But it is my view that by encouraging their boys to achieve such narrow “contentment,” mothers—while they clearly do not intend to—are actually pushing their sons toward premature disconnection from the wide range of their true inner experience, and teaching them that experiencing certain kinds of emotions is either inappropriate or unnecessary. By suppressing their sons’ vigorous expression of spontaneous vulnerable feelings, mothers give boys the subliminal message that it is dangerous or shameful to manifest such feelings and that these feelings do not have an important place within their mother-son relationship. Without any fore-thought, mothers, by coaching their sons in this way, unwittingly “socialize” their boys’ natural emotional states into our highly limited repertoire of emotional expression for males—another early gender straitjacket.
This is particularly unfortunate since my research shows that what “real” boys actually need from infancy forward—and what mothers in their hearts are often longing to offer—is complete and unconditional empathy and understanding for a full range of feelings. Ideally, when a mother sees her infant son looking unhappy, she would simply gaze gently into his eyes, hold him close, and ask him something like “What’s going on? Are you OK? You’re feeling tired, aren’t you?” These expressions of love and empathy are truly what most boys (like most girls) need when they are feeling discomfited or afraid.
Regrettably, research shows that the suppression of emotions in boys continues through childhood. For example, not only do mothers allow girls to express a greater range of emotional states as infants, but, as girls get older, mothers also simply communicate more with them than with boys. Leslie Brody, at Boston University, summarized her own and others’ research as demonstrating that mothers not only speak more to daughters about feelings but actually display a wider range of feelings to them as well. Mothers, in communicating with their daughters (as compared with their sons), may actually use more vivid facial expressions, allowing both girl and mother to develop better skills at recognizing each other’s emotions. But with sons, Brody explained, perhaps to adjust to these boys’ more intense emotions (such as anger or irritability), mothers tended to hold back, to respond less expressively. This is a set of complex findings, precisely because, as Brody reminds us, these “natural” styles of interaction tend to conform to “the cultural . . . stereotype that girls should be more emotionally expressive and that boys should be more emotionally constrained.”
As their sons grow older, caretakers use a greater variety of emotion-laden language when they speak to their preschool daughters than to their sons. These studies show that mothers talk more about sadness or distress with daughters, and about anger with sons—tending to minimize the extent to which their sons might attempt to dwell on their sadness. For example, if a girl begins to cry when she gets a bad grade at school, her parents might tend to say things such as “Oh, you must feel awful” or “Are you all right?” whereas if a boy begins to cry when he suffers the same fate, they might say, “How unfair—that’s ridiculous” or “You march right in there and tell them this just isn’t right.”
Though it is unintentional, such gender straitjacketing takes its toll. By the time they reach school age, little girls expect mothers to respond positively to their expression of sadness while little boys expect both mothers and fathers to respond far less warmly to their expression of the same emotion. Also, by the time girls and boys have reached this age, boys simply express less sadness than girls and thus “self-regulate” how much they show negative or vulnerable emotions. Indeed research shows that the older a boy is, the less emotionally responsive he will be and the harder it will be for his mother to tell how he is feeling.
Lest anyone begin to believe that mothers are alone in this emotional shaping process, it is important to point out that when fathers become actively involved in their children’s care, they too—perhaps especially so—push boys to limit their expression of emotional vulnerability. Fathers use many more emotion words with daughters than with sons, with only one exception. With their sons they use one word they rarely say to their daughters: “disgust.” The language of fathers in general, with boys or with girls, has more demands and teasing in it than in the mothers’ language, and the demands and teasing are even more persistent and intense when the father is addressing his sons. Such verbal jousting by fathers with their sons—for example, the use of a taunt such as “you ding-a-ling”—is usually playful, uttered in jest. But when we think about how such “teasing” affects boys in combination with all the other social pressures they face at such a young age, it is hard not to conclude that such jousting serves only to further toughen up boys, adding heavy plating to their already weighty emotional armor, and pushing their more tender feelings underground.
ANGER: THE OK MALE EMOTION
While studies show that boys at a very early age are pushed to suppress their vulnerable and sad feelings, they also demonstrate that boys are pressured to express the one strong feeling allowed them—anger. Several research centers have documented that parents speak more about sadness with daughters; but when it comes to sons, parents speak mostly about anger. In Professor Esther Grief’s work with colleagues at Boston University, mothers were asked to create a story with their children. When performing this task, mothers never used the word “angry” with girls, but frequently used it with boys. In Professor Robyn Fivush’s laboratory at Emory University, parents not only focused on anger more frequently with their sons, but also, when guiding their sons and daughters through conflict situations, they favored the reestablishing of harmony when their daughters were involved, but accepted retaliation as a reasonable solution for their male progeny.
Unfortunately, it is through anger—the final common pathway for a boy’s strong feelings, what Professor Don Long at Washington University has called an “emotional funnel”—that most boys express their vulnerability and powerlessness. In the face of a premature separation, boys turn most to anger in order to mute and rein in the full range of emotional responsiveness they would otherwise exhibit. The more tender feelings seem too shameful to show and thus boys turn to anger. When I consider these studies—when I think about how difficult it is for many of the adolescent boys and men I know to cope with intense emotional situations—it becomes clear why anger has always been the easiest feeling for men to express. Understandably, it is very challenging for most men to express or experience emotions other than anger, since, as boys, they were encouraged to use their rage to express the full range of their emotional experience.
