Real Boys

by William Pollack

  And yet, as we discussed in Chapter 2 on shame and the trauma of separation, by the second grade, boys seem far less attuned to feelings of hurt and pain in others, and begin to lose their capacity to express their own emotions and concerns in words. This, of course, is the self-hardening boys do when they begin to feel society’s pressure to avoid feelings and behaviors that might bring them shame. This is the process that pushes boys to wear a mask of bravado. And this, in large part, is what makes them violent.

  And so the statistics show that violence is overwhelmingly a male “thing.” Young men are violent with other young men, with young women, and with themselves. “Most violent behavior is and always has been the work of men,” writes James Gilligan. “It is clear that both cross-culturally and trans-historically, men have been the more violent sex.”

  So why do men behave so much more violently than women do, if there is no male “violence chromosome”? The answer, again, lies in the themes we have been discussing throughout this book. When boys feel disconnected and afraid of being shamed, when they harden themselves and then put on the macho mask, the one emotion they feel it’s acceptable to show, and thus the only emotion that they will show, is anger. That anger can come out as risk-taking behavior or, as I sometimes call it, “death-oriented bravado.” The boy has such a phobia of showing his shame that he counteracts it or overcompensates for it, by showing its opposite—recklessness and risk-taking and even violence against himself.

  That anger can easily turn to violence against others when the right factors are present or come into play. We had a glimpse of some of these in the story of Ben, the first-grade bully. There is generally a triggering event for any violent act—a threat, a betrayal, or an insupportable loss. The man who loses his job and goes on a shooting spree. The teenager whose girlfriend dumps him for somebody else and beats her up. The second-grader whose friend excludes him from a party or special event and screams at his mother. Whether the boy engages in risk-taking behavior or commits violence against others, it is often fueled by a reservoir of anger, fear, and shame, that has gradually accumulated over the years since the trauma of separation from his parents.

  A group of Danish doctors conducted a study to try to determine a link between early disconnection from the mother and adult behavior. They found that “individuals who suffered both birth complications and early childhood rejection were most likely to become violent offenders in adulthood.” But if these unlucky guys were “most likely” to become violent offenders, I believe a boy need not suffer birth complications or outright rejection by his mother to feel the loss of being prematurely pushed out into the “man’s world.” As we’ve seen, the push to disconnect is ubiquitous—it comes not only from parents but from peers, other adults, and from our popular culture in general. From a very early age, the boy is thrust out into the world and placed in what we’ve seen is a painful, shame-inducing male straitjacket. Throughout boyhood, the strings are pulled tighter and tighter until either the straitjacket snaps or the boy does.

  ON THE FRONTIER

  One way to think about our boys today is that they exist on a kind of frontier. Writers and historians—and our own intuition and experience—tell us that the frontier, any frontier, is generally a more violent place than civilization, the world of cities and towns and well-established communities. The American West has long been considered the quintessential violent frontier, and the American cowboy the quintessential example of the true man—laconic, tough, self-contained, unemotional, and, above all, action-oriented. Countless legends and songs and books and movies and television programs have helped to create and sustain the image of the lone man surviving on the wild and violent frontier—the Marlboro Man. When I was growing up, in the fifties, the macho hero was generally a cowboy or a ranger or a lawman. John Wayne in Stagecoach and The Searchers. Gary Cooper in High Noon. They didn’t say much. They focused on an active mission: to get the bad guys. Women were, for the most part, a distraction—if a necessary, and sometimes pleasant, one. Emotion was expressed haltingly. Vulnerability and weakness could get you killed, and fast. The father (if he hadn’t already been shot or eliminated in some other violent way) expected his son to wrangle the horse or wrestle the bully or shoulder the rifle as soon as possible, with no whining and without much instruction.

  For boys, these images of the frontier can be immensely powerful, even if they don’t think of themselves as particularly violent or imagine themselves as future cowboys. Of course, the West is currently pretty much out of vogue, but the idea of the frontier—and its stereotype of the lone, violent male hero—continues to provide the setting for some of our most popular media. The current favorite frontier is outer space, with aliens now taking the roles of the bad guys.

  I believe one of the reasons boys find the frontier so appealing is that they feel they are inhabiting a kind of emotional and physical frontier of their own. They are made to feel isolated from one another. They feel disconnected from their families. They are admired and rewarded for physical strength and emotional courage, while physical weakness and emotional vulnerability are ridiculed. On the frontier, risk-taking behavior is commonplace. It should be no surprise that boys who are forced to live on such a frontier act out the role in real life—by punching, shooting, or taking a risk that leaves them dead.

