They learn the satisfaction of service, and they grow in self-worth at the same time.
What if there is no mentor available?
If there are no mentors around, then a young man will fall into a lot of potholes on the road to adulthood. He may fight needlessly with his parents in trying to establish himself as independent. He may just become withdrawn and depressed. Kids at this age have so many dilemmas and decisions – about sexuality, career choices, what to do about drugs and alcohol … If Mum and Dad keep spending time with him, and are in touch with his world, then he will keep talking to them about these things. But sometimes there will be a need to talk to other adults, too. In one study, it was shown that just one good adult friend outside the family was a significant preventative of juvenile crime (as long as the friend isn’t into crime!).
Young men will try their best to find structure and direction in their lives. They may choose born-again religion or an Eastern cult, disappear into the Internet, follow Emo or Goth music and fashion, play sport, join a gang or go surfing. These pursuits may be helpful or harmful. If we don’t have a community for kids to belong to, they will make their own. But a community made up only of the peer group is not enough – it may be just a group of lost souls, without the skills or knowledge to help each other. Many boys’ friendship circles are really just loose collections that offer very little sharing or emotional support.
The worst thing we can do with adolescents is leave them alone. This is why we need those really great schoolteachers, sport coaches, scout leaders, youth workers and many other sources of adult involvement at this age. We need enough so that there is someone special for every kid – a tall order.
Today we mostly get mothering right, and fathering is undergoing a great resurgence. Finding good mentors for the kids in our community is the next big hurdle.
IN A NUTSHELL
In the years between birth and six, boys need lots of affection so they can ‘learn to love’. Talking and teaching one-to-one helps them connect to the world. The mother is usually the best person to provide this, although a father can take this part.
At about the age of six, boys show a strong interest in maleness, and the father becomes the primary parent. His interest and time become critical. The mother’s part remains important, however: she shouldn’t ‘back off’ from her son just because he is older.
From about fourteen years of age, boys need mentors – other adults who care about them personally and who help them move gradually into the larger world. Old societies provided initiation to mark this stage, and mentors were much more available.
Single mothers can raise boys well, but must search carefully for good, safe, male role models and must devote some time to self-care (since they are doing the work of two).
Our ideas about gender differences have changed dramatically over the years. For many centuries, biological difference was used as a reason to keep women’s lives in narrow roles. The waste of talent and the frustration of life chances was horrendous: women were not allowed to vote, get equal pay, own property, and so on. They were not supposed to join the paid workforce, or if they did, it was as a nurse, never a doctor; a secretary, never a boss. Turning this on its head – affirming that women could do anything men could – was one of the most important social movements of the twentieth century.
Then, for about thirty years – from the 1960s to early 1990s – it was thought that boys and girls had no differences other than those we ‘created’ through conditioning – the clothes and toys we give them, and how we treat them. Well-meaning parents and lots of preschools and schools got quite fanatical about this, working hard to get the boys to play with dolls and the girls into the Lego. It was felt that if we raised all children the same, then gender differences and problems would disappear. But gradually the evidence mounted that there were important and immutable differences that were simply wired in. (Some were blindingly obvious: for instance, in all cultures girls enter puberty two years before boys do, which causes much havoc in the world of schoolyard romance.)
With the advent of brain-scanning technology, this argument was pretty much settled. Today we are focussed on understanding the differences and making sure they aren’t a problem. If a girl’s brain develops more quickly than a boy’s, we can plan accordingly so this can be managed in schools and homes. If a boy has an inbuilt need to be active and use his body a lot, we can work out ways for this to happen that don’t mean he is ‘bad’. We can be sure to read to boys so that they become more verbal and better able to talk to girls! We can have less blame and more understanding.
In the next two chapters we will look at two major differences that are very significant in learning to help our sons grow up well:
1. how hormones (such as testosterone) influence boys’ behaviour, and what to do about it, and
2. how boys’ and girls’ brains grow differently and affect their ways of behaving and thinking.
KNOWING THE DIFFERENCES
Some of the real gender differences are so obvious that it’s amazing they were overlooked. For example, the average boy has 30 percent more muscle bulk than the average girl. Boys are stronger and their bodies are more inclined to action. They even have far more red blood cells (the original red-blooded boy!). It has nothing to do with gender conditioning. We have to give boys plenty of chance to exercise – girls too if they want it. Boys will need extra help to control themselves from hitting both each other and girls. Girls need help to learn not to use their better verbal skills to needle and demean boys. And so on.
This doesn’t mean saying, ‘Every boy must …’ or ‘Every girl must …’. After all, some girls are stronger and more physical than many boys. (Some girls need training in nonviolence. In one Sydney school, some parents removed their sons because the girls kept hitting them.) Gender differences are generalisations that are true enough of the time to be very helpful.
BOYS AND HEARING
Colin is ten. He is in trouble at school because he doesn’t pay attention. He gets bored, starts to mess around, and gets sent to the principal’s office. Is he stupid? Bad? Does he have ADHD or ODD (Oppositional Defiant Disorder) or OCD (Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder) or any of the other Ds? Perhaps, but there’s another possibility. What if he just can’t hear? What if his teacher’s voice is just too soft and he gets bored with its faintness, and at home he misses half of what is being said to him? Many parents joke that their
