Real Boys

by William Pollack

  THE BENEFITS OF FATHER-SON ENTHRALLMENT: LEARNING

  HOW TO READ ANOTHER’S EMOTIONS

  While perhaps some of this fatherly rough-and-tumble play—what Harvard psychiatrist Jim Herzog calls “kamikaze play”—drives mothers up the wall, research shows that such father play, or enthrallment, has many developmental benefits because it forces children—and this is especially significant for young boys—to learn to regulate and tolerate their feelings when interacting with a different special caregiver, to identify these feelings more clearly, and to adapt to a variety of complex social situations.

  How does this learning occur? A father’s playful and vigorous type of play forces a boy to learn to read his father’s emotions. Is dad joking or is he seriously in the mood to roughhouse? a boy might ask himself, closely observing his father’s facial expressions and body language to figure out his father’s mood. Then, too, by playing with his father, a boy is prodded to learn how to communicate his own fluctuating emotional states to adults and to other children. Is this roughhousing going too far for me? he may ask himself. If so, the boy may begin to cry. Is this getting boring? he might ask instead. If so, the boy may withdraw to signal that he needs more stimulation.

  And perhaps most important, through interactions with father, a boy learns to “listen” to his own inner emotional states, identifying which ones are overwhelming, out of control, tolerable, or intolerable.

  EMOTIONAL MANAGEMENT

  Dad play, then, leads to important emotional mastery skills. As a father coaxes a son to cope with interactions that test his limits and stretch him emotionally, the boy starts to feel empowered to effect change in his environment by analyzing what he is feeling and then communicating these feelings to his parents and others.

  As nine-year-old Bradley, a boy in my recent study, explained: “My dad and I play rough and horse around; and sometimes we wrestle and then one of us has to just give up—has to stop. Sometimes it’s me and sometimes I’ll be laughing and sometimes I’ll be crying. But it’s good because then at school I’m not afraid of anybody or anything; and I know when I’m going too far!”

  These early father-son lessons in emotion management can actually be of lifelong importance. They have been linked to later capacities in the boy to manage frustrations, explore novel circumstances, and persevere in academic problem-solving. Even more important, they have been tied, by Ross Parke and others, to the ability older boys have to master “social encounters” and to better handle interpersonal strife with communication skills and cooperation rather than with fighting. To put it simply: that roughhousing between father and son that may make mom cringe is actually the rudimentary beginning of a boy’s management of his aggression and his ability to substitute emotional mastery and mutual cooperation for violent interaction. As Jay Belsky at Penn State University—a pioneer researcher on the impact fathers have on their children—has quipped: “If Adam had been a better father, things would have turned out differently for Cain and Abel.”

  FATHERS AND SONS: EMPATHIC RELATIONSHIPS

  In addition to teaching critical emotional management skills, fathers—through the warm, playful, empathic relationships they forge with their sons—imbue boys with an important sense of safety and well-being that bolsters a boy’s feelings of masculine self-confidence. As twelve year-old Jackson told me: “I have to go to these ‘extra help’ reading classes at school on Saturdays. I don’t think I need those stupid classes. But when my dad drives me there and waits until I’m done, I really don’t mind going as much.” Or as seven-year-old Tommy explained: “I like it best when my dad comes to my Little League games because he cheers for me and then I feel like I’ve hit a home run, even if I strike out!”

  Feeling empathy for a child, studies show, seems to come naturally to most dads. Though they may express it differently than mothers do, studies show that many fathers feel deep empathy for their sons and want to stay closely connected to them. This was not always believed to be the case. For instance, in early studies that measured how fathers and mothers reacted when a baby began to cry, mothers seemed more sensitive and caring than fathers did in how they responded to the crying infant. But in recent studies that look at biological (rather than behavioral) markers of empathic response—factors such as heart rate and rhythm, changes in blood pressure, skin responsivity, and so on—researchers have found that when responding to the urgent cries of a young infant, there are no differences between how men and women react. Though women may behave on the outside as though they are more thoughtful and concerned about their baby’s feelings than men are (or at least may be perceived by researchers in this way), in reality both men and women have a full range of biologically based empathic reactions toward their sons.

  Because of the way we as a society view boys and men, when they act in a way that is open, caring, or expressive, many fathers, especially in public settings, may feel inhibited about showing the empathy they naturally feel for their sons. So, on the surface, it may seem as though fathers just can’t be as close to their sons as mothers often are. Yet in my twenty years of work with fathers and sons, what is most striking is the genuine and profound feeling that boys and fathers have for each other throughout their lives. I believe that boys and their fathers both feel immense natural empathy for one another and yearn to develop closer, more connected relationships.

  As twelve-year-old Marco expressed it, “I like going to school every day. But what I love the most is going to my house, doing my homework with my mom, and then—then I wait for my father to come home. When my dad walks in the door, it’s always a really special feeling.”

  Jack, a father in one of my studies, put it this way: “When my boss makes me stay late at work, I just hate it. I can’t stand the feeling of missing out on one extra moment of seeing my son, on being able to go home to play with him and then see that special glimmer in his eye when I tuck him into bed.”

