Real Boys

by William Pollack

  We need to develop a new code for real boys, gender-informed schools, and a more gender-savvy society where both boys and girls are drawn out to be themselves.

  If we want boys to become more empathic, we must be more empathic toward them.

  THE POTENCY OF CONNECTION—A NEW CODE FOR BOYS AND GIRLS

  Growing up as a boy brings its own special difficulties, but the good news is that boys can and do overcome them when and if they feel connected to their families, friends, and communities. My research demonstrates that despite society’s traumatizing pressure on boys to disconnect from their vulnerable inner selves, many, if not most, boys maintain an inner wellspring of emotional connectedness, a resilience, that helps to sustain them. Sometimes these affective ties are formed with special male friends—boys’ “chumships.” Boys may also forge empathic and meaningful friendships with girls and young women, relationships that are often platonic.

  The fact is that boys experience deep subliminal yearnings for connection—a hidden yearning for relationship—that makes them long to be close to parents, teachers, coaches, friends, and family. Boys are full of love and empathy for others and long to stay “attached” to their parents and closest mentors. These yearnings, in turn, can empower parents and professionals to become more deeply connected to the boys in their lives, much as Professor Carol Gilligan at Harvard and researchers at the Stone Center Group at Wellesley College have so eloquently advocated we do for girls. This intense power to connect of parents and others is part of the “potency of connection” that needs to be at the heart of a revised real-boy code. Through the potency of connection a boy can be helped to become himself, to grow into manhood in his own individual way—to be fully the “real boy” we know he is.

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  STORIES OF SHAME AND THE

  HAUNTING TRAUMA OF SEPARATION:

  HOW WE CAN CONNECT WITH BOYS

  AND CHANGE THE “BOY CODE”

  “It’s really hard being a guy,” fifteen-year-old Calvin Branford recently explained to me, “because you’re really expected not to talk about your feelings. You’ve got to deal with everything yourself. 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!”

  JOHNNY: THE TRAUMA OF SEPARATION AND SHAMING A BOY

  Johnny Martin was a boy of not quite five years of age who went for his first day in kindergarten. He was one of the smaller boys in the class. I spied him across a crowded room of five- and six-year-olds, all accompanied by their parents on this first day at a public primary school in a middle-class, educationally sophisticated suburb.

  The voice of the school principal came over the loudspeaker with a special greeting to all the new kindergarten students. He reminded them of the school’s core principles: learning, respect for self and others, and diversity. Parents and children alike seemed too dazed and confused by this momentous occasion to take in much of this. My ears perked up when he said that all parents would be expected to leave at the ten-minute bell, but for today, and this day only, parents could stay with their kindergartners for five extra minutes to say good-bye. I guess that’s when Johnny really came into view. He began to cling to his mother, and she with great animation was whispering something I could not hear.

  I understood from past painful experience that a child would do fine if he or she could let go of his mother at his own pace, be allowed to remain connected for as long as necessary each day or until he was ready to make the developmental leap of separation on his own.

  Johnny was not so lucky. Surrounded by a group of five boys who couldn’t wait to start playing with the trucks and crayons, Johnny stuck out like a sore thumb, a sensitive and still very young boy who wasn’t ready quite yet to let go, who feared separation from his mother.

  When the bell rang, most of the parents drifted away, leaving only those who seemed to know from experience that their kids would need them to be there for a while longer or some parents who probably just felt deep inside it was wrong to go quite yet. I asked the mother of another little boy, Sean, who was playing enthusiastically but continuing to look over his shoulder to see if his mommy was still there, what she thought.

  “I don’t know much about these things, but Sean just looks like he needs to be with me some more, so I’m staying,” she said.

  Johnny’s mother was more confused. She looked to Rachel, Johnny’s teacher, who offered the traditional prescription: “A clean break and he’ll be OK.”

  The mother whispered to Johnny, “Now, be a big boy—not like your crybaby little sister—and you’ll be fine.” With misty eyes, she kissed him on the head and started to leave. But before she reached the door, Johnny started to cry—his wailing could be heard all the way down the hall in the office of Mr. Bartlett, the school’s principal. In a flash he was on the scene, and suggested that Ms. Friedland, the school nurse, get involved.

  Ms. Friedland, a woman in her late fifties, came and advised that Rachel would need to be stricter with the students.

  “You’ll learn, Rachel, that setting a firm limit is the best thing, especially for boys!”

  When Rachel asked, “Why boys?” Ms. Friedland delivered a perfect summary of the Boy Code. “Separation is hard for girls,” she explained with authority, “since they’re so close to their mothers. Boys, however, have to be more independent or their peers will call them sissies and make fun of them. It’s our job to help boys deal with this, especially if their mothers haven’t done it themselves.” She glanced at Johnny’s mother. “You don’t want Johnny to become overdependent, do you?” she asked. “Let’s see if we can get him to handle things on his own.”

  Now that the “experts” were involved, Johnny’s mother was told that she could feel free to leave. Johnny was still crying, though less frantically, and as the nurse began to read him a story, Mom left.

