Real Boys

by William Pollack

  Societal attitudes also contribute to the relative negative consequences of divorce. Society shares grief over the death of a parent and may even make an exception to the Boy Code by allowing a boy to cry and express feelings of sadness and loss. For the most part, however, we expect the boy—especially the adolescent boy—to endure a parent’s death with stoicism and a stiff upper lip. Think of Prince Harry as he marched behind Lady Diana’s hearse, his face calm and emotionless. But what was he thinking and feeling inside?

  Society, in my opinion, is far less accepting of divorce—despite its prevalence—and is even less likely to accommodate a boy’s feelings about it. The divorced family is often viewed as an unsuccessful one, and seems to pose a threat to intact families, especially those that may be having problems of their own. Other parents aren’t sure of what to say to divorcing parents, whom to take sides with, or how to relate to the children involved. Often the result is that neighbors and friends say very little. They don’t deliver hot cooked meals, as they might after a death. They don’t go out of their way to call on the divorcing family, as they would attend a grieving family. And so a boy may feel yet another disconnection—this time from his community.

  For many boys, the only way to handle the seething emotions involved in divorce is to express them through action, as they do in many other contexts, as we have discussed. They will throw and hit and break things. They will get involved in fights at school and in the neighborhood. They will yell and play loudly. They will refuse to go to bed, refuse to go to school, refuse to do whatever a parent asks. They will step on ants, pull branches off trees, skateboard off high jumps, steal things from the local convenience store, set fires, rip their clothes, get lost in the woods, spit on the sidewalk, throw rocks at windows, play game after video game of mayhem and violence, lose their homework, talk back to a teacher, and commit a thousand other acts that look like those of a “bad kid” but are actually the cries of a boy in pain. Or, as I’ve said, a boy may take the opposite of action. He may withdraw, stop talking, retreat to his room, lie for hours on the couch, shoot a thousand paper wads into his wastebasket, wander around the house, watch excessive amounts of television, put on his headphones and listen to music all day long, stand by the window and stare into space.

  These actions—or a boy’s failure to act—can indeed be read like a barometer of a boy’s feelings. The more extreme his behavior, the greater his pain is likely to be.

  SINGLE-PARENT FAMILIES: MOTHERS

  The majority of boys of divorce who live in single-parent households live with their mothers, and a vast majority of those are in the sole custody of their mother, with little or no contact with their father. With a lot of hard work and dedication, a mother can successfully raise a boy without a father in the picture, and even mentor a boy who has no significant male figure in this life. But the relationship of mother and son is very different from that of father and son, and it can take time for a mother to understand in what ways it is different and to adjust to them.

  When Ron was nine, his mother left his father, after many months of arguing, counseling, reconciliation, and renewed bitterness. Finally, after another argument that covered the same old emotional territory, Ron’s father stormed out of the house and his mother reached the end of her tolerance. She packed up Ron and his two sisters, got in the car, and set off for a relative’s house many hours away.

  Along the way, the family stopped for a meal. Once settled in a booth, Ron’s mother went to the ladies’ room with his two sisters. He was left to go to the men’s room alone. “I had always gone into the bathroom with my father,” Ron remembered. “I didn’t like going in there alone with all those strange men. What made it worse was I imagined my mother and my sisters in the ladies’ room together, commiserating, talking, hugging each other. I don’t think my mother really thought about it. She just assumed that I could go in alone. I had never discussed my nervousness about public bathrooms with her because I didn’t need to. But my father knew all about how I felt. He told me he’d felt the same way when he was a kid.”

  “From that moment, I really felt like I was on my own. My mother and my sisters had each other. They could retreat to the ladies’ room. But I couldn’t. I had no one to cry with, and I didn’t think I should cry alone.”

  It took Ron years—through counseling and as a member of a support group—to break out of his silence and finally talk about the breakup of his family. “Thirty years later, I can cry and seek comfort not only from my wife, but from friends whom I have come to trust. But from the time I was nine years old until just the last few years, I was almost completely cut off from my emotions.”

  I do not suggest that mothers of divorce intentionally shun or ignore the feelings of their male children. But, just as a father can never have the same deep and instinctual understanding of a daughter’s needs as a mother can, even the most caring and intuitive mother will be unable to completely anticipate and understand the idiosyncrasies and concerns of her boy. As Cindy, the divorced mother of two boys, put it to me: “I know I do a pretty good job and that my boys are usually comfortable with how I handle things. But there’s a sadness I see in them sometimes, like a longing they have that’s not getting satisfied. When I see that look, I know it’s about their father. They miss him—his style, his laugh, his way of doing things. I love my boys a lot but I feel like there’s just nothing I can do when they’re feeling that way. We all just have to live through it together.”

  The mother-son relationship in mother-only families may be further complicated by the roiling emotions the mother is experiencing, and particularly her attitudes toward the boy’s father and men in general. While it is not always the case, the mother may feel strong negative emotions toward the father—disappointment, exasperation, anger, hatred, jealousy, disgust. She may expand these feelings and apply them to men in general for a while or, sometimes, for many years after the divorce. When a boy witnesses such emotions displayed toward the central male figure in his life and toward his gender as a whole, he may be confused about what role models he should follow—whom should he act like if all men are bad?