  Or as twelve-year-old Tyler Williams said when asked to describe whom he turns to when he’s feeling unhappy, “I’ve got a couple of pretty good friends who I can count on for some of the small things. But when something big comes up or I’m feeling really down, I go to the one guy who really understands and who can really help—and that’s my dad.”

  Just as boys yearn for the special kind of companionship and nurturing that many fathers provide, their fathers, in turn, long for the chance to coach and educate their sons, participate closely in their emotional lives, and, through intimate connection with their boys, perhaps achieve the loving responsiveness that they may have lacked in their earlier relationships with their own fathers. Within our current social and family contexts, however, for a variety of reasons these natural, mutual longings sometimes remain unfulfilled or only partially satisfied. Yet my research shows that many fathers and sons are discovering new ways to forge close, active, caring relationships.

  “HERE I AM!”: THE GENERATIVE FATHER

  Fathers have a natural ability (as mothers do) to be what Erik Erikson, the well-known psychoanalyst, called “generative.” The generative father is one who cares a lot about the next generation, who wants to help guide his children and give them what they need to be productive, creative, and happy. The generative father enjoys being needed by his children and thrives on giving them what they require. Although some fathers may focus their generative impulses more traditionally toward working hard and striving for financial and professional success for the family, many fathers also apply their generative efforts toward developing close, attached, deeply loving relationships with their daughters and sons.

  When I think about the importance of fathers and the emotional connections they can share with their sons, I recall the biblical father-son pair of Abraham and his firstborn son, Isaac. Coming late in Abraham’s life, through the intercession of Sarah’s prayers to God, Isaac represents a much loved and special son, the inheritor of all the future promises to the Hebrews, and the beginning of a paternal line that leads from the Old
Testament into the Christian world of the New.

  Although the story is still read today as testimony to a man’s faith in his God, as reflecting the monotheistic ethic of ending human sacrifice on behalf of God, it also could symbolize the bonds between fathers and their sons. While Abraham’s love for Isaac was tested by God, in the end Abraham and Isaac—father and son—were reunited in a profound and meaningful way.*

  A beautiful poetic phrase, used repeatedly in the ancient Hebrew text, when God calls upon Abraham to be his spiritual son, is the reply “Heneini—here I am.” On another level, Abraham, more than just responding to God, is announcing to Isaac, his one and only son, “Heneini—here I am!”; and perhaps today, in quite a similar way, most fathers are trying to let their sons know that they are there, ready to love, comfort, and protect them.

  And recent statistics reflect that’s what fathers want. In a large poll recently conducted by Newsweek magazine, 55 percent of men interviewed felt that parenting was more significant to them than it had been to their own fathers; and while over 60 percent felt they did it better than their dads, 20 percent said their fathers did it “much better.” Seventy percent said they spend more time with their children than their fathers did with them; and 86 percent of the mothers who shared parenting responsibilities with these men rated them as doing a “good” or “very good” job at parenting.

  As these findings indicate, not only do most fathers today want to be close to their sons, they are close to them. Fathers also seem to feel more confident about these emotional bonds and to have the support of their wives in making them. My research shows that now more than ever before, contemporary fathers are putting aside old ways of passive fathering, turning with confidence toward their sons, and crying out loudly and clearly: “Heneini—here I am!” This is the pronouncement of the generative father, the father who rejoices in the need he shares with his son for love and connection.

  THE LASTING DADDY EFFECT

  A boy whose father stays close to him during infancy and early childhood benefits from this fundamental father-son connection for a lifetime. Studies show that a father’s empathy and his involvement with his son at early stages pays off all through a boy’s life—especially during the turbulent years of adolescence. We know from the work of Leslie Brody at Boston University, for example, that when fathers are actively involved in their sons’ lives, the boys turn out to be less aggressive, less overly competitive, and better able to express feelings of vulnerability and sadness. Brody’s research suggests that boys with active, caring fathers don’t feel the need to act out or show aggression in order to win their fathers’ love and attention. It also suggests that boys with such fathers observe how their dads handle various life situations and thus learn how to deal with such situations thoughtfully and appropriately. Hardesty and her research group at Morehead State University in Kentucky corroborated these findings with a sample of boys followed from ages seven through twenty-two. Fathers who were “close and nurturing” had adolescent boys who had more flexible attitudes about gender and life. First-grade boys whose fathers participated in their care showed greater capacity for empathy in a study conducted at Santa Clara University; and in a study of preschool children and their fathers in Alabama, fathers who were closely involved in the nurturing of their children were shown to have sons with increased self-esteem and low incidence of depression.

  The profound and lasting impact of fathers upon their sons’ emotional lives has also been demonstrated by several longitudinal studies—studies conducted with the same group of boys and men over decades. In work done by Robert Sears, young men who at the age of twenty-three were best able to compromise to resolve conflicts were the ones whose fathers were most sharing in their care at the age of five. As adults, this group of the “well-fathered” boys also showed the effects of their fathers’ early parenting when their capacity for empathy was assessed at age thirty-one and the health of their social relationships and capacity for intimacy was evaluated in their forties.

