Real Boys

by William Pollack

  TIPS ON TODAY’S MOTHERING: HOW TO STAY CLOSE

  ANDSTILL PREPARE HIM FOR THE “REAL WORLD”

  We’ve seen that moms face several hurdles in raising boys today. First, they must struggle with the constant pressure they feel to separate from their sons when in their hearts they yearn to stay close to them. Second, they’re put into a Catch-22 situation because though they’re expected to raise boys to be loving and sensitive, they’re also expected to prepare their sons for the “real world” where they may get teased, taunted, or shamed if they show their loving or sensitive sides. And third, as their boys get older, moms have to deal with the ways in which their sons—in response to society’s shaming messages about masculinity—begin to harden themselves and thus resist their mothers’ overtures at closeness and connection.

  I often suggest that a mother use the following strategies to deal with these challenges and to forge a closer more successful relationship with her sons:

  Talk openly about the Boy Code. It’s just about impossible to conquer any problem if it’s never discussed. So talk openly about the Boy Code with your son. Tell him what you like and don’t like about it. Discuss the new double standard of masculinity that calls on boys to be “nice guys” but then pushes them to act like “toughies.” Tell your boy about the bind that places you in as a parent. Explain how much you’d like him to become an empathic, caring man, but also be sure to discuss what you know about the “real world,” and share with him how hard a place you know it can be. If your son believes that you really do understand what it’s like for him within male peer culture—that you understand the ways that he can get teased and mistreated for breaking the old Boy Code—he’ll be more open to learning the empathy and other emotional skills you’re probably eager to impart to him.

  This may sometimes mean admitting defeat. In other words, sometimes you may suggest an approach to a problem a boy is experiencing with his peers and your solution may simply fail. For example, suppose one of your son’s best friends begins to turn on your boy, to tease and taunt your son rather than continue to be friendly with him. Suppose too that, when your son shares this problem with you, you advise him to simply remind his friend how much the friendship means to him and to insist that his friend cut out the teasing. And, finally, suppose your son comes home and tells you that he tried out your advice but that the teasing only got worse.

  Here lies the rub. Your boy will tend to feel betrayed—and alone with his pain—if you follow all this by simply insisting that your suggested solution will work. Instead, tell your son how sorry you are that your approach didn’t work out. Suggest other ideas or, perhaps better yet, ask him how he thinks he should handle the situation and try your very best to support him. His approach might be quite different from the one you might tend to propose. Perhaps he’ll try ignoring his friend for a while. Perhaps he’ll tell his buddy that if he doesn’t cut out the teasing, he’ll be in for it! Your son’s approach may not be quite the one you’re most comfortable with, but it simply can’t be forgotten that your son is doing the best he can to deal with the Boy Code with all its harsh imperatives about masculinity. So just as it is important to discuss and critique the Boy Code with your son, it’s also critical to remember that your son is under enormous pressure to conform to it. So speak openly about the Boy Code and stand behind your son as he does all he can to rebel against it and to succeed within it.

  Teach others about the problem of the Boy Code. As they confront the old Boy Code, mothers often tell me with a sigh of resignation that they feel there’s nothing they can do to change it. I constantly hear things such as “You can’t change boys!” or “If they hear it at school, it’s all over!” or “Once adolescence hits, it’s in their blood—that’s it!” These kinds of helpless statements derive directly from the myths of boyhood we’ve already discussed.

  But in my opinion there is a lot mothers can do to change things. First and most important, talk to your friends, neighbors, and families about the Boy Code. Tell them what you know about how it operates and what it does to limit our boys. Explain your approach to handling it.

  Second, educate the educators about the Boy Code. As we’ll discuss later in this book, teachers and school faculties need to learn about boys’ peer culture too. Boys spend years of their lives in these institutions. If you sense that the schools your boys attend are not focused on boys’ emotional needs and aren’t attuned to how these needs can get ignored because of society’s rules about masculinity, take the time to teach what you know to the men and women who spend their days educating your sons.

  Finally, a big part of teaching others about society’s harsh imperatives about boys and masculinity is to stand up and rebel against them! In other words, it’s not enough simply to talk in a neutral way about them. In this chapter, we heard from several mothers who successfully bucked the stereotypes. Much in the way that mothers led the way to paving new opportunities for their daughters, it may be mothers who will show us the way to help boys feel freer as they grow into men.

  Teach your son about masculinity by talking about the men you love and why you love them. One of the best ways you can help give your son a clear healthy message about masculinity is to talk to him in a positive way about the men you and he care about—your husband, your father, an uncle, a close friend of the family, or any man both you and your boy can feel good about. As your boy struggles to fulfill society’s confusing expectations about masculinity, you can provide clarity by discussing the qualities you admire in these men. “What a warm person your uncle Charlie is,” you might tell your son. Or: “What I really love about your father is that he ignores what everybody says about how to dress and just does his own thing. Don’t you love that funny hat he wears?” Or: “You know that Pete next door? I just think it’s great the way he blasts that opera from the windows when he’s mowing the lawn. What a neat, creative guy!” By hearing the way you appreciate these men, your boy can develop his own sense of the kind of man he would like to be and feel more confident about breaking the rigid stereotypes he’s bombarded with all day long.

