Real Boys

by William Pollack

  Listen to the voices of the boys from our study when asked whom they emulate or see as a hero, and why. Curtis, a sixteen-year-old raised almost exclusively by his divorced mother, named her as his foremost model and inspiration:

  “My mom is everything to me. She’s sacrificed so much so that I can go to good schools. She got me into art, which is what keeps me going, and what I hope will be my profession someday. She’s opened a lot of doors for me. All the opportunities I have now are because of her.”

  Michael spoke of the male-male mentor bond he felt with his brother:

  “Who is my hero? My brother—definitely my brother. He is older so I always looked up to him. I try to emulate what he does in my life. There is no doubt in my mind when he came to Hillside School that I was going to come to Hillside School. I still talk to him more than my parents do. He’s at college and I call him more, he tells me more stuff. We’re best friends and I’ve always looked up to him. He has really been my role model.”

  Harry was grateful to his mother:

  “Well my mother did everything. She put me in baseball. She took me everywhere. She worked all the time, but she did everything you could ask for—she was always around.”

  But for some of the boys in my study, moms or dads were around somewhat less, and the earlier family generation became the models to emulate, the heroes of the next generation. As one boy explained when I inquired who his hero was:

  “[W]hen my father wasn’t around . . . [my grandfather] was the one who taught me how to pitch—he was . . . my father figure and I look up to him, like, even to this day. He is definitely my mentor . . . he’s just like a great guy.”

  Another adolescent boy reports, “I adore my grandparents—they mean the world to me. I spend as much time as I can with them. I admire my grandfather . . . as well as my grandmother. I admire them for completely different qualities. My grandfather was a police officer. He is just like a brilliant man. He reads all the time. He is always cracking jokes just to lighten the situation up. He is a complete people person and everyone seems to love him. He never seems to get on anyone’s bad side or anything like that. He always used to take me to the park and play baseball with me and stuff like that. When I was having trouble in Little League he helped me out there and when I was having trouble in school he helped me there too.”

  “My grandmother,” he explained, “is completely different. She is extremely smart. She reads all the time too but she is always forcing me to read. She would always read books to me when I was really young—all types of novels. My grandmother is an amazing cook. Anytime I go down there, they feed me like six or seven times a day.” And we can be certain that the sustenance this boy derived was more than culinary.

  As the statements of these boys attest, adolescent boys look for role models close to home. By and large, they feel tremendous admiration for the mentors in their family, and more than any other category of people, they see these relatives as their heroes and heroines.

  So for any parent or other family members who wonder how much of an impact they can have on their quickly developing son, much comfort should be derived from the fact that they—and not somebody else—are the ones these boys look to most for guidance, love, and support. As volatile as adolescence can be and as frustrating as it may be at times for the parents of sons working their way through this trying period, I believe it is very important for parents to stay attuned to the voices of their adolescent boys and seek as many opportunities as possible to share the potency of connection. When parents do so, they lay the groundwork for a more meaningful relationship with their boys, one that later, when their

  sons have grown into men, is likely to flourish with a new kind of honesty and a new kind of closeness.

  WHAT PARENTS AND FAMILIES CAN DO

  When parents ask me how to do this—how to build strong, dynamic, quality connections with their adolescent sons—I stress several things:

  Discuss the complexities of adolescence honestly. Though it’s normal to want to avoid the complex feelings that arise between boys and adults during the boys’ adolescence, do your best to acknowledge these feelings openly. Be honest about not only the confused feelings you think the boy may be experiencing but also about your own mixed-up feelings. For example, if you feel a rush of jealousy when your son is heading off for the prom-night dinner, say to him: “You’re not going to believe this, but part of me wishes I was young again and heading off to dinner with you.” Or if your son seems to be constantly on the run and you miss spending close times with him, tell him you’d like to respect his need to become more independent but that, yes, you’ve been missing him lately. There’s a big difference between a parent who is trying to control or manipulate the adolescent boy and the parent who’s being honest about wanting to reconnect with him. No matter how tough and independent he may act on the outside, you can rest assured that your boy, even as he develops into a man, will greatly appreciate hearing that you want to spend time with him. As you and he learn to balance your respective needs to remain interdependent, his years as an adolescent will become easier for both of you.

  Make regular “dates” with your son. While parents often spend a lot of time playing with their sons when they’re young boys, many parents forget to find time for such parent-child play when these boys grow older. During adolescence, it’s particularly important to make regular “dates” with your son to share in such family activities. Whether it’s going out for ice cream, playing a sport together, or just hanging out in the den to watch a favorite television show, spending regular recreational time with your sons creates important opportunities for deeper kinds of sharing and connecting. As we’ve already discussed, many boys open up emotionally and relate best when they’re given the opportunity to do something with somebody they love. While it’s important to respect your son’s need for time on his own (and allow him the time he needs to fulfill his other interests and obligations), be sure to seek him out for shared activities on a regular basis.