SAM AND OSCAR: HOW SHAME-PHOBIC BOYS BECOME HARDENED MEN
Starting during infancy with the trauma of separation and persisting during early childhood and adolescence, the shame-hardening process continues throughout the lives of our boys and men. It is a process that causes boys and men to develop a thick skin, a strong resistance to showing any emotions that might lead them to feel ashamed. This hardening comes not from a boy’s desire to be either courageous or coldhearted, but rather from an intense wish to protect himself from “losing face” or feeling otherwise dishonored.
Sometimes, especially with adult men, it is easy to misinterpret this hardening as a kind of typical male boasting or bluster. Sam Gash, described as a “fierce” blocker for the New England Patriots football team, bemoaned the knee injury that had placed him on the bench. Watching the action without being part of it, he explained, “was the worst thing I’ve ever had to endure.” When asked how he might cope with a more serious injury that could end his career—let alone leave his body paralyzed—he responded as if from behind a typical male mask, “Hey, if that’s God’s will, that’s the way it will be. I approach the game as if I have a big shield around me—God’s armor. I’m not really afraid of anything.” If we were to take Sam Gash’s testimony at face value, it would be hard not to think he was just a thoroughly tough, powerful, self-confident man.
But when we look closely at the behavior of young boys, and when we listen closely to thei
r stories, we realize that what in men or older boys is often interpreted as a macho sense of rigor and cockiness, in reality often has much more to do with hardening. This hardening takes place, and the mask goes up, not because boys or men feel particularly strong or self-assured, but rather because they don’t—they feel anxious to protect themselves from wounds to their already fragile male psyches. Once they’ve been shamed enough for failing to be fully masculine, once they’ve been told enough times that they should suppress their vulnerable feelings, once they’ve actually been physically injured for failing to meet the mark, boys allow the wounds to scar over, cover any remaining soft tissue, and act as if everything is going all right.
Take, for instance, Oscar De La Hoya, who today is an Olympic gold medal winner and known as a Golden Boy of boxing. As a young boy, Oscar was pushed into the sport by his father as a result of an unhappy childhood episode. Oscar recalls that during his third birthday party, he became frightened by the violence of the traditional piñata game. This is the game in which he and each of his friends were blindfolded and then, using a long wooden cane, were asked to take turns whacking the multi-colored toy-stuffed doll that was suspended above them by a cord. “I got scared,” Oscar remembered. “I started to cry hysterically and ran away in panic.” Oscar’s parents not only threatened but punished him, but nothing could get him back to that fearsome scene.
Later his father saw Oscar fleeing from other boys when they threatened to punch him. His father felt that Oscar’s lack of manliness was a “disgrace,” a shame upon the family. The “best medicine” for his son, he felt, was to teach him to box. After all, that’s what Oscar’s grandfather had done one generation earlier with Oscar’s father, when he too had seemed “unmanly.”
Oscar vividly remembers his first attempt at boxing when he was just five years of age. The match began, he recalls, and “the next thing—WHAM—the first punch thrown lands smack on my nose.” Oscar ran home in tears. But from that time on, he recalls, “I learned to manage my fears.”
Like so many boys, Oscar learned how to harden himself, in this case with the encouragement of his father. By training himself in a sport where he would need to withstand both emotional and physical pain, and by resolving to no longer allow himself to experience or show his fears, Oscar, at the ripe age of five, was already mastering the hardening expected of boys.
HARDENING’S RISK: BECOMING ANESTHETIZED TO PAIN
When boys become hardened, they become willing to endure emotional and physical pain—even to risk their lives—if it means winning the approval of their peers. Boys can become so thoroughly hardened that they literally anesthetize themselves against the pain they must cope with. And because they are left unsupervised at an earlier age than girls and are usually discouraged by adults from engaging in help-seeking behaviors at their time of greatest vulnerability or need, boys learn to remain silent despite their suffering.
Studies show, for instance, that though by the time boys reach junior high school, one in ten of them has been kicked in the groin, and though 25 percent of these boys actually suffer injuries to their groin area, the majority never tell an adult. One year after the trauma, 25 percent show signs of depression and 12 percent manifest post-traumatic syndromes. And in a study the Navy recently commissioned to understand the history of childhood sexual abuse in its female recruits, researchers made the entirely unexpected finding that as many as 39 percent of its male recruits had experienced some form of physical violence (beyond spanking) at the hands of the parents before they reached the age of eighteen. While this statistic is disturbing in and of itself, what is particularly striking is that, unless the Navy had decided to commission this study, this abuse by parents of their sons would never have been revealed. Once boys have become hardened, they often cover their pain so masterfully that we, as a society, become utterly incapable of seeing it.
