Real Boys

by William Pollack

  I cannot stress enough that it’s not mothers who are crippling our boys’ masculinity—it’s society’s myths about manhood that are preventing boys from being seen and trained as whole human beings, men who can work effectively and live in close relationships with other people.

  Research actually shows that men who are able to develop their emotional lives more fully are physically and psychologically healthier than men who are not. For example, in a study conducted at Wellesley College, Rosalind Barnett found that young adult men with close relationships to their parents had lower levels of psychological distress. In addition, such men reported that they did not feel that their parents were too intrusive. Clearly, these men had found ways to continue relating closely with their parents and to rely on this closeness in a healthy way to succeed in their adult lives.

  Other Western cultures are now teaching us about interesting aspects of masculinity and the positive impact mothers may have on their sons. For instance, for adult sons in Italy, mammismo—meaning “being a mamma’s boy”—is not a mark of shame. According to the Italian National Statistics Institute, in 1997 over 58 percent of Italian “boys” between the ages of eighteen and thirty-four may live with their mothers. And these mothers and sons vehemently support their right to stay connected. As one young man argued: “It’s better to be loved at an older age than abandoned at an early age. . . . The kids who leave home at thirteen or fourteen in England are the ones missing something in terms of affection.” An Italian mother agrees: “The problems come more from a lack of affection than an excess of it. You don’t find people who are psychologically unbalanced because they got too much love or protection at home.”

  INTERDEPENDENCE: A DELICATE BALANCE

  BETWEEN PARENT AND SON

  In healthy mother-son relationships, there simply does not seem to be anything as too much love. Yes, some mothers and sons can potentially fall into a relationship in which parent and child vacillate between extremes of dependence and independence in an unhealthy way. But I believe most mothers and their sons are capable of creating strong, healthy relationships based instead on interdependence, the recognition that each of us has ties to and relies on other people but that each of us is also responsible for our own actions and selves. Parents simply need to be careful not to put their own needs and desires ahead of their son’s and not to attempt to manipulate his emotions—to guilt or shame him into doing what they want. Faced with a demanding and controlling parent, a son may feel he has no choice but to either knuckle under or move across country and forget to leave a forwarding address.

  In short, mothering—and fathering—involves striking a delicate balance between supporting a child and allowing him to grow on his own. A mother operates most effectively on instinct, on when to intervene and when to let go. The best guide, in almost every case, is the child himself. A mother naturally learns to read the child’s cues, remaining as a steady, secure base while the child negotiates the next step of independence. She doesn’t intrude when the child is doing well on his own. She doesn’t move away when the child reaches out for comfort. She doesn’t flee if he momentarily pushes her away. A mother’s best guide is her own knowledge of her child, gained through countless daily interactions.

  But this process of learning a healthy interdependence, which seems so simple in theory, may be quickly inhibited when our boy, and his mother, fall under the inevitable sway of the Boy Code. As we saw in Chapter 2, little Johnny Martin clearly still very much needed to lean on his mother, yet he was not allowed to need his mother on the first day of kindergarten. He was humiliated by the depth of a normal dependency that others, including all the experts, were telling him a five-year-oldshouldn’t have. And so what happens is that the boy himself begins to pull away from his mother. It’s not just that mother feels pressured by society to “let go” and does. A boy also feels this cultural pressure and he too may push mom—and many of the emotional skills she’s trying to teach him—far, far away. And so what should be a son’s process of learning a healthy interdependence becomes instead one of learning an abrupt, unhealthy, even traumatic independence. Because of the Boy Code, instead of teaching connection, we end up teaching disconnection.

  DIFFERENT STYLES AND LANGUAGES OF LOVE:

  TALKING VERSUS DOING

  Another result of the Boy Code is that boys, as we’ve seen, tend to develop their own style of showing their love and affection that is generally quite different from that of girls (and thus from that of their mothers). This is critical for a mom to remember because—though it may hardly look like what she would do to rekindle a relationship—a boy, even after a traumatic separation from her, may reach out to reconnect.

  He may do this, rather than asking for it, by seeking out his mother’s company in playful activities. As we’ve already discussed, a boy’s natural language is usually action language. He tends to be best at showing his love, affection, and empathy through action. Thus for boys who create friendships by doing things together, empathy and love can emerge simply from a shared game of baseball, a joint building project, or a walk around the block.

  Sometimes mothers may make the mistake of discounting such activities because they seem to involve little of the verbal intimacy—the talk—that most women prize. But many boys gain a significant sense of support and comfort from these activities. And, ideally, a mom is attuned to this fact.

  Which is why I believe mothers can learn to connect with their sons simply by hanging out and sharing an activity.

  “HOW CAN I GET HIM TO TALK TO ME?”: RECONNECTING

  THROUGH CAR THERAPY

  Gwen learned about boys’ relational styles quite accidentally. She had been saddened that David, her thirteen-year-old son, didn’t talk to her as openly as he used to, but she was stymied in her attempts to change that. One day when her husband was working late, she took on his job of driving David to hockey practice. In the car on the way home, after talking about the scrimmage, David started talking about his friends on the team and eventually wandered into a discussion about marijuana.