  Later that week, when I had the chance to observe the classroom again, I asked Rachel how things were going. “Well, some parents wait to leave until their kids give them a signal that they’re ready to be on their own,” she explained. “Most of these kids have adjusted beautifully, and each day they let their parents go sooner. I wish I could say the same for all the other kids. Some of the boys, especially those who were so brave on the first day, spend a good deal of time crying for their mothers, and I have to comfort them, often in a group.”

  “What about Johnny Martin?” I asked.

  “You’ll see for yourself in a minute. . . . I’ve got to get ready for the class.”

  The bell rang and almost all the parents scattered. Sean’s mother was still staying behind, and now was enlisted in comforting some of the other boys who looked sad when their dads and moms left the room at 9:05. I heard what at first I thought to be a loud coughing noise in the corner, and when I turned around, I saw Johnny Martin, isolated from his classmates on the side of the room, vomiting into a small wastepaper basket.

  “What’s the matter, Rachel?” I asked.

  “He’s been doing that every day after his mother leaves—crying and throwing up!”

  “What did the school nurse have to say?”

  “Well, Ms. Friedland thinks he’s ‘overattached to his mother,’ that if this disruption continues, he may need a special class or therapeutic counseling.” As we spoke, Johnny kept vomiting, and the class fell silent as if awed by the sight. There and then I broke a vow I had made to myself—never to give a teacher advice when I was only invited to “observe” his or her classroom—but Johnny was traumatized and Rachel, a novice at her job but empathic at heart, knew something was wrong. I explained that vomiting was a stage two response to unbearable separation, an escalation from the crying that had led to no adequate response, and that next might come a more dangerous withdrawal. Then the nurse and principal would have a self-fulfilling prophecy of a “
special needs” boy on their hands. I told Rachel that all kids separate at their own rates and that boys need not be pushed to separate more quickly than girls. At first I worried about the impact of my blunt comments, but Rachel’s response reassured me.

  She breathed a sigh of relief, and when Ms. Friedland came to check in, Rachel told her that since the present plan wasn’t working, and since it was her classroom, she would try a technique of her own. Johnny’s mother would be invited back and would stay until her child felt more comfortable—and felt less pressure—to separate.

  A month later I saw Rachel again. “Thanks for your advice,” she said. “It worked wonderfully. Johnny’s mother felt less guilty, Johnny seemed more self-assured, and after about ten days he let his mom leave without any fuss. Now if I can only get up the courage as a second-year teacher to confront Mr. Bartlett and Ms. Friedland about this policy and the needs of the boys in my class, I’ll be all set.”

  THE BOY CODE: FOUR INJUNCTIONS

  Boys learn the Boy Code in sandboxes, playgrounds, schoolrooms, camps, churches, and hangouts, and are taught by peers, coaches, teachers, and just about everybody else. In the “Listening to Boys’ Voices” study, even very young boys reported that they felt they must “keep a stiff upper lip,” “not show their feelings,” “act real tough,” “not act too nice,” “be cool,” “just laugh and brush it off when someone punches you.” These boys were not referring to subtle suggestions about how they “might” comport themselves. Rather, they were invoking strict rules they had absorbed about how they “must” behave, rules that most of them seemed to genuinely fear breaking.

  Relying on well-known research, Professors Deborah David and Robert Brannon divided these kinds of do-or-die rules, or “injunctions,” boys follow into four basic stereotyped male ideals or models of behavior. These four imperatives are at the heart of the Boy Code.

  The “sturdy oak.” Men should be stoic, stable, and independent. A man never shows weakness. Accordingly, boys are not to share pain or grieve openly. Boys are considered to have broken this guideline, for instance, if they whimper, cry, or complain—or sometimes even if they simply ask for an explanation in a confusing or frightening situation. As one boy in the “Voices” study put it: “If somebody slugs you in the face, probably the best thing you could do is just smile and act like it didn’t hurt. You definitely shouldn’t cry or say anything.” The “sturdy oak” requirement drains boys’ energy because it calls upon them to perform a constant “acting job”—to pretend to be confident when they may feel afraid, sturdy when they may feel shaky, independent when they may be desperate for love, attention, and support.

  “Give ’em hell” This is the stance of some of our sports coaches, of roles played by John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, and Bruce Lee, a stance based on a false self, of extreme daring, bravado, and attraction to violence. This injunction stems largely from the myth that “boys will be boys” (more on such myths later)—the misconception that somehow boys are biologically wired to act like macho, high-energy, even violent supermen. This is the Boy Code requirement that leads many boys to “dare” each other to engage in risky behaviors and that causes some parents to simply shrug their shoulders if their sons injure themselves or others.

  The “big wheel” This is the imperative men and boys feel to achieve status, dominance, and power. Or, understood another way, the “big wheel” refers to the way in which boys and men are taught to avoid shame at all costs, to wear the mask of coolness, to act as though everything is going all right, as though everything is under control, even if it isn’t. This Boy Code imperative leads many boys and men to push themselves excessively at academic or career-related work, often in an effort to repress feelings of failure or unhappiness.