  MALE AND FEMALE STEREOTYPES AT SCHOOL

  The traditional stereotypes for boys and girls, men and women, endure in the classroom, as well as in the popular media. “Teachers and parents bemoan the fact that gender dynamics at school are hardly different than they were forty years ago. Forty years? Try forty thousand!” writes Lawrence Cohen in an article called “Hunters and Gatherers in the Classroom.” Indeed, for all the progress we have made in changing attitudes and redefining roles for men and women, particularly women, it seems that the most basic of stereotypic behaviors linger on in the classroom. “Boys roughhouse; girls play house,” writes Dr. Cohen. He describes asking two six-year-olds, a boy and a girl, “What makes a child popular? The girl said, ‘Being nice, having a lot of good ideas, being smart.’ The boy said, ‘Shooting missiles.’ ” Boys are admired by their peers for physical prowess—who can run fastest, who can kick the soccer ball farthest, who can ring the bell first at the top of the climbing rope—as well as intellectual vigor and prowess at verbal sparring. Boys also can gain admiration, or at least notoriety, through acts of daring. Who dares cross the street not at the crosswalk? Who dares jump over a ditch? Who dares talk with the strange janitor? Who dares eat a sandwich made of peanut butter, salami, and ketchup? Who dares bring a knife to school, when it’s strictly forbidden? Who dares kill a stranger?

  Girls, however, tend to gain status through building and maintaining relationships, being nice and sociable, dressing well and looking good, participating in class, speaking articulately, scoring well on tests, reading difficult books, pleasing the teacher. In other words, boys are constantly being rewarded—by their peers, and even by their teachers and parents—for behavior that fits the traditional male stereotype.

  The stereotypes apply to insult and ridicule and bullying, as well as to admiration and reward. As soon as a kid steps out from behind the mask, as soon as he defies the old Boy Code, he may encounter trouble. Boys who act “like girls” may be labeled sissies or babies. Boys who “can’t fight”—or who won’t fight—may be relegated to the bottom of their peers’ friendship hierarchy. As eleven-year-old Dean warned me: “You better know how to fight. If you don’t, people will just walk all over you.” And so boys harden themselves, learn how to fight, and give themselves over to society’s stereotyped vision of how they should behave.

  And yet, as prevalent as these stereotypes are, there are lots of kids—maybe even the majority—who do not fall prey to them. There are plenty of boys who show empathy with one another, who back away from violence when things get out of hand, who talk with one another about their thoughts and emotions, who accept a wide range of people with a wide
range of behavioral, physical, and cultural differences.

  How do they become that way? Many of them say, “It’s my friends that get me through.” As Preston, age thirteen, explained to me when I asked him how he deals with kids who fight and act violently: “It’s not so much about fighting. It’s about standing up for yourself and for your friends.” So just as peers can join together into a violent gang, they can also support one another in resisting society’s stereotypes, finding their own path, and avoiding violence. In other words, the prevention for violence can be found in connection—with friends, with family, with parents.

  MAKING CONNECTIONS AND PROVIDING MODELS

  People who care about others and feel connected to them are rarely the ones who allow their anger to get out of control or commit acts of violence. A boy who is cared about will be more likely to care about others. If he feels connected to his parents and his family, he will feel more connected to other people. If he feels that his parents understand him and empathize with him, he will have the ability to do the same with others.

  The difficulty for many parents is that it is not always an easy task to find the best way to express caring for their boy child or to make and keep a connection with him, especially as the child goes through adolescence. Most boys respond to hugs and kisses, but not always in public. Most boys respond to parents when they praise them, but not if the praise seems excessive or unwarranted. Some boys want to be active with their parents—to go swimming or to the supermarket or to the movies—but others need less active contact. Fathers, may do fine “doing things together,” but also need to recognize when the boy only requires that the father be there, and take full notice of what his son is up to. We’ve heard a lot about parents who fail to attend the big baseball game or the recital or the school play and how disappointing that can be to the boy. But we’ve also seen parents who do make it to the big event, and then spend most of their time on the cell phone or reading the newspaper. The point is that boy knows when the parent is truly involved and genuinely cares, and when he or she is merely going through the motions. No parent is perfect and every child’s threshold of need is different, but there is a kind of running tally being kept in every boy’s head. When the debits outweigh the credits, the boy starts to feel deprived of love, nurturing, and caring. That’s when he begins to focus more on his own needs than those of others; that’s when he starts to feel anger. That’s when all his vulnerable feelings may funnel into rage, and when his rage may bubble over into violence.

  So, it’s what the parent does and how the parent behaves that is most important. A parent or teacher may talk about caring and the importance of being empathic until he or she is blue in the face, but if they don’t act with empathy themselves, the talk is meaningless. The best way for parents to help their boys express their emotions and avoid anger and rage is also the most difficult: they must provide a model for their children in the way they themselves behave. Parents are good at telling a boy not to shout, not to hit, not to tease or ridicule others. But all those reasonable and time-honored lessons are instantly negated as soon as the father gets angry and kicks a chair himself, or the mother describes a neighbor boy who acts like a baby, or both parents get in an argument that ends with the father slamming out of the house and the mother insulting him as he storms out of the driveway.

  Linda found that her ten-year-old son, Jonah, was translating his father’s actions into his own violent behavior at school. As early as age three, Jonah had begun behaving aggressively, and she would receive calls from the day-care center complaining that he was biting other kids. “I’d tell him to stop it, and I’d give him time-outs like everyone suggested, but it just kept getting worse.”

