CHAPTER 1

The Importance of Emotionally Healthy Sons

When my son was five, I took him on one of many trips to visit his grandparents.As we sat around in the post–evening meal glow, I watched him work the room inhis unique and extraordinary style. He had a capacity to insert himselfeffortlessly right into your heart, alternately playing, talking, touching,cuddling, laughing, and hugging. As he made his rounds before being shuttled offto bed, my mother, who sat beside me watching this unfold, turned to me andsaid, "He reminds me so much of you at that age."

She meant it as a compliment, both for him and for me, but it left mespeechless—I could not ever remember myself so uninhibitedly connected to myheart. Somehow, in the process of growing up male in this culture, in the spaceof a decade between my childhood and my confused teenage years, I had grown intoa young man who lived completely within his head and was, without even knowingit, completely cut off from his feelings.

The long journey back to reconnecting with my emotional self has been the mostdifficult and painful thing I have ever undertaken, and the years I existed asan emotional cripple are lost forever. Watching my son, still intact, not yetweighted down by the enormous pressure to be tough, to be rational, to hold backtears, and, implicitly, to stop feeling, I vowed that I would do whatever wasnecessary to help him survive his youth with his beautiful heart intact. It wasa solemn promise I made that day, but not one that was easy to achieve. Much ofwhatever wisdom might appear in this book arose from mistakes I made with him.

As a society, we have made great strides on behalf of women, and that is anextraordinary thing. We have realized that in denigrating the feminine, we haveimpoverished the whole. By systematically hindering women from assuming theirpower in the world, we have lost generations of insight. And in the process, wehave forced our sons to grow into adulthood without access to the very resourcesthey need to become decent, caring, full human beings.

We look out today in horror at a society scarred by senseless violence andhatred. From mindless massacres in our schools to the numbing randomness ofstreet violence, our society seems to have taken leave of its senses. And thetruth, the truth that we scarcely want to admit, is that the violence isvirtually all committed by men, men who were once young boys who laughed andhugged and loved.

Our focus on the plight of women has produced a significant body of research onthe how, when, and why of collapsing self-esteem in girls. Though we have onlybegun to turn our attention toward the development of boys, some significantinformation has emerged. Studies show that young girls tend to be strong andself-confident until the onset of puberty. It is then that the crisis of self-esteemhits and hits hard. Boys, on the other hand, tend to go through twodistinct crises: the first at age five or six, and the second at puberty. Onemore tantalizing piece of information is that among infants and toddlers, boystend to be more emotionally expressive than girls, only to lose this skill asthey grow. At age five or six, the acculturation process first kicks in, and forour sons, it kicks in with a merciless impact.

As I see it, the issue in raising our daughters is providing them with the love,support, internal strength, and self-confidence to grow fully into their lives;the issue for our sons is bringing them to maturity with their emotional centersintact and accessible.

Through interactions at school and on the playground and exposure to culturalstereotypes through television, movies, and video games, our sons quickly learnthat boys are supposed to be tough; to be tough means not having any feelingsexcept anger. In a boy's world, everything becomes competitive, and you need totake the blows—literally and figuratively—and pretend they don't hurt if youhope to measure up. At age five, boys are already deep into the process ofsealing off their hearts, cutting the ties that connect them to their ownemotional worlds.

The second and potentially more dangerous crisis strikes boys at puberty, whenissues as emotionally charged as sex, love, and one's identity as a man suddenlyemerge with urgency. Yet the very resources our sons need to deal with theseissues, a solid grounding in their own emotional worlds, never got developed. Asa consequence, they find themselves living in a strange and dangerous world fullof pressing and confusing questions, and they don't even have the language tofind the answers.

Cut off from their emotions, our sons are truly lost, since they do not evenknow what is missing. They try to compensate by pressing on to understand, todevelop their gift of reason, for therein appears to lie protection from theunknown. Their emotions remain intact, but are repressed into the darkness oftheir unconscious.

Much research still needs to be done to complete the picture. One question thatmay not be answered for a very long time is just how much of the behaviordifferences between boys and girls is rooted in biology and how much is aproduct of social and cultural expectations. At one extreme are those whobelieve that boys and girls are from different worlds altogether—for lack of abetter term, the "Mars and Venus" theory. I personally think this is a foolhardyposition, if for no other reason than it tells us to stop thinking and worryingabout how we raise our children; the results are inevitably coded into ourgenes.

