Real Boys

by William Pollack

  Boys get mixed messages, “to be manly but empathetic, cool but open, strong yet vulnerable.” They are misunderstood if they act tough, and misunderstood if they act nice. So many boys grow up avalanched by macho images that are unmitigated by the influence of real, kind men such as their grandfathers.

  Pollack shows us the cost of the “Boy Code” to individual boys and to the culture. He argues that while we have rethought some of our ideas about girls, we are overdue for such a rethinking about boys. Our outdated models, rules, and assumptions are making boys sick.

  Pollack believes in boys’ “hidden yearning for relationships.” He argues that boys need more nurturing and permission to express their feelings than they currently get. They need emotionally present fathers with unique fatherly gifts such as father-son play. They need their mothers. Pollack empathizes with mothers who are expected to push sons away and yet are still held responsible for their sons’ emotional health and behavior. A mother’s central dilemma is, “How can I give the boy the love he needs and still prepare him for tough male culture?” Pollack sees relationships with parents as boys’ main salvation. His bottom-line advice is excellent: “Stay connected, no matter what.”

  Pollack eloquently describes action love, or how boys and men show by kind deeds rather than speeches that they have strong affectionate feelings. I observe this all the time. Once when I was ill from eating at a local restaurant, my son, an adolescent at the time, called the restaurant and angrily threatened to report its owners to the police for “poisoning his mother.” I was embarrassed by his behavior, but touched by his way of showing concern for me.

  Of course, boys and girls have some different issues. Boys can’t get pregnant and they are much less likely to have eating disorders or to be sexually harassed. Girls are less likely to be beaten up or shot. But all teenagers face the same pressures to individuate and stay connected in a culture of slasher movies, gun stores in shopping malls, Zima and Camel ads, and MTV. All children are growing up in a culture in which adults are teaching them to love the wrong things.

  Pollack diagnoses our culture and offers recommendations for treatment, such as more boy-friendly classrooms and better parent education. Real Boys adds to our information about boys, their specific developmental needs, the cultural and peer pressures they face, and the cultural issues we must resolve if we are to help them grow into strong, good men. His book stands out for its kindness and clarity. Real Boys is a blend of the scholarly and the homey, the practical and the conceptual; it is thought-provoking and just plain useful. I wish I had read it when my son was a boy.

  —Mary Pipher

  INTRODUCTION

  LISTENING TO BOYS’ VOICES:

  RESCUING OPHELIA’S BROTHERS

  Boys today are in serious trouble, including many who seem “normal” and to be doing just fine. Confused by society’s mixed messages about what’s expected of them as boys, and later as men, many feel a sadness and disconnection they cannot even name. New research shows that boys are faring less well in school than they did in the past and in comparison to girls, that many boys have remarkably fragile self-esteem, and that the rates of both depression and suicide in boys are frighteningly on the rise. Many of our sons are currently in a desperate crisis.

  We now understand that girls lose their voices as they enter their teens, and are becoming lost not only to themselves but also to us, mostly as a result of society’s gender stereotypes about girls. Spurred by these insights, we are starting to make some progress in helping girls gain greater freedom, speak in their true voices, be heard, and become empowered so they can better develop their individual capacities and strengths as women.

  But what of their brothers? And what of our sons?

  Over the last several years, I and other professionals who work with boys have become increasingly aware that even boys who seem OK on the surface are suffering silently inside—from confusion, a sense of isolation, and despair. They feel detached from their own selves, and often feel alienated from parents, siblings, and peers. Many boys feel a loneliness that may last throughout boyhood and continue into adult life.

  In my work I have tried to understand what boys are really saying about their lives and to get behind the mask of masculinity, a mask that most boys and men wear to hide their true inner feelings, and to present to the world an image of male toughness, stoicism, and strength, when in fact they feel desperately alone and afraid. This book is the result of listening to and learning about boys, and thinking about what we can do to help them become happier, more successful boys and men.

  What is the fundamental nature of boys? How are boys different from girls? And how are they the same? What should we expect of and for our boys—in school, in play and sports, with their friends, during adolescence, in the family? And what happens when boys are faced with challenges such as divorce, depression, violence, and so on? These are questions I have studied and will address in this book.

  I believe that most of us are at a disadvantage when we talk about boys, because our view of boys is so influenced and distorted by society’s myths about them. Over the years a thousand models of boyhood have accumulated and become melded into an all-purpose stereotype.

  A myth has been created of the young boy as the rascal and the scamp, the mischievous lad who loves to run and be loud, whose pockets are filled with junk that he considers treasure, with a frisky puppy as his constant companion. He considers girls to be “yucky.” He likes to go fishing and ride a bike. The mythical teenage boy is obsessed with himself, sports, cars, sex, and—above all—being cool. He’s tough. He breaks the rules. He talks back to his teachers. He would rather hang out with his hip friends than spend time with his “dorky” family.