  By the time Jonah reached fourth grade, Linda had grown accustomed to getting the calls. “Jonah gave so-and-so a black eye. Jonah knocked so-and-so’s tooth out. I didn’t know what to do. I never thought I’d be the mother of a violent kid.”

  Finally, Linda set up a meeting with Jonah’s teachers and the school psychologist. Together, they probed for possible causes for Jonah’s behavior. “It was very, very hard to admit,” she told me, “but I had to face it. Jonah was just imitating his dad.” It seems that Jonah’s father, Mike, had worked at an insurance company for almost ten years and had never received a promotion. Often, he would take out his professional frustrations on his family. Jonah took the brunt of his father’s anger, in the form of frequent spankings and harsh verbal insults. “Mike always calls Jonah our good-for-nothing kid,” Linda admitted. “He’s easier on the girls, but with Jonah, he’s quick to fly off the handle.”

  Our boys are watching us, carefully. By the time they’re three or four, they have started to notice the disparity between what they are told to do and what you actually do yourself. How many times have you heard a child say, after being told not to raise his voice or call someone an idiot, “But, Daddy does it!”

  So, in addition to doing things with your child, what kinds of modeling behavior will help boys understand that males can be empathic and express emotions and still be active “real boys”?

  PERSPECTIVE-TAKING

  Encourage your boy’s innate ability to feel empathy for others. This can be done by a practice called “perspective-taking.” It simply means that, in any situation, you help your child to understand the point of view of the other people involved. Why does Ben pick on others? (He’s sad because his parents just got divorced. He needs a friend but he doesn’t know how to make one.) Why did so-and-so not invite you to the party? (Maybe he was worried you wouldn’t come.) Why did the teacher get mad at the kids? (Maybe because his wife is very sick and he’s distracted and scared.) Why did your mother snap at you? (Because she’s trying to finish a paper for her advanced degree and feels stressed right now.) Taking the perspective of others tends to create empathy. When boys feel empathy for others’ worries and concerns, they feel less shame about their own vulnerabilities. Boys can, in fact, learn the value and ways of empathy, if they see it practiced by their parents and those around them.

  You can also allow yourself to express emotions other than anger. Research shows that both mothers and fathers are more apt to express anger around boy children than around girls. In addition, boys’ more vulnerable emotions are shamed away. As a result, for boys, anger, as we’ve seen, becomes the final common pathway for an entire range of other suppressed feelings and the most or only acceptable way to express themselves emotionally. But when parents, fathers in particular, admit to feelings of fear, uncertainty, and vulnerability boys feel more able to do so themselves. One father, when he received a rejection notice for a book manuscript, told his son how sad he felt as a result. The boy comforted him and said how sorry he was the publisher didn’t like the book. It immeasurably heartened the father, who thought of himself as hardened to such professional disappointments. And it helped form a very strong, lasting emotional bond between man and boy.

  Don’t get me wrong. I do not expect every boy, or every parent, or every household to be anger-free. We’ve all visited homes where the parents are so intent on removing “negative emotions” from their lives that every interaction becomes sugarcoated and the environment seems as unnatural as a home filled with anger and violence. Anger is part of life and can be a useful and productive emotion—to right a wrong or fix a problem, help a friend, or spur others to action.

  As a parent, you can engage in your own acts of empathy and caring, by doing favors for friends and neighbors, taking care of aged parents, getting involved in community affairs, or volunteering for charity work. And you can recognize and reward acts of empathy and caring in others. Boys often show wonderful empathy for a friend when he is hurt or disappointed. Tell him you admire it. When you see or read about similar acts of empathy, point them out to your son. And, as much as possible, you can help to surround your boy with other people—friends, coaches, teachers, and relatives—who can act as additional models of caring and connection.

  CREATING VI
OLENCE-FREE ZONES

  Any parent of boys knows that, no matter how cared for and connected they may feel, they have less predilection for talking openly about their feelings than girls do. In response to a direct question about how things went at school or what a boy thought of a movie or how he feels about a relationship with a friend, the parent may get little more than an “I don’t know” or “Fine” or “I don’t want to talk about it.” Sometimes the parent, like a cross-examiner, feels compelled to press the issue, asking one follow-up question after another until both participants in the lopsided conversation are frustrated or annoyed. Then, at some unexpected moment (often at bedtime, just when the light is supposed to be going out) the answer will come tumbling out. Things are going badly at school. The movie was scary and upsetting. The friend turned out to be less of a friend than the boy had thought.

  When it comes to talking about violence, it’s very important that a boy have a “violence-free zone,” a place where he can remove the mask and speak about fighting and violence without fear of suffering shame, belittlement, or retaliation. The zone may look different for each boy, and the parent needs to discover how to create one that works best for his or her son. But it will likely not be in front of a group of his friends while riding home in the car after a movie. It will likely not be at the family dinner table if older sister and younger brother are listening. It may not be while sitting around the table in the office of the guidance counselor or school principal. It may not be predictable at all. The parent needs to be ready to listen when the boy is ready to talk. If it’s five minutes past bedtime, it may be more important to have a conversation than it is for the child to get to sleep on schedule.