  Gwen was surprised when he opened up so much. “Something about the car,” she mused. “The darkness outside, the coziness inside, the way he could just stop talking and look out the window if he wanted to—all of it created a setting where he felt more comfortable talking.” From now on, she says, she makes sure she shares the driving duties with her husband. “It’s car therapy—for both of us,” she says, laughing.

  Many mothers find that if they engage in action-oriented activities with their sons, their boys begin to open up and talk. Claudia, for instance, spoke to me of her ten year-old Scott, who often comes home from school in what she refers to as a “really bad mood.” When he’s in one of these moods, she explains, “he just seems to want to turn on the TV and tune out from reality.” If she asks him what’s wrong, “he either ignores me or tells me to get lost.” But Claudia soon developed a strategy for getting Scott to share the feelings behind the mood. “I can usually get him to be much more expressive if I invite him to just do something with me. Like we’ll play Ping-Pong in our family room, go outside and throw a Frisbee, whatever. Once we get going, his mood seems to change. Lots of times, after we’ve been playing for a while, he’ll come over to me and start talking about stuff. He doesn’t always tell me everything that’s going on with him, but I often have the feeling he’s getting the emotional release he really needs.”

  THE TIMED-SILENC E SYNDROME OF BOYS

  Mothers are usually more willing to sit down and talk about their feelings, and so a boy’s relationship pattern might seem frustrating. But in fact the pattern can in some ways be anticipated and planned for. And it is different from what is typical for girls.

  The most challenging time for communication, the time when mothers and sons are most likely to disconnect (although in their hearts they may long to connect even more closely), is when a boy is hurting. I have found that when boys suffer a blow to their self-esteem or otherwise
feel sad or disappointed, they often follow a pattern that I call the “timed-silence syndrome.”

  A boy’s first reaction is to retreat and be alone to nurse his hurt. If a mother presses him with concerned questions at that point, it only intensifies his sense of shame and causes him to retreat further or more angrily. In many cases, it’s only after he has had time to sit with his own pain that he becomes ready to come back and talk about it. At that point his approach might be so subtle that his mother could easily miss it. And my studies show that if a parent misses that moment, the opportunity to connect about that episode might take a while to come around again.

  A caring mother could misunderstand this pattern. When her son walks into the house obviously upset about something, a sympathetic mom may immediately want to talk about it. When the boy says “Leave me alone,” she may feel rebuffed or she may push for connection when it simply won’t happen. Then, when the boy comes back to her and makes a cautious overture, indicating he might want to talk, she may miss his subtle cues, particularly if she’s still bothered by the previous rebuff, angry that her son was rude, frustrated that she doesn’t know how to help him. In fact, his initial gruff “Leave me alone” may simply be an indication of how badly he’s hurting and may really be an indirect call to his mother to be there for him—but later.

  MARIA AND CARLOS

  Maria Cortiz, a Boston mother who participated in my study, told me the following story:

  “Carlos came home one day and told me that he had lost a soccer game at school. In the past, whenever something like this happened, I tried to get him to talk about it. ‘Leave me be,’ he would tell me. ‘I don’t want to talk about this.’ I used to try to pressure him, but then he would get really mad, go into his room, and slam the door.”

  “So how did you handle things this time around?” I asked.

  “Well,” Maria continued, “this time I tried something else. I just said, ‘Sorry to hear that,’ and then waited for a chance to just hang out with him. After he took his shower and got into some fresh clothes, I asked him if he wanted to go take a walk and get some ice cream. We started walking together and making jokes about some of the goofy people on the street. When things felt comfortable, I simply said, ‘Hey, sorry the game didn’t work out today.’ ”

  “How did that go?” I asked.

  “I could not believe it,” Maria said, her eyes widening, her head nodding. “Carlos looked at me—you know, right in the face with those puppy-dog eyes of his—and said, ‘Ma, I feel so bad about it. I feel like such a failure.’ I gave him a big hug. I realized that the best way to get him to talk to me and tell what’s up for him is to just go out walking or something. From now on, that’s what I’m always going to do!”

  As Maria found out, boys often respond best to their mothers’ attempts at closeness when they can set the timing—when they’re free to follow a period of silence with one of action. Maria learned that she can’t push her son into talking when he doesn’t want to. And this is particularly true for adolescent boys, who feel a tremendous need for personal space and privacy. Mothers need to listen closely to a boy’s more subtle, action-oriented language and be available to talk on the boy’s schedule, not on their own.