  Yet, if you know boys, are a parent or teacher of boys, you know in your heart that these stereotypes are false and limiting, as all stereotypes are. Even so, the power of these stereotypes and the myths that perpetuate them are bound to be profoundly affecting the boys you know and your relationships with them. They are hindering the development of boys, our raising of them, and a boy’s ability to function at his best.

  These myths start to fade, in the light of emerging new information about boys, but much of this knowledge is unknown outside academic circles. I will show that while there is often a grain of truth in myths about boys—which is why these myths have endured—the full truth is more complex and considerably more positive.

  Real Boys is based on my twenty years of working with and thinking about men and boys as codirector of the Center for Men at McLean Hospital, a faculty member of the Harvard Medical School, and a fellow and founding member of the Society for the Psychological Study of Men and Masculinity of the American Psychological Association. Much of this book is derived from my recent study called “Listening to Boys’ Voices,” in which research colleagues at Harvard Medical School and I are studying hundreds of young and adolescent boys, observing them in various situations, conducting empirical testing, and talking with their parents. This study is intended to gather critical data relating to the new psychology of today’s boys and to evoke their candid responses to a broad range of questions regarding not only their everyday experiences at home, at school, and with friends, but also to reveal the true depth and complexity of their inner emotional lives as boys.

  The findings of “Listening to Boys’ Voices” added new evidence to support my experience as a psychologist and my belief that many boys are deeply troubled. The picture becomes more alarming when one considers the findings of the study in light of other statistics that are now surfacing.

  Consider the following: in the educational system, boys are now twice as likely as girls to be labeled as “learning disabled,” constitute up to 67 percent of our “special education” classes, and in some school systems are up to ten times more likely to be diagnosed with a serious emotional disorder—most especially attention deficit disorder (for which many boys receive potent medications with potentially serious side effects
). While the significant gaps in girls’ science and math achievement are improving greatly, boys’ scores on reading are lagging behind significantly and continue to show little improvement. Recent studies also show that not only is boys’ self-esteem more fragile than that of girls and that boys’ confidence as learners is impaired but also that boys are substantially more likely to endure disciplinary problems, be suspended from classes, or actually drop out from school entirely.

  Boys are experiencing serious trouble outside school as well. The rate of depression among today’s boys is shockingly high, and statistics now tell us that boys are up to three times more likely than girls to be the victim of a violent crime (other than sexual assault) and between four to six times more likely to commit suicide. In the summer of 1997 a string of suicides took place just miles from where I live in a small working-class neighborhood known as South Boston, or “Southie.” All of these self-inflicted deaths took place within the same community and within the span of a single summer. And all of the victims were boys.

  Why? What’s going on? That is the subject of this book.

  I’ll discuss how and why society places boys in a “gender straitjacket.” Without being aware of doing so, society is judging the behavior of boys against outmoded ideas about masculinity and about what it takes for a boy to become a man. These models (many of which date from the nineteenth century) simply have no relevance to today’s world.

  Yet if boys don’t conform to these ideas, society has ways of shaming them into compliance. By placing a boy in this gender straitjacket, society is limiting his emotional range and his ability to think and behave as freely and openly as he could, to succeed in the ever-changing world in which we live.

  Boys are pushed to separate from their mother prematurely. Mother is expected to “cut the apron strings” that tie the son to her and, indeed, that connect him to the entire family. As early as age five or six, many boys are pushed out of the family and expected to be independent—in school, camp, at all kinds of activities and situations they may or may not be ready to handle. We give our boys in early adolescence a second shove—into new schools, sports competitions, jobs, dating, travel, and more.

  The problem is not that we introduce our boys to the world—that’s what parents should be doing—it’s how we do it. We expect them to step outside the family too abruptly, with too little preparation for what lies in store, too little emotional support, not enough opportunity to express their feelings, and often with no option of going back or changing course. We don’t tolerate any stalling or listen to any whining. That’s because we believe that disconnection is important, even essential, for a boy to “make the break” and become a man. We do not expect the same of our girls. In fact, if we forced our daughters to disconnect in the same manner as we do boys—with so little help and guidance—we would expect the outcome to be traumatic.

  I believe that boys, feeling ashamed of their vulnerability, mask their emotions and ultimately their true selves. This unnecessary disconnection—from family and then from self—causes many boys to feel alone, helpless, and fearful. And yet society’s prevailing myths about boys do not leave room for such emotions, and so the boy feels he is not measuring up. He has no way to talk about his perceived failure; he feels ashamed, but he can’t talk about his shame, either. Over time, his sensitivity is submerged almost without thinking, until he loses touch with it himself. And so a boy has been “hardened,” just as society thinks he should be.