  Don’t wait to talk to him about sex, drugs, or other tricky topics. As we’ve seen, ignoring tough issues like sex and sexuality, AIDS, drugs, depression, and suicide simply does not help these issues go away for us or our sons. In fact, ignoring them may actually make a boy feel greater shame and be more likely to make unwise decisions. So don’t lose any time. As soon as you think he’s mature enough (and this age will vary), try to find the right place and moment, make sure it’s OK with your son, and then plunge right in! Speak openly to your son about what you know—and don’t know—about the perils and challenges of adolescence. Offer to explain anything he’s curious about.

  If you feel embarrassed or afraid to talk about these issues, tell him so. Your honesty about your own hesitation will make him feel more comfortable talking to you as well. If you don’t feel up to handling the talk on your own, do it as a team with your spouse, or have a family meeting with the boy’s other siblings (if he has any), or consider getting together with close friends or neighbors to discuss these kinds of topics as a group.

  Of course, for both you and the boy, it’s never easy to broach subjects like teenage sex or drug use. You’re both bound to feel torn about how much to say and to experience moments of shyness or embarrassment. But in the end, resolving and moving beyond these inhibiting feelings is far easier than coping with a boy who’s made an inappropriate or even deadly decision because he didn’t have somebody he could talk to ahead of time. Setting a good example goes a long way toward instilling your values in the boy. But creating ample opportunities for him to talk with you, ask you a lot of questions, and share his concerns openly is what is most likely to help your son learn and respect the values you’d like to impart to him.

  Provide frequent affirmations. As often as possible, try to find opportunities to tell your son that you love him and to emphasize for him, in specific terms, all the things you treasure about him. Be sensitive to the shame he may feel inside himself. Even a boy who acts confi
dent and self-assured on the surface feels vulnerable and needs to hear affirmations from his parents. As we’ve already seen, many times a boy’s external armor of bravado and machismo may be hiding profound feelings of insecurity, loneliness, and low self-esteem. One of the most effective ways to help a boy conquer these demons is to tell him in the most genuine and explicit way all the things we cherish about him.

  An important aspect of this process of affirmation has to do with the boy’s nascent sense of his identity as a man. Our boys yearn to have us provide clear balanced expectations about masculinity and to say supportive things that will help them build their confidence as they grow toward manhood. As your adolescent son begins to experiment with the behaviors he thinks we see as “masculine” and “manly,” stress how great you think he’s doing rather than conveying any messages that will make him feel confused or ashamed. So, for example, tell him how good you think he looks (even if that early mustache is a bit fuzzy), compliment him on his personal accomplishments (whether they’re in typically male or female domains), and support him as he begins to get involved in dating. By contrast, it’s best that you don’t do things such as tease him when he brings home a date, harass him about how quiet and cool he sometimes acts in the presence of his peers, or harangue him for acting so macho, or for being an insensitive guy. Likewise, ideally you should not bulldoze him into playing a sport when he doesn’t want to, tell him he smells funny when he splashes on Dad’s cologne, or tell him to “get a grip” on himself when he comes home in tears one day. These kinds of mixed messages—some exhorting him to fulfill the new ideal of manliness, some pushing him to fulfill conventional ideas about masculinity, and some mocking his valiant attempts to make sense of everything—make it difficult for a boy to forge his own healthy, balanced sense of masculinity.

  Show that you understand the adolescent crucible. It’s helpful to let your son know that you, as a fellow survivor of adolescence, understand just how rough the adolescent crucible can be. If you don’t feel in touch with what the contemporary adolescent experience is all about, it’s important to inform yourself as promptly and completely as possible. People who advocate teaching boys to “just say no,” or “to agree never to fight” are largely ineffectual because these simplistic directives don’t recognize what boys actually experience in the peer-governed world. Ideally you should try to learn what it takes for today’s boy to be considered cool, to belong to the central teen social circle, and to avoid being branded a wimp. To protect your boy, you must strive to become empathic to what this adolescent world is all about.

  Boys benefit enormously when you show that you appreciate how hard it is to be a boy dealing with peer pressure, society’s expectations, and the other challenges of adolescence. So long as you do not “lecture” in a condescending way or exude the kind of pity or sarcasm that will only further shame our boys, often you can best communicate your love and understanding by telling “war stories” from your own adolescence. Sharing your own vulnerabilities as an adult helps the adolescent boy feel that he’s not alone, that what he’s feeling is normal. It also frequently enables

  the boy to begin to share his own experience. “But what I’m going through is different,” he may begin, and then launch into the kind of open sharing of feelings that is so critical to his happiness and well-being.