  THE MOTHER TONGUE

  Of course, a woman’s more typical style of relating, through talk, is useful too. At times a mother will be able to bond with her son through sharing her feelings verbally, and her talent for this will serve a boy well. I think a mother should take every opportunity to teach her boy the “mother tongue” (as psychoanalyst Jim Herzog refers to it), gently pushing a boy to stretch his capacity to talk about feelings, a process that ideally starts when boys are very young. A mother might say, “I remember how awful I felt when I didn’t make the softball team. I felt like the biggest klutz.” Or a mother might take the opportunity to acknowledge uncomfortable feelings, such as sadness and shame, in everyday life, with a statement such as “I was so upset when my supervisor criticized me at the meeting today, in front of everyone.” In this way a mother demonstrates that sadness, shame, and vulnerability are natural, inevitable feelings, a part of living, and that they feel just a little less awful when they can be put into words and shared with a friend. Finally, a mother can often use her specialized skills to help her son find words to express his deepest feelings. So, for example, when her son comes home and punches the wall to relieve his anger, she might help him explore other feelings, such as sadness and disappointment, by asking, “Are you OK? Are you feeling disappointed about something? Could something be getting you down?”

  MOTHERS AND FATHERS—WORKING TOGETHER

  TO TRANSCEND THE STEREOTYPES

  Obviously, the best parenting of sons will be achieved when mothers and fathers transcend gender straitjackets in actions as well as words. Unfortunately, in real life, couples tend to split up roles, with each partner doing whatever he or she feels most comfortable with. This can lead to a pernicious pattern where mothers do more nurturing and daily care and fathers do more disciplining. The real problem with such a pattern is that it perpetuates the rigid gender stereotypes we hope to teach boys to overcome.

  One way gender stereotypes get stuck is that some mothers unconsciously play the role of gatekeeper, preventing a father from getting involved in parenting.

  NINA AND MARK

  When they entered counseling, Nina and Mark epitomized the dilemma of gatekeeping—a phenomenon we’ll discuss in greater detail in Chapter 6—with Nina complaining bitterly that Mark was not more involved with the children.

  Mark exploded: “What am I supposed to do? Every time I try to help, she tells me I’m not doing it right.”

  “What do you mean exactly?” I asked Mark.

  “For example,” he explained, “The other day I was trying to diaper the baby. The Velcro stuck to his leg and he gave a little squawk. In a flash Nina was there, scooping the baby out of my hands, asking, ‘What did you do to him?’ as if I were torturing him, for God’s sake.”

  “How did you respond to that?”

  “I left Nina and the baby and tried to help Matthew, our nine-year-old with his math homework, and before I knew it, she was criticizing that too, telling me I was helping too much and giving him all the answers. Whenever I do something, I can just see her in the background, wincing, as if I’m ruining the kids for life.”

  “Do you feel you do have an important role with the boys?” I asked.

  “The only thing she lets me do is be the bad guy. I come home and she tells me I have to talk to Matthew about his manners. Why can’t she do it?”

  “You’re his father,” Nina responded. “You know how to talk to boys better than I do.”

  In this case, we had to address Nina’s strong desire to be the perfect mother to her children. She was a professional woman who had chosen to stay home with her two boys, and it was hard for her to admit that her husband, who saw his children only in the evenings and weekends, could be as good a parent as she was. And in truth, she was quite right when she said that Mark was not as skilled at physically taking care of a baby or at reading his older child’s emotional needs.

  Mark, in turn, finally realized that sometimes he colluded with Nina, playing dumb at child care, so she would take over and let him return to his newspaper. We emphasized that Mark had the right—and the need—to learn his own style of interacting with his children. Over several weeks, Nina learned to ask Mark for help with the children, and then to be less hypervigilant about how he accomplished it. They found it worked best when Nina physically left the room, so she wasn’t wincing and shrugging in the background and, also, so that Mark had no possibility of getting help. He struggled through on his own and found he enjoyed the sense of accomplishment and intimacy that resulted.

  Nina and Mark also had to address what they had learned from their own families about parents’ roles. Nina’s father had been a strict, distant man. She remembered her father would yell and punish her, and afterward she could al
ways run to her mother for a hug and cuddle. She realized she was replicating that pattern, which allowed her to always be the good, loving parent, by forcing Mark into being the authority figure. But this ultimately undermined his ability to be intimate with his children. Mark, in turn, resented playing the role of authority figure because his own father had been so ineffectual. When Mark’s father was home, which was rare, he had read a book to the children or kissed them good-night so absentmindedly that Mark wasn’t sure he even knew which child he was dealing with. Mark’s mother had run the house with a firm hand. So Mark really felt, subconsciously, that Nina should take care of all discipline problems.

  Nina and Mark were able to recognize these patterns and gradually work to improve them. Nina learned to set limits more effectively. Mark learned to take a greater role in all areas of parenting. Of course, they did not magically become equal partners. Nina will always have a somewhat fierce protectiveness of her sons, as compared with Mark’s lackadaisical style. Changing one’s typical style takes constant work. In their case, as in many others, the reward for the work is a greater sense of comradeship as parents and a greater sense of intimacy with their children. In addition, the boys are learning something about appropriate gender roles—i.e., that both mother and father can be responsible for nurturing and setting limits. Such modeling will help the boys keep an open mind toward gender roles.

  Parents should discuss issues of masculinity and agree in principle on how to raise their sons, but they need not worry if they don’t do things exactly the same way. As Nina and Mark show, parents can have very different styles. A son can get different things from each parent, ultimately learning more.