But the status quo is not acceptable. Raising generation after generation ofgirls with shattered self-esteem and boys with little or no emotionalintelligence is neither inevitable nor desirable. There is nothing "alien" aboutlittle boys or little girls. We are the same species and we dream the samedreams. We all want to love and be loved and to have lives of meaning andpurpose. While we cannot change our biology, we can begin to change the way weraise our children.

In my earlier book, 200 Ways to Raise a Girl's Self-Esteem, I tried to providepractical suggestions for giving our daughters a better chance of growing upwith their self-esteem not only intact but vibrantly strong and resilient. Inthis book I offer equally straightforward suggestions for helping our sons growinto manhood connected to their hearts and resonating with the deep emotionalintelligence that they will need to live full and joyful lives. Some aresuggestions to develop or support your son's emotional repertoire; others areattitudes that we adults must cultivate in order to nurture our boys intoadulthood. No matter who the boy in your life is, no matter his age, it's nevertoo late to start.

CHAPTER 2

Exploring Your Own Assumptions

Living at a time of great transformation is exciting, especially when thechanges taking place are long overdue and coming at a dizzying pace. But it isalso extremely challenging because, as pioneers of change, we are constantlyentering new territory in which we have only a general idea of what direction totake. It takes enormous energy and focus to sort out the paths and to figure outwhat we need to do to make this journey easier for our sons. But most of us aremore than willing to commit this energy and time because we want to provide oursons with full, rich upbringings that will serve as a solid foundation for theirgrowth and development into the extraordinary men we know they can be.

By far the most difficult part of our task is discovering and dismantling theplaces where our own training hinders our role as pioneers. Someone must gofirst, and it is both a great honor and a solemn responsibility, but we need toremember that our own training, our own complex array of assumptions, was forgedunder different times. Much of it is no longer appropriate for or supportive ofour immediate task.

Simply replaying past expectations, assumptions, and traditions will not changethe landscape one iota. We as a society are in a rut, and that is why we do sucha poor job of raising boys. At the same time, there is much value in thetraditions of our past, and it would be foolish to jettison the whole withoutfirst thinking and feeling deeply about the ways we need to modify our ownassumptions.

How many times when talking to your children have you heard words coming out ofyour mouth and been struck by the thought that these are not really your wordsat all, but they are a replay of words you heard from your parents, words theyprobably heard from their parents, and so on down the generations?

In this chapter I highlight some key places where we can fall victim to our owntraining right when we want to blaze a new trail for our sons. And this too isone of the great gifts of parenting. In the process of teaching, nurturing, andguiding, we grow.

Examine Gender Roles

"Men work hard, dole out punishment, do the yard work, and handle the cash.Women take care of the kids, do the cooking and housework, and take care of thehugs and kisses. Real old-fashioned, but that's what I learned growing up, andeven though I don't agree with it anymore it is still pretty well ingrained."

The past forty years have seen a tremendous shift in how we view gender roles,thanks largely to the millions of women who have demanded fuller and more equalparticipation in life. But don't fool yourself into thinking we have turned thecorner. Cultural patterns of thousands of years aren't changed in a few decades;we are in the position of the battleship that has just turned the helm but willtake another twenty miles before the ship actually makes its turn. In addition,the advances made by women have not been matched by men. Where women's liveshave blossomed with opportunities, men's lives are for the most part still stuckin the old ways.

One way you can begin to have a real impact on your sons is to play down thegender role divisions in your own home. Start with how you divide up the choresand allocate responsibilities, and change the jobs you give your children.Examine the ways you are silently perpetuating old gender stereotypes. You mightbe comfortable with them, but by consciously breaking them up you send apowerful message to your children that their options have broadenedconsiderably.

Parents: Include boys in dishwashing, cooking, or baby-sitting, and includegirls in yard work, balancing the checkbook, and moving furniture around. It mayseem like a small gesture, but it sends the message that all activities can beopen to all of us.

Teachers: Create a lesson plan that focuses on the way gender and jobs havechanged over the years. There is great material here. For example, did you knowthat in the early days of industrialization all secretaries and phone operatorswere men? Talk about both the huge influx and then departure from the workforceof women during and immediately after World War II. Collect data from your classabout jobs held by mothers and fathers. Compare them to jobs held bygrandmothers and grandfathers.

Know that Real Men Know How to Be Fathers

"When my two children were still very small, I became the full-time stay-at-homeparent and my wife worked. It was the most incredibly rich and intenseexperience I have ever had, but it had its downside as well. I'd be sitting inthe park with my kids surrounded by all these moms furtively stealing glances atme and wondering what the hell was wrong with this guy."

