We prepared our daughters for the world. We left our sons to figure it out alone.

The boy child is dying in silence, and we are too busy clapping for our progress to notice.

In our hurried race to lift the girl child and rightly so we trampled over the boy. We stood on podiums and shouted empowerment, hung banners in pink, hosted girl-only conferences, and changed laws. And in our passionate pursuit of justice for the girl child, we left the boy child behind, quiet and unguarded, growing into a man no one prepared him to be.

Nobody noticed when he began to speak less. Nobody paused when he stopped crying altogether.

“Be a man,” they told him when he was five. “Don’t be soft,” they said when he was seven. “Stop crying like a girl,” they hissed when he was nine. And so he learned. He learned to wear silence like a second skin. He learned to bury his wounds, to convert pain into sarcasm, to turn tears into fists. And when he grew up and struggled to love, to father, to lead, we wondered what went wrong.

My 14-year-old boy   hadn’t cried in five years not because he had no pain, but because he was told boys don’t cry. Recently I asked him why I haven’t seen him cry, he blinked fast when I asked if he was okay, and whispered, ‘I’m fine.’ He wasn’t. He was only keeping to the cliche “boys don’t cry”.

We taught our daughters to speak, and taught our sons to suppress. We gave the girls a village and told the boys to find their own way. We marched for girls, raised funds for girls, created safe spaces for girls. And what did we give the boys? A pat on the back and an instruction manual titled “Don’t Feel.”

So here we are. A society littered with broken men who were once boys crying silently in rooms with no doors. Boys who were told to be strong while they were shattering inside. Boys who became fathers without ever being fathered. Husbands without ever witnessing tenderness. Leaders without ever being led in love.

Nobody tells you that the boy child is bleeding too. But his wounds are quieter. He’s not allowed to bleed out loud. He drinks instead. Or gambles. Or rages. Or withdraws. And when the damage spills into homes, streets, and systems, we blame the man without asking what happened to the boy he once was.

We are raising a generation of emotionally illiterate men, good boys who were never taught how to name their feelings, only how to survive them. And survival is not the same as healing.

We say we love our children, but we monitor the girls and neglect the boys, convinced that the absence of a womb makes them less fragile, less vulnerable, less in need of guidance. We hide behind the lazy excuse that boys don’t come home with swollen bellies, so we feel less burdened to protect or discipline them. But while the girl carries the pregnancy, the boy carries the possibility.He learned to wear silence like a second skin.

And when we leave him unguided, unchecked, emotionally starved and morally unanchored, we create the very danger we claim to shield our daughters from.

We have built entire empires of empowerment for girls,NGOs, government interventions, scholarships, safe houses, awareness campaigns, mother-daughter summits, International Day of the Girl Child, Women’s Day, and more. The girl child is spoken for, sung for, marched for, celebrated in halls of power and decorated in ribbons of advocacy. But where are the platforms for the boy child? Where are his safe spaces, his scholarships, his healing centers, his mentors? Where is the Day of the Boy Child?

He has none. Because we mistakenly believe he requires none.

We have elevated the visibility of girls while burying the quiet crisis of boys beneath our feet. And that neglect is breeding a silent epidemic. Boys growing into men without emotional education, without role models, without affirmation, drifting into crime, into addiction, into depression, into rage they cannot name. We don’t prepare them to father, yet we are shocked when they abandon their homes. We don’t teach them to express love, then wonder why they struggle to keep it. We don’t teach them to feel, then we blame them for going numb.

The truth is we cannot continue parenting boys with autopilot indifference and expect to raise intentional men. Boys need affirmation. Boys need correction with compassion. Boys need to be taught how to cry, how to lead with kindness, how to take responsibility, not just how to dominate. They don’t become responsible by accident. And yet, we keep pretending they will.

This is not about taking anything from the girl child. It’s about acknowledging that the boy child is starving in the shadows while we feast in the name of balance. It’s about accepting that both wings must be strengthened if we ever want to take off.

But it’s not too late. We can choose differently. We can begin again.

It starts with one teacher, one father, one mother, one nation willing to say. The boy child matters too.

Let us raise boys who are allowed to cry, to speak, to feel, to fail, to ask for help. Let us build safe spaces where boys can be vulnerable without shame. Let us mentor them, guide them, remind them that manhood is not a burden but a journey and that strength is not the absence of emotion, but the courage to face it.

The boy child is not okay. And until we say it out loud, until we do something about it, we will keep mistaking brokenness for masculinity and destruction for dominance. The boys are trying. But they’re drowning in a silence we taught them.

If we do not raise whole boys today, we will keep trying to fix broken men tomorrow.

We cannot keep nurturing one wing and expect the bird to fly.

The boys are trying. But they’re drowning in a silence we taught them.

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