  Along similar lines, the Glueck Study, first undertaken over four decades ago with 240 fathers and their sons in the Boston area (and later followed by John Snarey at Harvard) demonstrated that fathers who were supportive of their sons’ “social and emotional development” during their sons’ first ten years of life had boys who excelled in high school and college; and when fathers kept up this nurturing through adolescence, their sons’ career success was also influenced positively. Indeed, it was virtually impossible for fathers to be “too involved” with their sons—barring any overt misuse of the time together. The more time the fathers stayed close to their boys, the better the boys did.

  A DIFFERENT WAY OF RELATING: LOVE THROUGH ACTION

  Because in the past relatively few men had fathers who participated actively in their day-to-day emotional development as children, it is hard for many of them to know exactly how to initiate a close relationship with their own sons. Many fathers I talk to feel passionately about getting involved with their sons but wonder about the best way to get started. They feel love and empathy for them but feel nervous or unsure about how to convey these feelings.

  But fathers—and, as we’ve discussed, this is often true for mothers too—are often most effective when they simply join in their sons’ activities. Whether the son is hammering a nail, cleaning a very dirty car, or printing and collating multiple sections of an overdue term paper, many boys enjoy the feeling of doing something requiring a good deal of energy—working hard or accomplishing a difficult task—with the help and support of their fathers. Fathers, I have found, often discover they can most effectively tap into boys’ emotional worlds by joining their sons in this kind of work-related, goal-oriented activity or supporting them in their efforts. Because our society places tremendous emphasis on the conventional female approach of bonding verbally by sharing feelings through words, we often lose sight of what my research illuminates—that fathers frequently show that they care and nurture their sons through action. Young boys, for instance, love the intimate sharing and camaraderie in helping dad to change a younger sibling’s diaper, going outside and throwing a football, shopping together for a saxophone, and so on. Older boys enjoy being together with their fathers, for instance, on a long bike ride, at a movie, or on a Sunday-morning mission to prepare a surprise soup-to-nuts brunch for the whole family. The specific activity does not matter so much as the connection that develops through sharing in an action together. While words and emotions may be exchanged openly, many times it’s just being “at the same time at the same place” and doing some activity together that help father and son grow close to one another.

  THE ACTION-ORIENTED LANGUAGE OF FATHERLY LOVE

  Especially during the stormy period of boys’ adolescence a dad’s capacity to “hang in” with his son and remain active in a boy’s daily activities makes all the difference. In an eleven-year study that followed boys beginning at ages seven to eleven through ages eighteen to twenty-two, the more shared activities a boy had with his father, the more education he completed; and the closer the emotional bond between father and son, the lower was the incidence of social delinquency. Indeed this study showed that fathers had more of an effect on their teenage sons in their academic and social functioning than mothers did, and boys reported receiving greater emotional support from fathers than mothers in well-functioning two-parent families.

  By contrast, when D’Angelo and colleagues at Case Western Reserve studied over eighty adolescent boys, they found that boys with fathers who had the poorest self-control—boys with fathers who easily lost their tempers or who frequently acted out in impulsive ways—demonstrated significant difficulties in almost all areas of their lives. These boys had problems doing well at school (or showing up to school), were poor at resolving conflicts in an appropriate way, and found it difficult to get along with their peers. They also tended to have problems with drugs and alcohol, were relatively inept at handling intimate relationships, and tended to b
e sexually promiscuous.

  Fathers provide a flexible surface for their sons to bounce off, a play space with elastic but firm limits, a secure sense of love expressed not just in words but through actions. When they refrain from disciplining their sons in heavy-handed ways and from emotionally overreacting to the inevitable provocations boys use to test their emerging masculinity, fathers can neutralize their sons’ rebelliousness and teach boys (and often mothers too) an action-oriented language of fatherly love.

  A bright and sassy thirteen-year-old has a prickly debate with his father, a fifteen-year-old argues about curfew, a seventeen-year-old tears through the house yelling and screaming about his girlfriend and cursing under his breath. Before all hell breaks loose for any of these boys his dad grabs him up and says, “Hey, let’s go out back and shoot some baskets.” To all of this potential aggression spinning out of control, the involved and nurturing dad will provide a loving “holding environment.” He will goodnaturedly maintain reasonable expectations and express his love through action.

  BOYS AND NONVERBAL LOVE

  In addition to doing things together with his son, with genuine camaraderie, a father can also convey his love by doing things for his son, through nonverbal gestures. As Jerome, a forty-nine-year-old African American man and the father of two boys, reminisced about his own father: “We never really said much at all . . . because my father was never much of a talker. It was what he did that mattered. I remember that when I was younger, sometimes I’d get all balled up about something, really unable to do anything but go to my room and cry. Soon after my retreat, I’d hear a knock on the door and I’d know it was Dad.”