Raising Cain: Book Review - March 2000

What Pipher accomplished for girls in her book, Reviving Ophelia, psychotherapists Kindlon and Thompson are trying to do for boys. Their book is an eloquent discussion of the struggles boys face as they learn to be men in our culture.

From Literary Cavalcade, property of Scholastic Inc.
by Dan Kindlon and Michael Thompson

Training Boys for Toughness
Although there is a lot of lip service being paid to the new age of the "sensitive male" stereotypic images of masculinity are still with us. Whereas boys used to emulate John Wayne or James Dean (who now seem quaint by comparison), today's boys see even more exaggerated images of stoic, violent, impossibly powerful supermen on movie, television, computer, and video screens. The media serve up as role models Neanderthal professional wrestlers; hockey "goons" ready at the slightest provocation to drop their sticks and pummel an opponent; multimillionaire professional athletes in trouble with the law, demanding "respect" from fans and the press; and angry, drug-using, misogynist rock stars.

Even boys who are not allowed to watch violent movies or play violent video games, but who watch television sports, will nevertheless consume a steady diet of commercials in which a man is not a man unless he is tough, drives a tough truck, and drinks lots of beer. These are not visions of manhood that celebrate emotional introspection or empathy. We are often invited to schools to talk with students when incidents or behaviors have roused the concern of parents or teachers. At one such meeting, the topic was drinking, which, on an average weekend, reached epic proportions among the high school-age boys. The boys talked openly about hangovers, passing out, fights, drunk driving, and casual sex, but this behavior did not appear to worry them. Instead, they spoke with pride about the amount of alcohol they could consume.

Our culture co-opts some of the most impressive qualities boys can possess--their physical energy, boldness, curiosity, and action orientation--and distorts them into a punishing, dangerous definition of masculinity.

Evidence of the maladaptive nature of this vision 'of masculinity comes from one of the most revealing windows on boys' attitudes, the National Survey of Adolescent Males, in which researchers interviewed a large, representative group of 15- to 19-year-old boys in the United States.

Funded in the early days of the HIV crisis, the survey focused on risk-related sexual behavior. ... To find out how strongly they believed in a "masculinity ideology"--the attitude that manhood is primarily based on strength, stoicism, toughness, and dominance over women-- researchers asked the boys how much they agreed with the statements:

It is essential for a guy to get respect from others. A guy will lose respect if he talks about his problems. A man should be physically tough even if he's not big. A husband should not have to do housework.

The survey results showed that the more boys agreed with the masculinity ideology statements, the more those statements corresponded to the boys' own views, the more likely they were to drink beer, smoke pot, have unprotected sex, get suspended from school, and "trick" or force someone into having sex. In fact, the most significant risk factor for a boy's involvement in unprotected sex was his belief in this set of "hypermasculine" traditional male attitudes. This mind-set spelled trouble for boys whether they were black or white, rich or poor, city kid, or suburbanite.

Popular culture is a destructive element in our boys' lives, but the emotional miseducation of boys begins much earlier and much closer to home. Most parents, relatives, teachers, and others who work or live with boys' set out to teach them how to get along in the world and with one another. In the process of teaching them one thing, however, we often teach them another, quite different thing that ultimately works against their emotional potential. Traditional gender stereotypes are embedded in the way we respond to boys and teach them to respond to others. Whether unintentionally or deliberately, we tend to discourage emotional awareness in boys. Scientists who study the way parents shape their children's emotional responses find that parents tend to have preconceived stereotypic gender notions even about infants. Because of this, parents provide a different emotional education for sons as opposed to daughters.

Here's how this gender socialization can look in its mildest, most ordinary form: Brad is 4 years old and has a question about everything. His mother fields most of these questions because she's with him more often than his dad. She tries to give all questions equal attention, but what she doesn't fully realize is that she, like any parent, subtly shapes the kinds of questions her child asks.

"Mommy, why do I have to sit in a car seat if you don't?" he asks. She responds with a discussion of the safety advantages, and explains how it is against the law for children to ride in a car unless they ride in a car seat. Because of her thoughtful answer, Brad feels rewarded for asking about how things work and is thereby encouraged to do it again sometime.

But in the park, when Brad points to a small boy who is crying and asks his mother why, she gives a much shorter and less animated answer. "I don't know, Brad, he just is. Come on, let's go. It's not polite to stare."

The truth is, Brad's mother may not know why the little boy is crying, and she is teaching her son good manners when she tells him not to stare. But her short answer is less informative, and less rewarding for her son. It subtly discourages him from thinking any further about why someone cries or what might have moved this particular child to tears. Her quick closure on the inquiry also may convey her own discomfort with the subject--a message that boys frequently "hear" when fathers give short shrift to questions or observations about emotions.

Studies of parent interactions with both boys and girls suggest that, when a girl asks a question about emotions, her mother will give longer explanations. She's more likely to speculate with her daughter about the reasons behind the emotion or to validate or amplify her daughter's observation: "Yes, honey, he does look very sad. Maybe he's got a little hurt or he's lost his toy. What do you think?" The message the daughter gets is that it's OK to be concerned about another's feelings; her natural concern and empathy are reinforced. Boys experience this kind of emotional steering constantly.

When 6-year-old Jack and his family moved into their new house, one of the three children had to take the downstairs bedroom, separate from the others on the second floor. It was not his 8-year-old sister, Kate, who got the assignment, or his 4-year-old sister, Amy. It was Jack. When Jack expressed a little uneasiness at sleeping alone on the first floor, his father said to him, "Oh, you're a big guy; you can handle it. Your sisters are scared to sleep alone."

When boys express ordinary levels of anger or aggression, or they turn surly and silent, their behavior is accepted as normal. If, however, they express normal levels of fear, anxiety, or sadness-emotions most often seen as feminine--the adults around them typically treat them in ways that suggest that such, emotions aren't normal for a boy. LC

A Closer Look at the Three Pieces in this Section

Imagine that Hersch, Pipher, Kindlon and Thompson have met to discuss issues that face teenagers today. On what points would they agree? Where might they disagree? What kinds of prescriptions for helping kids do you think each might offer?