  But the greatest danger is that the mother’s feelings about the father could spill over onto her attitude toward her son. If she begins to think of her own son as “just like his father,” or “acting like all men do,” he may come to see himself as toxic. Now he feels that he is not only unable to talk with his only parent, but that his very presence is unwanted by her. He may feel he has nowhere to turn for solace and help. Whom can he tell that his mother thinks he is bad?

  Some mothers may have a very different reaction. Rather than seeing their son as toxic, they may expect him to become the “little man of the house.” They may seek emotional support, and even physical comforting, from him after the divorce. They may expect the boy to take on tasks and responsibilities of the father, such as looking after younger children in the family and doing chores around the house. Although there is nothing wrong with a boy helping out around the house, this push to become the “little man” can exacerbate the trauma of the divorce. Not only must he adjust to a new life with only one parent, he may also be being asked to become a man too soon.

  Boys in such mother-only families can have a very difficult time of it. Stephanie Kasen conducted a study of 648 children, eight years after their parents’ divorce. It showed that boys in mother-only households were five times more at risk for major depressive disorders than girls in mother-only families. They were also far more at risk than boys who had a consistent, adult-male relationship with their biological or stepfather or with another male figure, such as a mother’s boyfriend, uncle, or a family friend.

  But the determining factor of how well a boy in mother-only families survives divorce is not the presence or absence of a father or male figure. If a mother can keep her feelings for her husband from negatively affecting her attitudes toward men in general, and her son in particular, and learn to recognize how boys express emoti
on—often through action—she can help her son get through the divorce, not without pain, but without unnecessary pain.

  In fact, there is plenty of evidence that demonstrates that a boy can still achieve adulthood successfully without a father and with no dominant male figure in his life. Single mothers often do a wonderful job of raising their sons without help from a man.

  Roberta, for example, married Jeff when both were seniors in a college in Vermont. They had two children within three years, Ryan and Kim. Jeff went on to get an advanced degree at a university in Massachusetts, while Roberta took a part-time job and raised the kids. The family members saw one another mostly on weekends. When Jeff graduated, he took a job near home, and Roberta went back to school and got her teaching certificate. A few years after she graduated, Jeff was offered a lucrative and exciting job in Utah. Roberta did not want to move; he did. After seven years of marriage, they both realized that they had drifted apart and wanted different things from their lives. They separated in a reasonably amicable way. Jeff lived alone in Utah for a year, and visited the family only twice. After another year, Jeff and Roberta decided to divorce. Ryan was seven, Kim was six.

  “I realized that I had to shoulder the responsibility for bringing up my kids,” Roberta said. “I could either do it with caring and intelligence, or I could do it with remorse and recrimination. When I think about it, there really was no choice. I wanted to do what was best for my kids, and for me. I knew they’d be better off if I was positive about things, and I knew I’d feel better about myself, too. No one wants to live with a complainer.”

  Roberta got a job that enabled her to be home most of the after-school hours. She refused to demonize Jeff, and although he never visited, she encouraged her children to call him when they wanted to. From time to time she dated, but did not actively seek to replace Jeff with another man. Above all else, she talked with both her children about their lives, and tried to do things with Ryan that he particularly liked. “When we went to our first hockey game together, he taught me the team cheer, and, I tell you, I yelled it as loud as anybody in the arena.”

  When Ryan turned twelve, Jeff invited him for a visit to Utah. “My first reaction was to say no,” Roberta remembers. “I thought Ryan might like it better out there. He might want to stay. He might form some incredible bond with his father and I would lose him. But I knew I had to let him go. So, I told him that I was going to miss him a lot, and that I hoped he had a great time.”

  “Ryan did have a great time, doing all kinds of things, going to rodeos and horseback riding and whitewater-rafting. But it was like a vacation. He knew it wasn’t home. What we have is very strong. And, to give Jeff credit, he didn’t make a play for Ryan’s affections. They established a relationship, which is good, but he didn’t manipulate Ryan or try to turn him against me.”

  “If I could do it all again, I guess I wouldn’t have married so young. I would have had kids later. I would have tried harder to keep the marriage together. But, I can’t do it all again. And I have two great kids. That’s a lot.”

  THE DEADPAN DAD

  In mother-custody families, the role of the father varies tremendously. Some fathers disappear altogether. Some, like Jeff, are distant and play only a minor role in their sons’ lives. We can make some generalizations, however, about the relative status of mother and father. Statistics show that most mothers are worse off financially than they were before the divorce, but that fathers more often suffer depression. This is often because the mother has been the one who creates the social connections in and for the family, she has been the emotional glue, and the father feels separated and lost without the social environment he once knew. This can cause the father to become despondent or depressed, and adversely affect his capacity to be with his son. He may continue to meet his financial obligations (unlike so-called deadbeat dads), but may be unable to meet his emotional obligation—he becomes a “deadpan” dad, as we discussed in Chapter 6. The deadpan dad is a man who is there for his son only through prescribed visits or through his monthly support payment. He is not irresponsible so much as he is confused, depressed, or emotionally “numbed-out” about being separated from his son.

