Real Boys

"I believe that boys, feeling ashamed of their vulnerability, mask their emotions and ultimately their true selves. This unnecessary disconnection--from family and then from self--causes many boys to feel alone, helpless, and fearful. And yet society's prevailing myths about boys do not leave room for such emotions, and so the boy feels he is not measuring up. He has no way to talk about his perceived failure; he feels ashamed, but he can't talk about his shame, either. Over time, his sensitivity is submerged almost without thinking, until he loses touch with it himself. And so a boy bas become 'hardened,' just as society thinks he should be."

--Real Boys


"Researchers have found that at birth, and for several months afterward, male infants are actually more emotionally expressive than female babies. But by the time boys reach elementary school much of their emotional expressiveness has been lost or has gone underground. Boys at five or six become less likely than girls to express hurt or distress, either to their teachers or to their own parents. Many parents have asked me what triggers this remarkable transformation, this squelching of a boy's natural emotional expressiveness. What makes a boy who was open and exuberant unwilling to show the whole range of his emotions?

Recent research points to two primary causes for this change, and both of them grow out of assumptions about and attitudes towards boys that are deeply ingrained in the codes of our society.

The first reason is the use of shame in the toughening-up process by which it's assumed boys need to be raised. Little boys are made to feel ashamed of their feelings, guilty especially about feelings of weakness, vulnerability, fear, and despair.

The second reason is the separation process as it applies to boys, the emphasis society places on a boy's separating emotionally from his mother at an unnecessarily early age, usually by the time the boys are six years old and then again in adolescence. "

--Real Boys