  On the flip side, be careful not to add to your boy’s confusion by saying what you don’t like about the men around you—at least, not in a hostile tone. While it may be appropriate to share, in a limited way, aspects of these men that disappoint you, it can be very damaging to a boy’s sense of male confidence if he’s constantly forced to hear about what you dislike in men. So, for example, it might be OK, in limited doses, to say things like “I feel really hurt when your grandfather gets so quiet and distant” or “I don’t understand these body-building magazines—don’t guys get how great they look just the way they are!” But it simply is not acceptable—and again, can be seriously detrimental to a boy’s development—if he hears you making negative remarks about the men closest to him: “Your father is such a jerk the way he acts like such a know-it-all!” or “Your older brother thinks he’s Hercules—I wish he’d stop spending so much time lifting weights and just get over himself!” Or more subtle things such as “Does your friend John think he’s cool with those silly unlaced shoes?” or “Those flowers your father bought me are not going to make up for the fact that he always comes home so late from work.” All of these negative messages about men only obscure what you really want for your boy. So avoid them as best you can.

  Rotate parenting responsibilities. If you’re in a two-parent family, rotate the tasks of parenting with your partner. For instance, don’t always make your husband the disciplinarian, and don’t allow yourself to be the only one whose job it is to nurture your boys when they’re feeling down. When each parent shares the tasks of parenting in a gender-neutral way, it gives a boy the message that being empathic and nurturing is not just a “woman’s job” and that being strict and tough is not only for men. The way that we divide our responsibilities as parents really does give boys powerful messages about gender roles and masculinity. Just think—if we’re telling our boys that they sho
uld be more gentle and sensitive, but then relegating all of the sensitivity training to mom, it’s no wonder that our sons will begin to internalize a sense that this a purely female agenda. By contrast, if dad too is pitching in on the empathy training and if mom takes on some of the roles and responsibilities traditionally assumed by dad, naturally the boy will become more flexible and feel far more confident about his male identity.

  When your son is hurting, don’t hesitate to ask him whether he’d like to talk. Even though your son may not respond right away, there’s nothing wrong with asking him how things are going and whether he’d like to talk to you. Simply engaging him in a frank conversation is often effective in helping him work through difficult feelings. Sometimes it works well to initiate this somewhat subtly—for instance, rather than saying, “Gee, you seem like you’re in a terrible mood. Do you want to talk about how you’re feeling?” you might instead say something like “Hey, we haven’t hung out and talked about things for a while. Do you feel like spending some time together this afternoon?” Especially by focusing away from your son as the “one with problems” and gently suggesting some time together for intimate sharing, at the very least you’re showing that you care, that you’re interested in connecting with him. Depending on his particular personality and the feelings he’s experiencing at the time, he may accept your offer or perhaps tell you he’s uninterested or unavailable, or that he needs some time alone. The key here is to wait until he’s ready to talk with you.

  But avoid shaming your boy if he refuses to talk with you. If your boy indicates he’s not interested in talking with you right away, try to avoid saying or doing anything that might shame him for his refusal. Saying things like “Oh, you’re just like your father” or “If you knew what’s best for you, you’d sit right down and talk to me NOW,” are both examples of typical shaming statements. Slamming the door behind you or walking off in a huff are behaviors that give your boy the same kind of message. In reality, there’s nothing wrong with his need for some time on his own. It may be his best way of coping with difficult feelings, or it may just be the way he thinks the Boy Code expects him to behave. As much as you may feel rejected—or eager to help him—try to avoid punishing him for his decision to spend time alone. Instead, simply let him know that you love him, that it’s all right if he doesn’t want to talk right away, and that you’ll be there for him if he wants to talk later.

  Honor your son’s need for timed silence. If your son prefers not to talk right away, give him the chance to spend some time on his own. He may get into a quiet mood—sit down in front of the television, listen to music, or go off to be by himself. Do not interrupt him right away. As in almost every other case, he’ll come out from his place of isolation and seek out some attention.

  When your boy seeks reconnection, try your best to be there for him. It’s important to make yourself available when your boy finally emerges from his self-imposed period of silence and isolation. He may not provide you with a long “window” of connection, so it’s best that you pay close attention to him and try to notice when he’s reaching out for you. It may be subtle—he may simply ask you, “What time are we having dinner?” or it may be explicit—“Mom, can we talk now?” In either case, your best response is to let him know—without embarrassing him—that you’d be happy to spend time with him.

  Experiment with connection through action. When you first approach your boy, or when he approaches you following a “timed silence,” you may find it helpful to try to connect with him through action-oriented activities. Thus, instead of encouraging him to talk with you right away, invite him to do something active with you. Whether it’s taking care of a chore, playing a sport, or going for a walk, doing something together can often provide subsequent opportunities for talking together. Not only is this a good way to reconnect with many boys, it also gives them another message that you understand their style of relating, that you respect it, and that you’re eager to experience it together.