  Sometimes, particularly in the cases of well-to-do families, a boy will force a deadpan dad to substitute money when no love is available. Martin, sixteen, had idolized his father, a wealthy executive in a global corporation. But when his parents divorced, the father moved out of the suburban town where they had lived and took a luxurious penthouse apartment in the city. Martin’s mother was well provided for, but his father, who was terribly upset by the divorce, soon became deeply involved in a relationship with a much younger woman and often took her with him on his extensive business travels around the world. “I almost never saw my dad,” said Martin. “He never sent me any letters. Once in a while I’d get a postcard from London or Beijing or someplace. I remember on one of them my dad’s girlfriend had written a little note. ‘Hi sweetheart.’ I hardly knew her.”

  Martin’s father made up for his absence in his own way. He bought Martin a car, and sent him tickets to rock concerts and basketball games—always the best seats. Every weekend, Martin could be seen whizzing off to some event, an attractive girl at his side. He was, in fact, considered by many of his classmates as the ultimate in cool. He had plenty of money. He had his own car. He could do whatever he wanted.

  Gradually, Martin learned to speak the language of money that his deadpan father had taught him. “For my eighteenth birthday, I asked my father if I could have my own credit card, and he gave it to me. The first thing I did was take my girlfriend on a vacation to St. Bart. We stayed in the best suite in the best hotel. We had an incredible time. I didn’t tell him about it. But when he got the credit-card statement, he went ballistic. He called me up and screamed at me. I screamed back at him. I told him that he owed me. He owed me big-time for leaving my mother, and putting us all through such incredible shit.”

  Although many fathers vacate their son’s lives, many do not. Sometimes it is the mother who works to keep the connection.

  Louise’s marriage ended just a few days before her son, Will, was born. Her husband married the woman he was having an affair with and moved halfway across the country. “Raising Will by myself meant I had to find ways to bring men into his life. I knew I could give him a lot, but I knew there were some things only a man could give him,” Louise said. She determined that, as he grew up, Will would have a positive relationship with his father. “I was furious at Max for the affair and for leaving me to raise a child on my own, but I never let Will know that. I’ve encouraged their relationship ever since Will was an infant. I still have to call his father and say, ‘You know you haven’t called Will in three weeks, do you think maybe you can give your son a call?’ For my son’s sake, I have basically orchestrated this relationship over the years. So my son has a great relationship with his father, and feels very close to him although it’s long-distance.”

  Louise also arranged for Will to have a Big Brother. “Starting when Will was seven, he had Blair for three years. Blair’s a really good guy. That was great.” Then Louise built a relationship with a man named Gary and, eventually, he moved in with Louise and Will. “When Gary first moved in, I had to explain to him that as the adult he needed to reach out to the child. The first few weeks were a bit tense, but since then it’s worked out. There is no animosity, and now he would rather share things with Gary than with me. You know, get approval from Gary as opposed to approval from me, the mother. And I support that.”

  Sometimes a relationship with a “substitute” man doesn’t take. A mother may try to help her son form a bond with her new boyfriend if the father is not in the picture, and even push a little too hard to make it work. But, if that boyfriend is replaced by another, and then another, naturally the boy will feel even greater disconnection. He has already been “abandoned” once by a male role model. A string of disappointments in male relationships can further damage his al
ready fragile sense of self-esteem.

  Some fathers, too, are less willing to stay involved with their son’s lives after the mother enters a new relationship. One who fell out of touch with his son after the mother remarried says, “Her new husband is a nice guy. He gets along really well with my son. I don’t think he needs me anymore.” Even when a son gets into a stable family relationship with his mom and a stepfather he likes, that does not mean he has lost his need for his father. The only message he gets from the noncommunicative dad is “I don’t care about you. You’re not important.”

  But not all fathers, of course, become separated from their boys after the divorce. And some actually take sole or primary custody. The number of father-custody families is on the rise, although the percentage is still very small. There is new, and controversial, research that shows that some boys who live with their father may fare better than those who live with their mother. Whether or not this is true, the research underscores for me just how important it is for a father not to fade out of his son’s life because he assumes he is not needed or wanted. As fourteen-year-old Tony puts it: “You’ve only got one mom and you’ve only got one dad. So I think you really want to have both of them in your life.”

  A SOCIETY BUILT ON AN OUTDATED STEREOTYPE

  Just as society expects boys to behave in certain ways, it expects families to do the same. As prevalent as divorce is, and as politically correct as our schools and community organizations have become in talking about it, society is still structured in favor of two-parent intact families. The boy without a father will find himself at a disadvantage, or at least in an awkward situation, far more often than he would like. The parent-teacher conference will always be with his mother. If he plays a team sport, his coaches will almost always be men—but not his father. At the Cub Scout sleepover, his mother may come along, but she will be in the minority. He may be invited on an outing with several friends, to a ball game or a campout. There may be four sons there, but only three fathers.