I've seen what a few generations of being able to live off inheritance does to people...

Post: #16

My childhood was very normal but my teen years were pretty fucked up. My parents were cool but fairly uptight Catholics, the best thing they did was refuse to buy us kids any video game systems after the original Nintendo and basically banned us from the house after school and during the summer. I basically grew up playing pond hockey, killing small animals and being outside all of the time, I still haven't played a video game in about 20 years.

Things were all good until I was about 13 and my older brother (3 years older) got into drugs, big time. It started with weed and boozing but by the time I was 15 he was a full blown crack head and would steal shit from my parents and I. I can't remember how many times the cops brought him home or my parents called the cops on him, he fucked up my our father pretty bad one time and then dad left for good.

After my parents divorced I couldn't take the drama so at 16, I used some cash I got from my grand dad dying to fuck off to Europe for a year as an exchange student, best thing I ever did. After that my parents didn't give a shit because they figured I was mature enough to take care of myself, in grade 12 my mom would go out to bars on the weekend so I would throw these massive parties on the weekends at her house. I was voted party animal of the year in my high school graduating class, fuck ya!

Post: #17

This is a reflective + vent post.

I was raised with aggressive angry parents that complain and whine constantly and do not know the meaning of the word calm. I am an only child BTW. They were extremely conservative religious people who hated sex and did everything they could to make me hate the female form.

if I messed up they would get angry at me very quickly, even if it was small like accidently splashing food on the walls( when I was really young) to big things like getting a pass average in uni. I was hit with hands + all sorts of objects as a way to discipline me.My dad and mum would go nuts. I wish I had found direction and I wish atleast my parents would reward me for good grades rather than just an obligatory compliment, but I can't blame them, they were an arranged marriage and they never really knew how to bond and raise a child. I have my self to blame for not having the strength to break away from them.

My dad is the classic beta with anger issues and takes out being wrecked at work on my mum and my mum is ultra submissive.

Eventually my dad and mum spilt when I was 11 due to my dad wanting to work overseas ( really this was a skillful way to not raise me while not making him feel guilty) spilt when I was 11 and I was forced to live in a single mother house situation with just my mum.

My mother is a person with classic extreme neurosis, very emotional, cannot take jokes and highly reactive and has incredible swells of anxiety. She would not let me bring people over because she was worried at the clutter and mess the house was in.

I think it would be fair to say my teen years were full of tension. My mother and I would fight/argue constantly over small trivial crap. My dad would visit once a month in the middle of the year and once a month during Christmas and would constantly fight/argue. Like my parents would fight constantly and there was extreme tension in the house. There was just no room to relax.

I was also homeschooled after the age of 16. I am 5'4 and below average looking. When I was in school I would have plenty of trouble making friends, took out anger from home onto new people I used to meet and never ever smiled. I was bullied constantly, but I have myself to blame for this. If I had just worked out how to make friends back then I could have had an outlet and some friends while I was being homeschooled. I made almost no friends in university, but I am making an effort to learn social skills.

The only good positive out of all of this is that while I admire beauty of a woman, I never actually pedestalise women because I would have such a horribly bad relationship with my mother. Like I would fight, tell her she looked like shit and fat as a way to get back at her for hitting me and nowadays I never listen to her. I still get really anxious around good looking women(I think part of this was being exposed to so many ugly women when I was younger), but this will go away with practice and working on my internal issues. I get sick of seeing beta behavior because I would see this with my dad and other family behaviors and I would get disgusted at how my male relative would marry such fat women.



Things I am trying to do to recover and improve from all this crap:
-Learning how to be assertive( I think I have this covered)
-approach girls
-Gym 5 times a week( seeing good gains, but it has dropped off so I have to readjust my diet)
-get money so I can move out( being applying for jobs, but kinda hard get one, especially when I live so far out from Melbourne city. Like in my last job, I had to use the taxi too much which pretty mush took our 2-3 hours worth of pay). I am jobless, but I won't give up, I will keep on applying.
-find ways of making more friends( I got two good friends that I can chat to an stuff)
-try out creams to fix my excessive hyperpigmentation
-looking for hobbies( will try out dancing )
-reading the newbies game section of this forum.
-working on body language to fix my walk
-learning a language( starting off easy with French )
-meditating ( cannot go past 3-4 minutes,lol, need to work on concentration span)
-going to a psychologist( went to psychiatrist for assessment)
-Doing my best to not let being 5'4 get to me when it comes to women even though pretty much everyone here told me it matters + I live in a country where there are lots of 6'0+ men.
-Doing stand up comedy.
-learning how to drive( I did not have a car or money out pay for driving lesson when I was 18-19 , and my parents would not sit next to me, so my hope was a driving instructor) . Never too late to learn. Will be doing my second driving test in 3 weeks time. Gonna practice hard so I can pass.
-playing sports like dodgeball and soccer.