Encouraging boys to remain connected to their emotions requires the full andactive engagement of their fathers. Yet, too many fathers let this, the mostvaluable contribution they can make to their sons' development, slip away.Sometimes the hesitation is out of awkwardness and inexperience—we weren'traised to be nurturing parents, we weren't given even the basic informationabout caring for infants and toddlers, so the easy way is simply to back awayand leave it to Mom. Sometimes the hesitation comes from outside pressure,social expectations, and, particularly, pressure from the workplace that givesthe message: "If you want to get ahead, you must put your job ahead of yourchildren."

But what father would actually endorse that message? Being a father todayrequires a very different kind of courage, the kind that anchors us to ourdeeper priorities, gives us the strength and commitment to pioneer for our sonsa new and more fully integrated way of living. It means being mindful of thepressures that pull us away from our children. It means stepping firmly into thewhirlwind of emotions that growing up is all about. It means adding our voicesto the rising swell of women's voices demanding flexible work hours andcorporate support rather than resistance to employees with families.

Parents: Fathers need to demonstrate through their words and actions that theirchildren's emotional needs are just as high a priority as providing food andshelter. Reassess your work schedule and make sure it allows you to be with yourchildren when they need you. Reassess the level and quality of your involvementat home and make sure that you are doing your share.

Teachers: Invite parents to bring several babies of different ages into yourclassroom. Allow the students to observe the babies' behavior. Help kids getcomfortable with the care and nurturing of infants.

Men, Reacquaint Yourself with YOUR Feelings

"Being a father has been the single most important thing that has happened in mylife. Not only because I love my kids so much, but because by being so activelyinvolved in their lives, I have gotten the opportunity to go back and relearnthrough them a lot about acknowledging and respecting my own feelings."

For most men, the process of growing up is a process of growing further andfurther away from their emotions. We might characterize it more positively as"being under control," "being strong," or "being logical," but for many of us,our dispassionate calm has come at great cost. We have lost the ability toexperience and to express our deepest feelings.

The good news is that being a father is the single best way to reconnect to ourown emotions and relearn the skills necessary to integrate them fully into ourlives. The reason is simple—our children are roiling bundles of emotions, andmuch of what they spend their childhood doing is trying to recognize,understand, and deal with these powerful feelings. If we take the opportunitythey offer us by virtue of their unconditional love, if we engage ourselvesearnestly in their lives, their concerns, their hopes and dreams, thoughts andfeelings, we will not only reinforce for them the value and importance of thisroller-coaster journey, but we will learn with them how to balance, integrate,and harness the power of our emotions.

Parents: Many new parents, even those strongly committed to sharing thechildrearing, tend to find themselves in a routine where Mom is doing the lion'sshare of infant care. Don't let it happen! The sooner and more deeply Dad getsinvolved in the feeding, changing, dressing, cuddling, rocking, bathing,playing, and goo goo ga ga–ing, the better. For Dad, this is a once-in-a-lifetimeopportunity that has the potential to change your life dramatically forthe better.

Teachers: Express your own feelings about world events or subjects you arestudying, and invite your students to express theirs. Develop service projects,plays, or artwork that help students act on deep feelings and passions inpositive ways.

Beware of Parental Imbalance

"After years of estrangement I've finally gotten to know my father, and whatsurprises me is that he is really a very tenderhearted guy. Growing up, myparents sort of divided up the parenting duties so that she was the carrot andDad was the stick. It set up a 'just wait till your father gets home' patternthat pushed us further and further apart."

One of the most difficult things about parenting is trying to balance all theresponsibilities in a way that won't allow our children to unconsciously puteither Mom or Dad into a false and incomplete posture. This is easier said thandone. With the pull of traditional roles still very much a factor, plus thepractical divisions of labor necessitated by careers and time constraints andpersonality differences, it may seem easier to have Mom do the holding andreassuring and Dad lay down the law. But if we take the easy way out, we inviteour sons to project their own distorted conclusions onto our accommodations—Momis nice, loving, and supportive and Dad is the tough guy.

From that simple beginning can unfold an ingrained gender bias that robseveryone of what is real and essential—the full amazing complexity of beinghuman. If Dad is the sole instrument of punishment, then it is easy, almostnatural, to take a few steps back and seek support when you need it from Mom,and to assume that men just can't be loving. If only Mom is the nurturing one,then maybe nurturing is exclusively women's work and not something that can beexpected from men. And finally, in the face of this widening gulf, what am Isupposed to be like when I become a man?