“It’s really hard being a guy,” fifteen-year-old Calvin Branford recently explained to me, “because you’re not supposed to talk about how you feel. There’s nobody you can depend on. With girls, everybody expects they’ll go off and talk to somebody. When you’re a guy you’re really not allowed to do that. I guess it’s pretty hard being a guy because there are so many things a normal person would probably do, but you’re just not expected to!”
HELPING BOYS RECONNECT: A PRIMER FOR PARENTS
As powerful as the cultural imperatives of the Boy Code may be in pushing boys of all ages to separate from their parents, toughen themselves up, and restrict their emotional lives, there is a lot we can do as adults to help boys overcome these conventional pressures. Here are some basic guidelines I would suggest:
At least once a day, give your boy your undivided attention. This means you’re not speaking with someone else, you’re not simultaneously trying to cook, clean, read, or do some other task. You’re listening closely. He’s got your attention. While sometimes he may not want to talk—while he may just want to play a game, get some help on his homework, or complain about having to do chores—showing him this attention, even if he doesn’t always soak it up, gives him the message that you’re there, that you care, and that he has a daily time and place when he can share things with you. It’s not important that he always unload heavy emotions on you. And he may signal that he prefers to talk about things at some later point. He just needs to feel your regular loving presence and know that you’re eager to know what’s happening in his world.
Encourage the expression of a full range of emotions. From the moment a boy is born and throughout his life, it’s important he gets the message that all of his emotions are valid. With an infant, this means we need to mirror back all of the feelings the baby expresses. Rather than forcing him to constantly smile or laugh, we also need to show him we’re receptive to his sadness, fear, or other painful emotions. So when a young infant begins to frown, yawn, kick, or cry, rather than trying to “cheer him up” or “smooth things over” by making happy faces at him or ignoring his displays of discomfort, show him your empathy, let him know you understand how he’s feeling, and show him with your words, facial expressions, and gestures that you respect and understand his genuine feelings. With toddlers and school-age boys, we need to ask questions—“What happened?” “Are you feeling sad about something?” “Tell me what’s making you unhappy”—and, again, express our empathy—“Gee, that sounds unfair!” “I’m sorry it hurts so much.” We also need to use a broad range of emotion words—happy, sad, tired, disappointed, scared, nervous—rather than limiting our discussion of emotions to words such as “anger” that force boys to channel the gamut of their feelings into one word and one emotion.
In our daily attention-giving time with our sons, we need to pay close attention to what he’s saying and how he’s acting. If he complains, expresses fears or anxieties, cries, or otherwise shows emotions that reveal he’s hurting, ask him what he’s going through and let him talk about all that he is experiencing. With an older boy, be sure to ask him questions about his relationships with girls, with other boys, with his siblings, teachers, and other friends and acquaintances. Ask him to share with you not only what’s going well in those relationships, but also what’s going less well. Ask him what he enjoys about them and what he finds difficult. By probing about both the “positive” and “negative” sides of these relationships, older boys will begin to discuss a broad array of thoughts and feelings.
When a boy expresses vulnerable feelings, avoid teasing or taunting him. While it’s natural to want to be playful with our sons, and though showing him a sense of levity and good cheer sometimes helps him to overcome unpleasant feelings or situations, by and large it’s important that we not “cut off” his painful emotions by teasing or taunting him. So, for example, when he comes home and complains that his teacher told him he needs a haircut, rather than teasing that he “sure looks like a real fuzz ball,” ask him how his teacher’s comments made him feel, hear him out, and tell him that you too don’t appreciate what
the teacher said. Or if your teenage son announces despondently that his sweetheart just “dumped him,” rather than joking that it must have been his bad breath that got to her or that his heart “must just be totally broken,” instead ask him if he’d like to talk about it and, if so, listen to what he’d like to share with you and try to mirror back in an empathic way the feelings you sense he’s trying to convey. Teasing and taunting rarely heal the boy. Empathy, however, goes miles to help him learn how to express and cope with a broad range of feelings.
Avoid using shaming language in talking with a boy. Research, as well as everyday observation, reveals that parents often—although unintentionally—use shaming language with their male children that they do not use with girls. It’s important to find ways to talk with boys that do not shame them, and that they can respond to. If a boy does something that surprises or concerns you, a natural reaction is to ask, “How could you do that?” But that implies that the act, whatever it was, was wrong and casts the boy in the role of the evil perpetrator. Rather, you might ask, “What’s going on?” or “What happened?” which suggests that you have not formed a judgment about the situation under discussion.
If a boy comes home with a less than stellar report card, a parent—understandably concerned—may challenge him and deliver an ultimatum, “You’re going to have to work harder than this. These grades won’t get you into a good college.” Undoubtedly, the boy knows he is not performing as well as others or as well as he would like. The better parental response might be “You’re still struggling with math, aren’t you. What could we do to help?”
Or suppose a boy declines an invitation to visit a friend or go to a party. Rather than say, “It would do you good to get out of the house. Besides, that boy is really nice,” you could try to find out why the boy no longer wants to be with his friend—“Has something happened between you two guys?”—or what it is about the party that doesn’t appeal to him—“Will somebody be there you don’t get along with?”
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