  Listen empathically. When your boy begins to express what he’s experiencing, try to listen carefully and empathically and not interrupt. Once the boy finds the courage to take off his mask and expose his vulnerable feelings, what he needs most is a patient, nonjudgmental, fully attentive listener. While you may feel very tempted to jump right in with advice or to try to “cheer up” the boy, simply try to listen and let the boy know that you sincerely appreciate what he’s going through. This helps to make sure that he doesn’t just retreat behind the mask and hide painful feelings—including those that might amount to depression—we really should know about. Often by asking further questions about what he’s going through, or by simply inquiring “How can I help make things go better?” the boy himself will suggest ways to improve his situation.

  Make your home a safe place. Finally, do your best to make family and home an asylum from peer culture and society’s ambivalent demands about how to become a man. By remaining available at an optimal distance, moving in or out as the situation demands, you can create a safe place in which your boy, protected from shame and ridicule, can explore genuine emotion and vulnerability. Sometimes the sagest advice is that of the late Chaim Ginott: “Don’t just do something. Stand there!” Ideally, you will provide for the boy what I call a “revolving door.” Don’t pester, prod, or cling to him when he’s not ready for interaction, but let him know that when the time’s right for him, he’s welcome to come through the door for a time of closeness. If as he grows you are able to cede control to your adolescent son in this way—allowing him to choose when and how much parent-son relating takes place—you will enable the boy to individuate at his own pace. While it may sometimes feel like an emotional roller coaster, letting your son push and pull, hold on and let go, and seek connection and then retreat is far more effective than striking up a detached laissez faire attitude that communicates a lack of interest in connection or putting your own needs for closeness and companionship ahead of those of a young man striving to become his own person in his own way. So make home a haven for real boys where both you and your sons can enjoy the chance adolescence offers for growth, renewal, and connection. For I believe that by doing so, you’re creating the solid foundation for a new kind of closeness that can take shape when your boy becomes a man.

  — 8 —

  THE WORLD OF BOYS

  AND THEIR FRIENDSHIPS

  I tell him everything. Good things that happen. Bad things

  that happen. Everything. It’s important to have

  someone to talk things over with.”

  —Shawn, age seventeen, referring to his best friend, John

  PUNCTURING THE MYTH OF THE BOY LONER

  Because our society is haunted by gender stereotyped ideas about the mythic image of boys and men as stoic loners who thrive on solitude, we tend to misunderstand and greatly undervalue boys’ friendships. Psychologists have often failed to see the significant ways in which boys express their yearnings for human closeness and connection. They have underestimated the degree to which boys rely on their closest male and female friends to survive. My research shows that, perhaps beyond what we have ever realized, close friendships are of paramount importance to boys.

  Part of the reason we do not fully appreciate the richness and prevalence of boys’ friendships is that at first glance, they may not appear as emotionally deep and meaningful as girls’ relationships. However, upon a closer look it is clear that boys have friendships of tremendous depth and intensity. Boys’ friendships are simply governed by different rules and expressed differently than girls’ friendships.

  To fully appreciate male friendships, we must put aside traditionally female standards of intimacy and attachment. In doing so, we may be surprised by what the psychiatrist Harry Stack Sullivan termed “chumships”—that is, boys’ particular sense of camaraderie and love. For instance, in public—and especially under the watchful eyes of their peers—boys often use action-oriented behavior to express their connection to other boys. They may race each other, climb a tree together, or play against one another in tennis. Such behavior can be seen as “doing together” or caring through action. In these settings, boys generally forgo the kind of quiet one-on-one verbal sharing that we typically associate with girls. Boys do share intimate moments of relating, but they tend to do so privately, away from the group, where such exchanges might expose them to shame or embarrassment.

  Furthermore, my research shows that in addition to their same-gender friendships, most boys develop healthy, positive, and deep relationships with girls. This finding undermines the myth that young preadolescent boys are always “less mature” than girls
their age and that, because their play styles are different, boys and girls are unable to form important connections with one another. It also debunks the myths that adolescent boys are inept at or uninterested in friendship with girls and that boys this age impart love, affection, and empathy only in the context of sexual conquest. My research reveals that not only are boys capable of forming important platonic friendships with girls, but they are eager to do so and count on these friendships for emotional support and enhancement of their self-esteem.

  LEAN ON ME: BOYS HELPING OUT BOYS

  Seventeen-year-old Shawn’s face softens when I ask him about his friends. “My friends really help me get through,” he says gently. As an African American boy living in a predominantly white town, Shawn has had to face prejudice and ignorance. Small in stature, he has encountered a great deal of teasing from other boys.