Real Boys

by William Pollack

  Adam tried to tough it out on his own, the way boys do. It’s part of the code.

  BEHIND THE MASK OF MASCULINITY: SHAME AND THE TRAUMA OF SEPARATION

  Just as Adam and his parents unwittingly adhered to the Boy Code, most parents and schools do the same. It has been ingrained in our society for so long, we’re unaware of it. One educational expert recently suggested that the way to achieve equality in schooling would be by “teaching girls to raise their voices and boys to develop their ears.” Of course boys should learn to listen. They should also speak clearly, in their own personal voices. I believe, however, that it’s not boys who cannot hear us—it is we who are unable to hear them.

  Researchers have found that at birth, and for several months afterward, male infants are actually more emotionally expressive than female babies. But by the time boys reach elementary school much of their emotional expressiveness has been lost or has gone underground. Boys at five or six become less likely than girls to express hurt or distress, either to their teachers or to their own parents. Many parents have asked me what triggers this remarkable transformation, this squelching of a boy’s natural emotional expressiveness. What makes a boy who was open and exuberant unwilling to show the whole range of his emotions?

  Recent research points to two primary causes for this change, and both of them grow out of assumptions about and attitudes toward boys that are deeply ingrained in the codes of our society.

  The first reason is the use of shame in the toughening-up process by which it’s assumed boys need to be raised. Little boys are made to feel ashamed of their feelings, guilty especially about feelings of weakness, vulnerability, fear, and despair.

  The second reason is the separation process as it applies to boys, the emphasis society places on a boy’s separating emotionally from his mother at an unnecessarily early age, usually by the time the boys are six years old and then again in adolescence.

  The use of shame to “control” boys is pervasive; it is so corrosive I will devote a whole chapter to it in this book. Boys are made to feel shame over and over, in the midst of growing up, through what I call society’s shame-hardening process. The idea is that a boy needs to be disciplined, toughened up, made to act like a “real man,” be independent, keep the emotions in check. A boy is told that “big boys don’t cry,” that he shouldn’t be “a mama’s boy.” If these things aren’t said directly, these messages dominate in subtle ways in how boys are treated—and therefore how boys come to think of themselves. Shame is at the heart of how others behave toward boys on our playing fields, in schoolrooms, summer camps, and in our homes. A number of other societal factors contribute to this old-fashioned process of shame-hardening boys, and I’ll have more to say about shame in the next chapter.

  The second reason we lose sight of the real boy behind a mask of masculinity, and ultimately lose the boy himself, is the premature separation of a boy from his mother and all things maternal at the beginning of school. Mothers are encouraged to separate from their sons, and the act of forced separation is so common that it is generally considered to be “normal.” But I have come to understand that this forcing of early separation is so acutely hurtful to boys that it can only be called a trauma—an emotional blow of damaging proportions. I also believe that it is an unnecessary trauma. Boys, like girls, will separate very naturally from their mothers, if allowed to do so at their own pace.

  As if the trauma of separation at age six were not wrenching enough, boys often suffer a second separation trauma when they reach sexual maturity. As a boy enters adolescence, our society becomes concerned and confused about the mother-son relationship. We feel unsure about how intimate a mother should be with her sexually mature son. We worry that an intense and loving relationship between the two will somehow get in the way of the boy’s ability to form friendships with girls his own age. As a result, parents—encouraged by the society around them—may once again push the boy away from the family and, in particular, the nurturing female realm. Our society tells us this is “good” for the boy, that he needs to be pushed out of the nest or he will never fly. But I believe that the opposite is true—that a boy will make the leap when he is ready, and he will do it better if he feels that there is someone there to catch him if he falls.

  This double trauma of boyhood contributes to the creation in boys of a deep wellspring of grief and sadness that may last throughout their lives.

  MIXED MESSAGES: SOCIETY’S NEW EXPECTATIONS FOR BOYS

  But there is another problem too: society’s new expectations for boys today are in direct conflict with the teachings of the Boy Code—and we have done little to resolve the contradiction. We now say that we want boys to share their vulnerable feelings, but at the same time we expect them to cover their need for dependency and hide their natural feelings of love and caring behind the mask of masculine autonomy and strength. It’s an impossible assignment for any boy, or, for that matter, any human being.

  THE SILENCE OF LOST BOYS

  Often, the result of all this conflation of signals is that the boys decide to be silent. They learn to suffer quietly, in retreat behind the mask of masculinity. They cannot speak, and we cannot hear. It’s this silence that is often confusing to those of us concerned about the well-being of boys because it fools us into thinking that all is well, when much may be awry—that a boy doesn’t need us, when in fact he needs us very much.

  The good news is that we now know of many ways that we can help boys, and they are based on various patterns we now understand about typical boy behavior. Understanding these patterns, these ways of a real boy’s life, will, I believe, help us raise boys of all ages in more successful and authentic ways. For the truth is that once we help boys shed the straitjacket of gender—once we hear and understand what a real boy says, feels, and sees—the silence is broken and replaced by a lively roar of communication. The disconnection quickly becomes reconnection. And once we reconnect with one boy, it can lead to stronger bonds with all the males in our lives—our brothers and fathers and husbands and sons. It can also help boys to connect again with their deepest feelings, their true selves.

