Dear Dad,
Remember how we used to spend so much time fixing cars? Remember all the car shows we went to? The funny thing is, what I remember most is how much we used to talk together. I told you all about Angela, that girl I had it bad for in my junior year. You told me about your problems at work. I talked to you about my fights with my friends. You always saw my point of view, even if you didn't agree with me. You always knew when I was not being honest with you. I loved those conversations. I used to brag to my friends that I was really close to my dad, that I was able to tell him my deepest secrets. I really miss those conversations. Why don't we have them anymore? I wish we could. It might make me feel less alone sometimes. Happy Father's Day!
Love,
George
This letter, drawn from interviews with an 18-year-old boy, reveals the desires of the hundreds of teenage boys who have participated in my longitudinal studies of boys' social and emotional development over the past 20 years.
George and the other White, Black, Latino, and Asian American boys in these studies told my research team that they share, or want to share, their "deep secrets" with others, including their fathers. Like George, they believe that sharing these secrets prevents them from feeling "all alone" and from going "wacko." Yet these boys also spoke about the pressures at home and in school to "man up," be independent and keep their problems to themselves.
As they reached late adolescence, boys described how their close relationships with parents and friends were fading, "like a DJ used his cross fader to start fading it slowly and slowly and now I'm like halfway though the cross fade," as one 17-year-old described it to me. At the ages of 16 and 17 years old, when the suicide rate among boys in the United States increases to five times the rate of girls, boys spoke of losing their close relationships and feeling increasingly isolated.
For decades, research has found that close relationships with family and friends contribute to better mental and physical health, academic achievement, life satisfaction and longer life spans. Yet American culture continues to define maturity and manhood as a process of separating from those with whom we share, or want to share, our deepest secrets.
Boys know that there is a problem. They tell us directly, and they show it with their bad behavior. They also, however, offer a solution. As George said, we need to spend time connecting with boys, asking them about their friendships and talking to them about our own lives so that they can learn to make good choices and avoid our mistakes. We need to allow them to express their vulnerabilities and not make these vulnerabilities a matter of manliness, maturity or sexuality.
Boys know that they live in a culture where having emotions and even wanting relationships are considered girly and gay. As one teenage boy said, "it would be nice to be a girl because then you wouldn't have to be emotionless." Yet boys also know that being emotional and wanting close relationships is simply part of being human. Data from a wide range of experts -- stretching from neuroscientists and developmental psychologists to primatologists and evolutionary anthropologists -- confirm boys' experiences and show that caring about others and the desire for close relationships are not only human capacities and needs, but they are essential for survival. What we have called girly and gay is simply human, in other words, and overwhelmingly important. Researchers such as neuroscientist Lise Eliot find, in fact, that gender differences in cognition and emotion have been greatly exaggerated. Boys are more emotional in the first year of life than girls -- they cry more easily. It is only with age that we see significant gender differences in these areas.
Boys challenge us to treat them as human beings with the same emotional and social needs as girls. They also tell us that doing so will make them feel less alone, and we will undoubtedly feel more connected to them as well. Happy Father's Day! Now go talk to your son.
Men are more or less a static component where as women are more flexible more capable of being the variable element. A catalyst to change.
Women should they shift their choices in men from muscles, brawn and macho-ism too stable, emotionally whole and monogamously cerebral you'd see a massive improvement to Father /Son relationships, a more stable community, healthier men breeds healthier men. Less bad behavior and more success in just plain living a good life.
Should women decide whats best for society now and in the future they could effect change.
Today women are choosing bad men as mates, not marrying, having children then the father disappears and they raise the children sometimes alone or with another man not their father. This structure is inherently more challenging to produce good results. It's laden and riddled with potential problems.
Young boys who don't have a stable father figure are a big problem in our society. But they watched, they learned and now they are out there mimicking their biological fathers and matching the mother's idolotry. A cycle of bad choices and bad results.
That said I'd be critical of a few elements :
1. Females in most species migrate, move and select the most successful males. Most female species whether it's insects or mammals have a "sense" genome that tells them "this guy can protect, provide and give me children".
And that selection process is as normal as a boys desire to cry. And there is the conflict.
As young males we watch, we learn and we adapt and we copy. As much as we don't want to be John Wayne or the Alpha Male we see that females are drawn to the alpha male in droves. He has an entourage of female groupies. This affords him a different social status in our male kingdom.
The politics of this conflict plays itself out usually ending in more conflict.
Granted young people today seem to be shifting the focus but if you think John Wayne doesn't get alot of play with the youth, go to nightclub and see how the meeker fellows are doing compared to brawn and baughty. Mark Zuckerberg had LOTS of time on his hands for a reason.
I feel like I probably have a unique perspective on this issue, and one that might be able to help both fathers and sons.
My dad was first diagnosed with leukemia when I was 3. For the next 7 years he was sick on and off, and for the last 2 years he spent almost the whole time in the hospital. He died, at home, with me holding his hand when I was 10. I grew up without my dad, I didn't have a male role model in my life, and I had to more or less raise myself. The difficulty of this cannot be understated, and not a single day has gone by where I have not felt the absence of my dad acutely.
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
- Teddy Roosevelt
Be there for your son. Take an interest in his life and his interests. If he loves to play the piano, take an interest in it and learn about it. Let him teach you things about his passions. He loves them and he loves you, so having you take an interest in something that he loves will thrill him. Don't force him to do things just because you want him to like them. Don't withold affection. Hug him. He will object to this overt display of affection in public -- boys are taught that it isn't cool to show affection -- but he will be thrilled inside. Do the little things. It is these that he will remember as much as the big things. The pats on the back, the hugs, the "I'm proud of you," teaching him how to shave/tie a tie/etc. Teach him the importance of respect, hard work, and discipline. These will serve him well forever. Set a good example and he will follow. Push him beyond what he thinks he is capable of doing. That encouragement will teach him that the success of accomplishing something difficult is more rewarding than the alternative. Encourage him to take smart risks. Take pride in his successes AND his failures. Failing to achieve something great is NOT failure. Before my dad died, he left me a note with a quote that I feel would serve all fathers well.
The more that we can teach children about all aspects of life, including handling emotions, the better off we will be as a society.
There is no place to hide from dealing with emotions. If we don't learn to deal with them, they will only manifest as illnesses or problems later in life.
Mr. Hyde cannot have a conversation with Dad about pornography or smoking pot, breaking into someplace they're not supposed to be. There is an adversarial relationship intrinsic to this side of growing up, adolescence and the parent trying to curtail such impulses.
Fathers lose their cool. They fear their sons will make them look bad, often, and overreact to these moments of rebellion, causing and even greater divide between them. And if you're suggesting cozying up to troubled youths, it will smack of pretense. Like trusting the warden with your inclination to try and escape prison.
Counselors should exist to deal with this problem. Fathers and sons will always be at war.