Today, I was tasked with the challenge of babysitting an egocentric six year old girl and an indecipherable three year old boy, and then consequentially their two neighborhood friends of the the same ages, for about seven hours.  During this time period, I noticed the oddest behavior.  

After completely botching a game of soccer, I found myself dissolving into the basest and drollest forms of entertainment to occupy my charges.   One moment, I was the fun babysitter trying to steal the soccer ball, the next I transformed into a giant monster/evil fairy (there was some argument over the matter) that had to be avoided with high pitched squeals and/or attacked with sticks and rocks.  

The two youngest were getting a real kick out of it especially.  One was of my original charge, the three year old boy, and the other was the neighbor girl, who must have been around the same age.  Already, the boy had showed his affection for her (as much as a three year old could have affection for a little girl).  He refused to play any game she wouldn’t play, insisted they swing together, and even braved the spider web on the slide upon her invitation.  I could tell, he was smitten.  

It was what he said during the game the really seemed interesting to me.  Whenever I would start from me he would shake his head and point at the girl.  “No, no, go get Emma and then try and get me.”  Sure enough, I would chase after his young love, sweep her up in my arms, and once I would charge for him, he would attack, “knocking” me to the ground, and rescuing his lady.  

The whole game went on in this fashion.  It seemed to me the boy had created a sort of story line in his head: I was the monster, the girl was the damsel in distress, and he was the knight who would save her.  Princesses being rescued by noblemen is a trope of classic fairy tales, but those all seemed geared toward girls.  Not to mention, damsels-in-distress are hard to come by in modern children movies and books.  

Still, he exhibited an inherit affinity for playing the hero.  He wanted to rescue her, demanded it even.  At three years old, he wanted to be wanted.  Already, he was searching for affirmations of his manhood.  As a seventeen year old girl, I have run into this particular form of “needness” in guys I have dated–but those are insecure teenage boys, not a squealing toddler.

I have never seen anything wrong with the classic damsel-in-distress storyline.  It’s romantic and dreamy–honestly, what girl wouldn’t be okay with a handsome prince rescuing her from the clutches of a fire breathing dragging?  But it seems like society is constantly marching away from this dynamic.  Woman are no longer weak and delicate.  They are no longer housewives and exclusively mothers, either.  Every little girl is expected to answer “what do you want to be when you grow up?” with an actual profession now, the more ambitious the better.  And it’s great!  It’s great that girls dream of growing up to be presidents and doctors and lawyers.  It’s great that women are putting off getting married and having children to build their career first. 

We are become a society of independent woman.  We are becoming a generation of women that don’t rely on our male counterparts to put food on the table.  We can hold our own.  We aren’t damsels-in-distress any longer.  And as this trend continues, my question becomes, what happens to that classic male instinct?  What becomes of the surprisingly fragile masculine ego that is fed by the needs of women?  How will that three year old boy react when that little girl doesn’t need to be saved?  

The point of this extremely drawn out post is this:  It is obvious that the traditional roles of women are changing drastically.  But maybe that change is only the tip of the ice berg.  How woman see themselves won’t just change their role in society, it will change how men and woman interact.  And more importantly, it will change how men define themselves.  Because not only are we doing away with the princesses and damsels-in-distress, but also the respectable princes and noble knights in shining armor whose only purpose was to rescue her in the first place.