  LIVING WITH HALF A SELF—THE “HEROIC” HALF

  Until now, many boys have been able to live out and express only half of their emotional lives—they feel free to show their “heroic,” tough, action-oriented side, their physical prowess, as well as their anger and rage. What the Boy Code dictates is that they should suppress all other emotions and cover up the more gentle, caring, vulnerable sides of themselves. In the “Listening to Boys’ Voices” study, many boys told me that they feel frightened and yearn to make a connection but can’t. “At school, and even most times with my parents,” one boy explained, “you can’t act like you’re a weakling. If you start acting scared or freaking out like a crybaby, my parents get mad, other kids punch you out or just tell you to shut up and cut it out.” One mother told me what she expected of her nine-year-old son. “I don’t mind it when Tony complains a little bit,” she said, “but if he starts getting really teary-eyed and whiny I tell him to just put a lid on it. It’s for his own good because if the other boys in the area hear him crying, they’ll make it tough for him. Plus, his father really hates that kind of thing!”

  Boys suppress feelings of rejection and loss also. One sixteen-year-old boy was told by his first girlfriend, after months of going together, that she didn’t love him anymore. “You feel sick,” confessed Cam. “But you just keep it inside. You don’t tell anybody about it. And, then, maybe after a while, it just sort of goes away.”

  “It must feel like such a terrible burden, though, being so alone with it,” I remarked.

  “Yep,” Cam sighed, fighting off tears. “But that’s what a guy has to do, isn’t it?”

  Jason, age fifteen, recently wrote the following in an essay about expressing feelings:

  If something happens to you, you have to say: “Yeah, no big deal,” even when you’re really hurting. . . . When it’s a tragedy�
��like my friend’s father died—you can go up to a guy and give him a hug. But if it’s anything less . . . you have to punch things and brush it off. I’ve punched so many lockers in my life, it’s not even funny. When I get home, I’ll cry about it.

  I believe, and my studies indicate, that many boys are eager to be heard and that we, as parents and professionals, must use all our resources to reach out and help them. As adults, we have both the power and perspective to see through the boys’ false front of machismo, especially when we know enough to expect it and to understand it for what it is—a way to look in-charge and cool.

  A four-year-old boy shrugs and tries to smile after he is hit in the eye with a baseball, while blinking back tears of pain. A ten-year-old boy whose parents have just divorced behaves so boisterously and entertainingly in class he’s branded the “class clown,” but underneath that bravado is a lot of suffering; he longs for the days when his parents were together and he didn’t need that kind of attention. A fourteen-year-old flips listlessly through a sports magazine while his school counselor discusses the boy’s poor conduct. When the counselor warns the boy that his behavior may well lead to failure and suspension from school—trying to discipline through shame, through a threat of rejection—the boy retorts, “So what?”

  Unfortunately, at times we all believe the mask because it fits so well and is worn so often it becomes more than just a barrier to genuine communication or intimacy. The tragedy is that the mask can actually become impossible to remove, leaving boys emotionally hollowed out and vulnerable to failure at school, depression, substance abuse, violence, even suicide.

  BOYS TODAY ARE FALLING BEHIND

  While it may seem as if we live in a “man’s world,” at least in relation to power and wealth in adult society we do not live in a “boy’s world.” Boys on the whole are not faring well in our schools, especially in our public schools. It is in the classroom that we see some of the most destructive effects of society’s misunderstanding of boys. Thrust into competition with their peers, some boys invest so much energy into keeping up their emotional guard and disguising their deepest and most vulnerable feelings, they often have little or no energy left to apply themselves to their schoolwork. No doubt boys still show up as small minorities at the top of a few academic lists, playing starring roles as some teachers’ best students. But, most often, boys form the majority of the bottom of the class. Over the last decade we’ve been forced to confront some staggering statistics. From elementary grades through high school, boys receive lower grades than girls. Eighth-grade boys are held back 50 percent more often than girls. By high school, boys account for two thirds of the students in special education classes. Fewer boys than girls now attend and graduate from college. Fifty-nine percent of all master’s degree candidates are now women, and the percentage of men in graduate-level professional education is shrinking each year.

  So, there is a gender gap in academic performance, and boys are falling to the bottom of the heap. The problem stems as much from boys’ lack of confidence in their ability to perform at school as from their actual inability to perform.

  When eighth-grade students are asked about their futures, girls are now twice as likely as boys to say they want to pursue a career in management, the professions, or business. Boys experience more difficulty adjusting to school, are up to ten times more likely to suffer from “hyperactivity” than girls, and account for 71 percent of all school suspensions. In recent years, girls have been making great strides in math and science. In the same period, boys have been severely lagging behind in reading and writing.