Post: #18

yea, massively.

I'd also like to thank all the school people who embraced PCism. I hope you get the brain hiv for your troubles.

That said, I've taken a lot of steps to learn things I never knew how to do .
Like swim for example.

Youtube is a wonder if you want to learn how to do stuff.

fredster, good luck on your driving test. Are you going to buy the last of the V8s once you can drive?

Post: #19

I kinda resent people who were "over-raised". That's basically every popular kid in my class. I just feel like that because in a way I think they had it easy. They didn't put the effort on learning how to dress, how to take care of yourself, how to have a good diet, etc because they just grew in an environment when they had it all.

Most of them are some spoiled pieces of shit who aren't even aware of how lucky are they. How lucky they are they didn't end in a household where your parents just don't give a shit about you.

Meh. Anyways I guess I'm just venting off here but it's something that seriously pisses me off, the fact that some people have it easy while most have to work their asses off just to an inferior result.

Post: #20

Wait, over raised means having the good stuff or being beaten down in everyway imaginable in life?

But yea, when you meet someone who had everything you can imagine in HS and they are now a bum, its like, what the fuck is your problem?

Post: #21

There needs to be a balance in how boys are raised. Over-raising means they probably had a normal upbringing, but weren't really allowed to experience the things that teenage boys do. I remember hearing on tv all the time about teenage pregnancy when I was in high school...and knowing that meant dudes were banging chicks back in the day, and actually being upset about that statistic (mainly that I wasn't even in the pool of applicants). I'd hear guys on the soccer team go in-depth about the chicks they banged (even what girls gave good blow jobs) and remained quiet in those conversations. I'm sure several of you can relate.

From what I've seen and remember growing up, boys from middle-class households are usually over-raised (especially if no sisters are present). During family get-togethers it was verified that myself & my cousins that lived in the same region (all male) were being good boys, although we didn't want to be. We were constantly warned about sex. One cousin was told to "never touch his PP, only funny men do that (meaning gay)". You can't bang chicks (well you can but you're too raised to know how to get them), but you shouldn't jack off either, lol. I remember we would talk about girls secretly at night in very quiet voices as to not be heard and be reprimanded. Not to mention, excessive correction for the most minor things and generally taught to not do anything that might be "naughty" can actually prove a hindrance and cause you not to go through the normal process of taking girls to dances and experiencing women at your formative years. There's usually a retroactive mentality among guys who started "gaming" later in life.

The parents who raise correctly take a relaxed, almost open-minded view to sex, help the kid be as cool as possible (even if that means spending a bit more on clothes), and don't overdiscipline but still have a firm set of rules. Boys are usually behind girls socially, and over-raising doesn't help. The poor rarely over-raise, I've never met an over-raised white trash dude for instance, but maybe they do in other cultures.

Post: #22

LOL, I just realized i understood the opposite of what you meant. I wish I could edit my post tho, i guess that for anyone that tries to read it just think the opposite of it.

Post: #23

(10-23-2013 09:47 PM)Fredster Wrote:  This is a reflective + vent post.

I was raised with aggressive angry parents that complain and whine constantly and do not know the meaning of the word calm. I am an only child BTW. They were extremely conservative religious people who hated sex and did everything they could to make me hate the female form.

Holy shit, man. Reading your post was like an epiphany. I grew up in similar circumstances (beta-aggressive dad, neurotic mom); nevertheless, I am still recovering from the terrible effects my family had on me. I know that part of being a strong man is taking responsibility for your actions but many people underestimate how a shitty family can fuck you up for life.