  Don’t hold back. Finally, and most important, don’t feel you need to hold back. It’s fine to show your son your love and affection. It will only make him feel stronger and more capable of handling the outside world. While we’ve spoken of the problems that can arise if any parent is too dependent, controlling, or domineering, the psychological literature over-emphasizes the frequency of this kind of parent. My years of working with boys and their parents suggest that moms need not worry. Their love is tremendously valuable, and it truly helps boys become confident, powerful, successful men.

  THE POWER OF MOTHERS

  In many ways, Western society has traditionally celebrated the powerful connections that develop between mother and son. For instance, Freud—whose later followers often distorted many of his brilliant insights—recognized the positive power of mothers, the potency of maternal connection. As he put it: “If a man has been his mother’s undisputed darling he retains throughout life the triumphant feeling, the confidence in his success, which not seldom brings actual success with it.” In past centuries, sons were indeed expected to remain closer to their mothers. According to historian Anthony Rotundo, “Mothers were encouraged to maintain intimate ties with sons for as long as they lived and were expected to shape their sons’ moral character.”

  Today we have somehow lost touch with this wisdom, with the reality that mothers can and do have such a profound positive impact on the emotional lives of boys, an impact that lasts a lifetime. Mothers have an awesome some power to allay the shame-based hardening process that too often claims the psychological souls of our boys, and they model—and influence their sons to give vent to—vulnerable emotions such as sadness, fear, and anxiety.

  I strongly believe that both a boy’s ongoing natural yearning for his mother’s love and the mother’s deep-seated desire to continue loving her son should be permitted to find appropriate expression. Mothers should feel free to follow what they have always known in their hearts to be the truth—that when he maintains an ongoing connection to his mom, a boy is taking an important, healthy step toward becoming a man.

  As we’ve seen, a mother is often an expert at coaxing a boy to be more emotionally expressive, feel more confident about himself, and reveal his complete personality with more courage and honesty. But she’s also especially talented at showing how boys can merge these new “sensitive” qualities with some of the traditional qualities celebrated as typically “masculine.”

  By giving her son the love and support he needs to satisfy society’s two-sided rules about masculinity while still being the person he truly is, a mother is training him to become a man who can share his feelings in an authentic way, a man who can be forthright about what he likes and doesn’t like, a man who’s able to share his genuine self with friends, family, and colleagues alike. By connecting closely with her son, she’s giving him the energy, confidence, and savvy he needs to meet all of society’s expectations of him, old and new, while still honoring his true self, the real boy behind the mask.

  — 6 —

  REAL FATHERS/REAL MEN:

  THE EMPATHIC RELATIONSHIPS OF

  FATHERS AND SONS

  “I’ve got a couple of pretty good friends who I can count on for

  some of the small things. But when something big comes up or I’m

  feeling really down, I go to the one guy who really understands and

  who can really help—and that’s my dad.”

  —Tyler Williams, age twelve

  THE SPECIAL ROLE OF FATHERS

  Fathers are not male mothers.

  Interactions between father and son are, as we know, crucially important in a boy’s life, but they don’t always look the same as those between mother and son. Fathers tend to develop their own loving style of teaching, guiding, and playing with their boys.

  ENTHRALLMENT: FATHER-SON PLAY

  Beginning very early in the lives of boys, fathers show a special ability to enliven and broaden their sons’ play activities and to teach thei
r sons how to feel and express certain emotions. Research shows that while mothers tend to soothe their children and shield them from too much stimulation, the average father is inclined to arouse the emotions and stimulate a boy, playing with him zestfully and “jazzing” him up.

  In studies observing interactions between fathers and babies, Professor Ross Parke, at the University of California’s Riverside Center for Family Studies, discovered that dads are just as responsive to infant cues as mothers are, although their style with their sons is remarkably different. Parke found that when fathers spend intimate recreational time with baby boys, the fathers show a unique capacity to draw out the infants’ emotional expression along a wider scale of intensity and to help the infants to learn how to tolerate a wide range of people and social situations.

  When their sons become toddlers, fathers boost the stimulation ante, revving up the emotional systems of their sons by playing games such as tag or wrestling. Martin Greenberg, a child psychiatrist, referred to a father’s early emotional investment in his newborn as “engrossment.” I call active father-son play enthrallment, since in my experience a boy becomes enthralled by the loving, playful attention of his father, and dad becomes enthralled by the responses of his son.

  This gift that fathers have—this enhanced ability to evoke a son’s diverse emotional responses—is invaluable to boys. With the help of their dads, boys can learn how to engage in a broad range of appropriately spirited behaviors. In fact, when fathers take the time to play zestfully with boys during their infancy and as youngsters, at adolescence these children often need less guidance from adults when handling difficult feelings and are more capable of handling emotionally intense situations in a graceful and socially acceptable way.