Boys will be boys - psychology

Public Interest, Summer, 1999 by Gwen J. Broude

Are boys in trouble today? Their situation is desperate, according to a coalition of clinical and academic psychologists. The alarming news has been trumpeted in scholarly journals as well as in several best-selling books, most notably William Pollack's Real Boys and Michael Gurian's The Wonder of Boys and A Fine Young Man. Both Pollack, codirector of the Center for Men at McClean Hospital of Harvard Medical School, and Gurian, a Washington-based family therapist, want to persuade us that we are in the midst of a boy crisis of epidemic proportion.

According to Pollack and Gurian, boys today are plagued by depression, isolation, despair, and fragile self-esteem. Boys are performing poorly in school compared with their sisters, who are now thriving. Diagnoses of attention-deficit disorder in male children are escalating, as are disciplinary problems, school drop-out rates, psychiatric disorders, and suicide. In the words of Pollack, "Many feel a sadness and disconnection they cannot even name." "Millions of our adolescent boys have experienced a trauma of some kind," asserts Gurian, and they haven't got the emotional resources, or support from others, to cope with the pain. Our boys are "like soldiers traumatized in wartime," and they are showing symptoms of "posttraumatic stress." Boys have also become dangerously aggressive, committing more and more crimes. The number of violent criminals among our adolescent boys is "incredible." And these males, in turn, pose a danger to the rest of us. Warns Gurian: "Trauma-causing adolescent males are everywhere."

Pollack, Gurian, and other psychologists raising the "boy problem" are not concerned about a small group of disadvantaged youngsters who might truly be in danger. They are talking about all boys, even those who seem to be "normal." We should not be fooled, says Gurian, by the "I'm fine" mask. When a boy says, "I'm fine," he actually means "things are not really fine." Boys who seem to have high self-esteem are, in fact, hiding a deep-seated lack of confidence. Many boys who seem to be doing well are actually living lives of quiet desperation. You or I may unwittingly be the parents of just such a boy.

Girls aren't O.K., boys aren't O.K.

What do alarmist psychologists blame for boys' traumas and disorders? In the 1960s, everyone worried about the condition of girls. Back then, feminists argued that girls and women were victimized by the traditional sex roles depicted in "Father Knows Best" and many children's books. Sex-role stereotypes were thought to encourage independence, assertiveness, and ambition in men while mandating dependence and docility in women. Moreover, society supposedly preferred male traits to female ones, viewing the latter as unhealthy. Feminists complained that these stereotypes were not only confining but also degrading to girls. Carol Gilligan saw sex-role stereotypes as most damaging in adolescence, when girls first came to understand that their "different voice," which emphasized interconnection and harmony instead of individuality and competition, was not appreciated by a male-dominated world.

Feminists had a solution to this "girl problem": Raise both little girls and boys to be androgynous. Androgyny, a grab bag of masculine and feminine traits, would liberate not only females but also males from the tyranny of sex roles. The androgynous person would exhibit a blend of desirable male and female characteristics - for instance, assertiveness and nurturing. In an androgynous world, females would be assertive and males sensitive, and everyone would be better off, for equality between the sexes could only be achieved when females acquired masculine traits and when males softened their rough edges.

Enter today's problem. Psychologists who now believe that our boys are in trouble attribute their current trauma to both the traditional sex-role stereotypes attacked by feminists and to the androgynous society proposed to rectify them.

For starters, they claim that our sons themselves are the victims of these stifling traditional sex stereotypes. According to the boy advocates, the traditional male-sex roles that feminists regarded as empowering and entitling men are actually harming males by forcing them to deny their inner selves. And to add insult to injury, society simultaneously endorses traditional male roles while insisting that males reject those stereotypes and embrace the new androgynous look. We want today's boys to become "new men," sensitive and vulnerable New Age guys who respect women and shun macho attitudes about power, responsibility, and sex. We send our boys to schools that encourage, at least for them, the passive and obedient style of girls and punish the more rambunctious ways of boys. But, at the same time, we still want our sons to be cool dudes - the sort of "real men" portrayed in traditional stereotypes.

Cutting the apron strings

Pollack, Gurian, and others also claim that by trying to turn little boys into cool dudes, we insist that they become men far too soon. Boys, they say, are separated from their mothers long before they are ready. We fail to give them the emotional support that they need - which we are willing and eager to provide for our daughters. We do not encourage boys to express their feelings, and we do not provide them with the necessary support for emotional growth. Gilligan, in particular, claims that just as we have been stifling female development, beginning at adolescence, so we are undermining the emotional development of four- and five-year-old boys by insisting that they let go of the apron strings at too tender an age. Pollack issues the same warning. Even as adults, he warns, males "still unconsciously long for connection with the mother and the nurturing 'holding' environment she once provided."