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Parents of boys spend years hoping their sons will never become the person who hurts someone.
We spend far less time preparing them to become the person who stops someone else from doing it.
I have an 18-year-old son, and the allegations emerging from Cornell University have forced me to think more seriously about that distinction. A former Cornell student has accused seven fraternity members of sexually assaulting her in 2024 after she became intoxicated and incapacitated. Prosecutors have since reopened the criminal investigation, and Cornell has faced renewed scrutiny over its response.
I have spent more than a decade working with boys and young men in schools, foster homes, correctional settings, and on college campuses. I am a social worker whose work focuses on trauma, boyhood, and masculinity. Yet this case has reminded me that there is a conversation I need to have more directly with my own son.
I know that he is a sweet, thoughtful, and tender kid. I know he knows sexual assault is wrong. The harder conversation is about what he will do if he ever sees another young man doing something wrong.
Will he challenge a friend?
Interrupt what is happening?
Get help?
Risk being called disloyal?
Will he understand that protecting his standing among other young men can never matter more than another person’s safety or dignity?
Those are questions I do not want to leave to chance.
We spend years teaching boys not to cause harm. Don’t bully. Don’t harass girls. Don’t assault someone. Don’t take advantage of another person’s vulnerability. Those lessons are essential. They are also incomplete. We spend far less time teaching boys how to become the person willing to stop harm when another boy is causing it.
That requires more than knowing right from wrong. Boys must learn to trust their discomfort when everyone around them appears unbothered, tolerate the possibility that speaking up may cost them social standing, and understand that loyalty should never mean protecting another boy from accountability.
Boys learn quickly what earns acceptance from other boys and what invites ridicule. Challenging the group can feel like betrayal. Over time, they can become skilled at silencing themselves to preserve belonging.
That is why I want my son to understand this:
His moral compass always matters most when following it will cost him something.
It is easy to condemn harmful behavior from a distance. It is harder when the person causing harm is your friend, teammate, roommate, or fraternity brother.
I want him to know that being a good friend will almost certainly require challenging another young man at some point. Sometimes that means saying, “That’s not funny,” when someone humiliates a girl. Sometimes it means refusing to participate in inappropriate conversations. Sometimes it means interrupting a situation when a friend crosses a line, getting help rather than confronting someone directly, or refusing to protect a friend from accountability afterward.
I also want my son to recognize where he holds power, something I have found remarkably few boys are ever taught to do. I often ask boys where they learned how to share power, and I have yet to meet one who can answer that question. We teach boys how to compete for power, protect it, and use it, but almost never how to share it.
Among other young men, his voice may carry influence that someone else’s does not. He may be able to interrupt a situation because the person causing harm sees him as a peer. He may be believed when a girl or young woman is dismissed. Sharing power means recognizing those moments and using influence not to protect yourself or your place in the group, but to protect someone else’s dignity and safety.
Speaking up rarely requires heroics. It means doing something. Get another adult. Call for help. Stay with the person who was harmed. Document what happened. Refuse a cover-up. Say clearly that what happened was wrong. The point is not to perform bravery. It is to refuse silence when someone else is being harmed.
Accountability is part of that power too. Young men notice when peers laugh off harm, minimize it, protect a friend, or treat consequences as unfair. They notice when institutions, like Cornell, do the same. When boys repeatedly see other boys protected from accountability, they learn something about whose safety matters and whose suffering can be dismissed. That can further dehumanize girls and women, leave them more vulnerable, and cause them to experience trauma all alone.
Part of sharing power is refusing to protect another young man from the consequences of what he has done. Accountability is not betrayal. Often it is the most responsible use of the power you have.
Parents need to model this long before our sons become adults. I want my son to see me take harm seriously even when doing so is uncomfortable. I want him to understand that friendship, status, and reputation do not excuse someone from accountability, and that when adults look away, minimize harm, or protect someone from consequences, we teach boys that silence is acceptable.
Parents should not wait for someone else to teach these lessons. I want my son to understand that simply not participating doesn’t make him one of the good guys. There will be moments in his life when another person’s safety, dignity, or humanity depends on whether he is willing to do something.
The conversation I want to have with him is simple: Know what you believe. Pay attention when your conscience tells you something is wrong. Understand the power you hold and learn how to share it. And when someone is being harmed, never confuse silence with innocence.
After Cornell, the question parents of boys should be asking is not only whether our sons would ever hurt someone. It is whether we have prepared them to act when someone else does.
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