Land of the Raising Son

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Leon Watts: Land of the Raising Sons

Leon Watts is the founder and creator of the website www.MomsandSons.com and he's looking to help shape a few good men.

See, in an age where a lot of the men in our community are being brought up in single-parent homes "with that single parent being the mother" Watts found that there was a need by mothers to find information and resources to help them raise their boys to men.

The site is based on ten principles of rights of passage for young men: spiritual, emotional, social, personal, mental, cultural, historical, political, economic, and physical. Watts says the site presents various parenting resources to mothers of sons and aids them "in producing balanced/productive men."

"I started doing some volunteer work with kids "I got to a point where I felt there was so much information out there that a lot of mothers aren't getting. A friend of mine suggested a good way to get [that information] out was to do a website," he says in describing how the idea of the site was created.

"Another friend of mine, had developed a rights of passage program for boys. I used that as a basis for the website. From those ten points I felt I could funnel books, movies, and programs that could help mothers to help their boys become more balanced men."

Single parenting in general isn?t easy, but Watts says it was very common that single parent mothers were struggling most with raising their sons. "The missing link was no matter what age a mother?s child was, I consistently heard women say, "I can raise him to be a good person, but there are some things to becoming a man that I just can't teach this boy," he explains. "I recognized in talking with men who were responsible, that they made their decisions based upon things they had learned from another man. As much as they loved their mothers or as much as they were close to their mothers, there were certain conversations learned from fathers or men in our neighborhoods that showed a man?s way of making a decision."

Watts says that in addition to the basis of ten principles, the site uses information from other mothers raising sons, networking information, information about organizations that can help, books, movies, and other resources to help parents build relationships and inspire their sons. He says that getting this information out to a number of parents had in the past been very difficult.

"I wanted to have something that a mother could quickly tap into and get a variety of information. Because the website is set up with the ten points, the information will be broken down into subjects to handle those. For example, if a mother's interested in getting her son more spiritually based, there?s information on that. If she wants him to learn how to handle money better, there?s information from that part of the site. The idea is to funnel as much information of what's available to mothers, that's fresh information," he says.

Most importantly, Watts says, it's important that men and women realize the importance of a man in a boy's life. "One of my biggest points is to let guys know that it's not money that kids need as much as time with them. A lot of times, the mother and father are not together, so I encourage the men to keep in touch with their kids and to encourage the mothers to be more open to the fathers spending time, even if they don't come up with the money to help."

Watts began his career as a juvenile counselor, but says that he ran into a lot of politics and red tape so he left the career to dedicate time to getting involved in volunteer work in the community. He says that his work and the site, have definitely opened doors to both the community and him.

"It's always been a passion of mine to do some work with kids because I've always seen how rich and fertile kids minds were with just a little bit of attention. I've always felt good in that any work I've done has been helpful, so it's personally rewarding. It's one of those things that's just a win-win situation," he said.

For more information: visit www.momsandsons.com
-- Kenya Yarbrough (interview by LaRita Shelby/RadioScope)