  Even as we continue to harden our boys the old-fashioned way, we expect them to live up to some very modern and contradictory expectations, particularly in their relationships. We want them to be “new men” in the making, showing respect for their girl peers, sharing their feelings in emotionally charged circumstances, and shedding their “macho” assumptions about male power, responsibility, and sexuality. In short, we want our boys to be sensitive New Age guys and still be cool dudes. Is it any wonder that a lot of boys are confused by this double standard?

  All of this gets absorbed by boys and promulgated by the society at large as an unwritten Boy Code, which is the sum total of this disturbing cycle. The code is a set of behaviors, rules of conduct, cultural shibboleths, and even a lexicon, that is inculcated into boys by our society—from the very beginning of a boy’s life. In effect we hold up a mirror to our boys that reflects back a distorted and outmoded image of the ideal boy—an image that our boys feel under great pressure to emulate. When a boy tries to see his own genuine attributes, his true self, in the mirror, he can’t; he only sees how he falls short of this impossible and obsolete ideal. Is it any wonder, then, that he may later become frustrated, depressed, or angry, suffer low self-esteem, fail to succeed in intimate relationships, or even turn violent?

  Through this book I would like to help families, communities, and boys themselves better understand what a real boy is and, most important, how to help boys flourish and succeed in our society. In Part I of the book, “Real Boys,” I explore these and other myths about boys and discuss the true nature of boys, using boys’ voices and stories. In Part II, “Connecting with Boys,” I discuss the “how to”—what we can do to help boys break out of society’s gender straitjackets, express a wide range of their true feelings, and function more successfully as confident, open, and caring young men in a difficult world. In Part III, “When the Bough Breaks,” I outline more serious consequences of the Boy Code—depression (including the crisis of boy suicides), violence, and divorce—and emphasize not only how we can detect these problems, but also what we can do to make a positive impact in our boys’ lives despite these challenges. In the Epilogue, I propose ways in which we can strengthen the connections we have with boys by suggesting how we might replace the old Boy Code with one that is more consonant with our new understanding of real boys.

  Although it’s not always easy to tell, many adolescent boys—just like adolescent girls—suffer from a crisis of self-confidence and identity. There is, however, a major difference between the plight of boys and that of girls. Even when their voices are stifled in public, girls generally feel comfortable speaking in private to one another about their pain and insecurities. By contrast, though boys may exhibit bravado and braggadocio, they find it more difficult to express their genuine selves even in private, with friends and family. Their voices, as loud and forceful as they may sound, may not reveal what is really in their hearts and souls. Instead, most boys—whether in public or private—tend to act confident and contented, and even brag about their abilities. While we may joke about how adult males won’t ask for directions when they’re lost, it is no laughing matter that so many of our boys feel they can’t reach out for the emotional compass they so desperately need.

  What can we do to change all this? How can we help boys adjust to today’s world and social environment and learn new ways of seeing and relating to other people? What can we do to draw boys out, to get boys to trust us, to let us join them inside their worlds, and help them be and become more fully the people they really are?

  As we will discuss in detail in this book, there is much we can do to support and connect with our boys. We can become aware of the boy stereotypes even the best of us carry in our minds, and consciously work to eliminate them from society, from our thinking and our language. We can learn to recognize the words that boys use when something is troubling them but they feel they can’t talk about it—the “I’m fine,” that actually means things are really not fine. We can learn how to get our sons to talk, without demanding or pressuring them to, by finding the safe spaces that will allow them to open up and express themselves: We can better anticipate the situations that might cause feelings of vulnerability and fear—the first day of school, the big test, the first date, the gym class, the school trip, the illness of a friend, the breakup of a romance, the move to a new place, the doctor’s appointment, the onset of puberty—and find ways that will prepare a boy for them in advance, and allow him to talk about them after the fact. Above a
ll, we can begin to teach connection as the basis of a new male model.

  Boys themselves can lead us in this process, if we’ll only let them. In this book, I want to let you hear the true everyday voices of real boys. They have so much to say to us, to teach us, about themselves and what their inner worlds and daily lives are really like. Many boys will speak in this book. They can guide us, telling us what they genuinely need from us in the way of attention, love, listening, and caring. When you get behind the mask boys typically wear, many of them are beautifully articulate about who they are and how they feel and what they see in the world around them.

  PART ONE

  REAL BOYS

  I remember the gleams and glooms

  that dart

  Across the schoolboy’s brain;

  The song and the silence in the heart,

  That in part are prophecies, and in

  part

  Are longings wild and vain.

  And the voice of that fitful song

  Sings on, and is never still:

  “A boy’s will is the wind’s will,

  And the thoughts of youth are long,

  long thoughts.”

  There are things of which I may not speak;