  BOYS’ SELF-ESTEEM—AND BRAGGING

  The fact is that boys’ self-esteem as learners is far more fragile than that of most girls. A recent North Carolina study of students in grades six to eight concluded that “Boys have a much lower image of themselves as students than girls do.” Conducted by Dr. William Purkey, this study contradicts the myth that adolescent boys are more likely than girls to see themselves as smart enough to succeed in society. Boys tend to brag, according to Purkey, as a “shield to hide deep-seated lack of confidence.” It is the mask at work once again, a façade of confidence and bravado that boys erect to hide what they perceive as a shameful sense of vulnerability. Girls, on the other hand, brag less and do better in school. It is probably no surprise that a recent U.S. Department of Education study found that among high school seniors fewer boys than girls expect to pursue graduate studies, work toward a law degree, or go to medical school.

  What we really need for boys is the same upswing in self-esteem as learners that we have begun to achieve for girls—to recognize the specialized academic needs of boys and girls in order to turn us into a more gender-savvy society.

  Overwhelmingly, recent research indicates that girls not only outperform boys academically but also feel far more confident and capable. Indeed the boys in my study reported, over and over again, how it was not “cool” to be too smart in class, for it could lead to being labeled a nerd, dork, wimp, or fag. As one boy put it, “I’m not stupid enough to sit in the front row and act like some sort of teacher’s pet. If I did, I’d end up with a head full of spitballs and then get my butt kicked in.” Just as girls in coeducational environments have been forced to suppress their voices of certainty and truth, boys feel pressured to hide their yearnings for genuine relationships and their thirst for knowledge. To garner acceptance among their peers and protect themselves from being shamed, boys often focus on maintaining their masks and on doing whatever they can to avoid seeming interested in things creative or intellectual. To distance themselves from the things that the stereotype identifies as “feminine,” many boys sit through classes without contributing and tease other boys who speak up and participate. Others pull pranks during class, start fights, skip classes, or even drop out of school entirely.

  SCHOOLS AND THE NEED FOR GENDER UNDERSTANDING

  Regrettably, instead of working with boys to convince them it is desirable and even “cool” to perform well at school, teachers, too, are often fooled by the mask and believe the stereotype; and this helps to make the lack of achievement self-fulfilling. If a teacher believes that boys who are not doing well are simply uninterested, incapable, or delinquent, and signals this, it helps to make it so. Indeed when boys feel pain at school, they sometimes put on the mask and then “act out.” Teachers, rather than exploring the emotional reasons behind a boy’s misconduct, may instead apply behavioral control techniques that are intended somehow to better “civilize” boys.

  Sal, a third-grader, arrived home with a note from his teacher. “Sal had to be disciplined today for his disruptive behavior,” the teacher had written. “Usually he is a very cooperative student, and I hope this behavior does not repeat itself.”

  Sal’s mother, Audrey, asked her son what he had done.

  “I was talking out of turn in class,” he said.

  “That’s it?” she asked. “And how did your teacher discipline you?”

  “She made me stay in during recess. She made me write an essay about why talking in class is disruptive and inconsiderate.” Sal hung his head.

  “I was appalled,” recalls Audrey. “If the teacher had spent one minute with my child, trying to figure out why he was behaving badly, this whole thing could have been avoided.” The teacher had known Sal to be “a very cooperative student.” It seems that, the night before, Sal had learned that a favorite uncle had been killed in a car crash. “I told my son that I understood that he was having a really hard day because of his uncle, but that, even so, it’s wrong to disrupt class. He was very relieved that I wasn’t mad,” Audrey said. “The episode made me think about how boys get treated in school. I think the teacher assumed that Sal was just ‘being a boy.’ And so, although what he really needed was a little understanding and extra attention instead she humiliated him. It reminded me to think about how Sal must be feeling when something like this happens, because he often won’t talk about what’s bothering him unless w
e prompt him to.”

  As a frequent guest in schools across the country, I have observed a practice I consider to be inappropriate, even dangerous—and based on a misunderstanding of boys. Elementary school teachers will offer the boys in their class a special “reward”—such as a better grade, an early recess, or an extra star on their good-behavior tally sheet—if the boys will not raise their hand more than once per class period. They find that some boys are so eager to talk and so boisterous in clamoring to be called on that their behavior disrupts the order of the classroom.

  High school teachers sometimes adopt the same practice with their adolescent boy students, particularly those who act up or talk out of turn in class. The teachers will let the boys leave early or take a short break from class if they demonstrate that they can keep quiet and “behave.” In other words, instead of trying to look behind the behavior to the real boy, to what is going on inside him, teachers assume a negative, and ask these boys to make themselves even more invisible and to suppress their genuine selves further. Ironically, they’re asking boys to act more like the old stereotype of the passive, “feminine” girl. The teachers may get what they want—a quiet classroom—but at what cost? Such approaches silence boys’ voices of resistance and struggle and individuality, and serve to perpetuate boys’ attention-seeking acts of irreverence.