style="font-size:15px;"> In his early forties, Jamie’s levels of testosterone begin a very gradual decline. He goes for several days at a time without thinking about sex! In the bedroom, quality replaces quantity. In the world, Jamie now has less to prove, and is more mellow and wise. He assumes quiet leadership in group and work situations, rather than having to prove who’s boss. He values friendship and makes his best contributions to the world.
Each boy is different
What we have described here is the pattern for the average boy. There is great variation among males and also lots of overlap between the sexes. Some girls will have more testosterone-type behaviour than some boys, and some boys will show more estrogen-type behaviour than some girls. Nonetheless, the general pattern will hold true for most children.
Understanding boys’ hormones and their effects means we can understand what is going on and be sympathetic and helpful. Just as a good husband understands his partner’s PMT (premenstrual tension), a good parent of a boy understands his TNT (testosterone needing tuition).
TEENAGE BOYS AND DRIVING CARS
The biggest single worry for most parents of boys is safety. In the adolescent years, as he spends more time away from your direct care and his mobility and independence grows, it’s hard to relax and just ‘let go’. And in fact there is growing evidence that this fear is well grounded, that we are letting go too soon. This is especially true in the matter of driving cars. Every year the newspapers carry stories of small towns or suburban communities across the nation devastated by multiple fatality crashes, where four or five teenagers die in collisions caused by immaturity and inexperience.
As a community we care deeply about the lives of our young people, and this has prompted some astounding research into why boys die like this and how to prevent it. It has been discovered that one boy on his own driving a car, aged in his late teens, is relatively safe. Today’s emphasis on driver training and 50-100 hours of practice driving with an adult supervising (usually Mum or Dad) means young men have greater awareness and skill than young drivers in our day. They probably drive too fast at times, but are also more focussed on and attentive to their driving, so they do not fare too badly as long as alcohol is not involved. However, if you add a male passenger in the car, things begin to change: the young driver takes more risks, and the chances of a fatal crash increase by 50 percent. If the passenger is a girl, however, a male driver usually becomes protective and careful, and is actually safer than he is on his own.
The next part will shock you. If you now add one or more other young people in the back seat, the death rate of the driver increases by over 400 percent. The distraction, the need to impress, and the difficulty of staying in a calm, careful state of mind, mean that all those in the car are at serious risk. This is especially so after dark, and of course is much worse with drugs or alcohol present. This astonishingly clear research has lead to law reforms that are saving lives around the world. In Australia, a bereaved father, Rob Wells, who lost his son along with three other boys in a single car crash, has campaigned to persuade governments in several states to restrict young drivers carrying more than one passenger, especially late at night. These laws have worked very effectively in New Zealand and Canada for many years.
Meanwhile, it helps that parents know about this ‘brain overload factor’ – the ‘maturity bypass effect’ of having friends in a car – and can make informed decisions. Psychologists now believe seventeen-year-olds are too young to drive groups of friends about at any time. You have ferried them about for sixteen years already; why not do it for another year or two, to know they won’t die or kill their friends? A year or two later, and with more experience, they will be so much safer.
At seventeen, teenagers can sound persuasive. They can say the right things. But it’s later, under pressure, that their brains are not able to cope. The last thing parents of dead teenagers ever hear them say is, ‘I’ll be fine, Mum’.
Why boys scuffle and fight
Testosterone affects mood and energy levels; it’s more than just a growth hormone. There’s no doubt it causes energetic and boisterous behaviour. That’s why, for centuries, horses were gelded to make them better behaved. Testosterone injected into female rats makes them try to mate with other female rats and fight with each other. It makes certain parts of the brain grow and others slow down their growth. It can grow more muscles and less fat, and it can make you go bald and bad tempered!
How testosterone affects the psychology of males can be illustrated by a famous study. A tribe of monkeys in a laboratory was closely observed to learn about its social structure. Researchers found that the male monkeys had a definite hierarchy, or pecking order. The females’ hierarchy was looser and more relaxed, based on who groomed whose hair! But the males always knew who was boss, sub-boss, and sub-sub-boss, and had frequent fights to prove it.
Once the researchers had worked out the monkey dynamics, they set about stirring up trouble. They captured the lowest-ranking male monkey and gave him an injection of testosterone. Then they put him back with the tribe. You can guess what happened next. He started a boxing match with his ‘immediate superior’. Much to his own surprise, he won! So he went and took on the next monkey! Within twenty minutes he had worked his way up to the top and tossed the biggest monkey off the highest branch. Our hero was small, but he had testosterone! He became the ‘acting manager’.
Sadly for him, this was not to last. The injection soon wore off, and our little hero was knocked back all the way down to the bottom of the heap. It’s a lot like politics!
The point is that testosterone influences the brain and makes boys more concerned with rank and competition.
Boys need order
In their book, Raising a Son, Don and Jeanne Elium tell the story of an old scoutmaster who comes and sorts out a hopelessly rowdy scout troop in their city. This is the ‘scout troop from hell’: the boys are always fighting and damaging the hall, nothing is being learnt, and many gentler boys have left. It’s time for a clean sweep. On his first night with the troop, the scoutmaster sets some rules, invites a couple of boys to shape up or leave, brings in a clear structure, and begins teaching skills in an organised way. He successfully turns the group around: in a couple of months it is thriving.
The scoutmaster explained to the Eliums that, in his experience, there are three things boys always need to know:
1. Who’s in charge?
2. What are the rules?
3. Will those rules be fairly applied?
The key word is structure
Boys feel insecure and in danger if there isn’t enough structure in a situation. If no-one is in charge, they begin jostling with each other to establish a pecking order. Their testosterone-driven make-up leads them to want to set up hierarchies, but they can’t always do so