  “No sissy stuff” Perhaps the most traumatizing and dangerous injunction thrust on boys and men is the literal gender straitjacket that prohibits boys from expressing feelings or urges seen (mistakenly) as “feminine”—dependence, warmth, empathy. According to the ideal of “no sissy stuff,” such feelings and behaviors are taboo. Rather than being allowed to explore these emotional states and activities, boys are prematurely forced to shut them out, to become self-reliant. And when boys start to break under the strain, when nonetheless they display “feminine” feelings or behaviors, they are usually greeted not with empathy but with ridicule, with taunts and threats that shame them for their failure to act and feel in stereotypically “masculine” ways. And so boys become determined never to act that way again—they bury those feelings.

  And so in several fundamental ways the Boy Code affects the ability of boys and adults to connect.

  First, it separates boys from their parents too early, before most boys are actually emotionally prepared for it. When boys encounter some of early childhood’s most trying times—when they sleep alone in a crib for the first time, are sent away for two weeks of summer camp, or separate from their parents for the first day of kindergarten—they are often being pushed toward pseudo-independence before they’re really ready.

  Yet when boys rebel against this push to separate—when they cry, get injured, or tell friends that they’d rather stay at home than go outside and play—society’s Boy Code makes them feel ashamed of themselves. Shame haunts many boys all their lives, undermining their core of self-confidence, eroding their fragile self-esteem, leaving them with profound feelings of loneliness, sadness, and disconnection. Moreover, it affects our ability to fully connect with our boys.

  Even when boys appear sad or afraid, our culture lets them know in no uncertain terms that they had better toughen up and “tough it out” by themselves. The feelings boys are forced to repress become so troubling that some boys may show the apparent symptoms of attention deficit disorder and serious conduct disorders, become depressed, and—when they’re older—turn to alcohol or drugs. Indeed, the same kind of shame that silences adolescent girls from expressing their true voice affects boys at a much younger age—at the age of five or six.

  But the good news, I also believe, is that neither boys nor the adults who care for them need to live by these rules. Boys can rebel against them and revise the code for boys and girls so that they can experience a broad range of feelings and behaviors. Parents do not have to resist their deepest feelings for their sons or let myths about boys overwhelm the wisdom of their own instincts. Together we can unlearn the Boy Code. Together we can insist on enjoying close, emotionally rich relationships, based on connection instead of disconnection.

  ROGER: BOOT CAMP FOR LONELINESS AND SHAME

  Roger’s mother sent him to a three-week “sleep away” summer camp program for the first time. “I guess I wasn’t really thinking about how hard it might be for him to be away from me at age seven,” his mother, Jaye Waters, explained. “Later, when I thought more about it, I realized I would never have been ready for that at his age. I guess I thought a boy would like to have an ‘independent’ adventure on his own. As a single parent, I was really looking forward to a few weeks to myself. I forgot that he is as attached to me as I was to my mother when I was seven years old.”

  Roger was miserable from the moment his mom dropped him off at the camp. “I didn’t know anybody. I kept looking at my mom’s picture, but it wasn’t enough. I hated camp,” Roger told me tearfully.

  Jaye saved the heart-wrenching letter Roger mailed on his third day there. “Dear Mom,” it read, “I hate it here. The food makes me throw up. Nothing we do is fun. I am crying every day because I miss you so much. I think of you all the time. I know you love me so please come get me right now. Love, Your Son.”

  “I considered driving the three hours to get him that day, but I decided to wait until visiting day over the weekend. I wanted to make sure he wouldn’t get used to it and start liking it after a few more days,” Jaye explained. “I tried to call on the phone, but the camp director explained it would be better to let him ‘tough it out.’ ”

  Roger came back with her that Saturday. “I’ll never k
now how damaging it was to him to be there for that whole week. I hope that he got something out of it, but I’m afraid all he got was a lot of pain that probably nobody would have expected him to put up with if he were a girl. . . . I realize some separations can be painful and are necessary for kids, but it was just too soon and nobody saw it—not even the supposed expert of a camp director!”

  “I don’t ever want to go to camp again,” Roger maintains. “I’d rather just hang around here while my mom goes to work, than go anyplace else.”

  PREMATURE SEPARATION—THE TRAUMA OF BOYHOOD

  Both Roger Waters and Johnny Martin were suffering the trauma of premature separation, the source of much of their pain today—the disconnection they feel and their fear of being shamed. For all of society’s mandates to boys to act like invulnerable superheroes, among all the subtle messages given to boys to downplay their sadness and pain, premature separation is the deepest hurt of all.

  At the heart of society’s beliefs about boys are the ideas that, early on, boys need to achieve “masculine autonomy” and that even today this is a prerequisite for a boy’s healthy psychological development.

  Since young boys are taught that staying close to their mothers is something shameful, one of their natural responses is to turn to their fathers for love. Yet for some boys, mother may offer a special kind of nurturing, loving interaction that even the most caring father may not be able to replicate. And for many other boys, father may simply not be there to meet them. Fathers often work long hours, tend to leave parenting to the mother, or are not able to nurture their sons’ emotional development. Many fathers want to be there for their sons, but fear that doing so will only bring their sons further shame or distress. In a later chapter I’ll have more to say about the empathic relationships of fathers and sons.