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Printed from The Vanier Institute of the Family's website at www.vifamily.ca. © 2007.
TRANSITION MAGAZINE Canadian Boys: Growing Up Male 
Canadian Boys: Growing Up Male Growing up can be tough, whether you’re a girl or a boy. Growing up male presents unique challenges that can, at times, feel overwhelming. In this issue of Transition we explore why it is that so many Canadian boys feel sad, lost, confused and angry. What do boys need that they’re not getting? The Vanier Institute of the Family decided to devote an entire issue of the magazine to boys because their problems have been largely ignored in recent decades. Before the women’s movement, girls were the ones who tended to be ignored; now our society pays far more attention to girls and their problems than used to be the case. While we wholeheartedly applaud efforts on behalf of girls, we wonder why boys and their problems don’t seem to rate equal attention. After all, boys are children too, despite Lewis Carroll’s assertion that he loved “all children, except for boys.” Another reason to focus on boys is that we can’t address the issue of the exploitation of girls and women without also addressing the issue of how boys are raised and socialized. If we can help boys grow up to become whole men—emotionally literate, flexible, and responsible—everyone will benefit. In our first article, “The Forgotten Child,” Fred Mathews convincingly describes the declining status of boys in Canada as a problem that needs urgent attention. Despite their hard-shell exterior, and their I’m-fine-just-leave-me-alone attitude, many boys find life far from easy. For example, in the academic arena, the average boy is at a distinct disadvantage compared to the average girl. To find out why, see our second article, “Why Boys Don’t Do as Well at School as Girls.” And finally, in “Raising Sons,” David Baxter looks at how parents often unintentionally perpetuate gender stereotypes that may harm their sons. Drawing from his own experience as a psychologist, as well as from some of the best books available about boys’ issues, he outlines how mothers and fathers can help their sons navigate the difficult journey from boyhood to manhood. The Forgotten Child: The Declining Status of Boys in Canada
Canada lags far behind all Western democracies in the study of boys’ welfare despite the fact that indicators of boys’ declining status have been observable for many years. For example:
What is going on? By almost every measure of well-being, boys trail girls in Canada, and yet we fail to acknowledge boys’ issues. What keeps boys and young men off the social policy radar screen? We are, after all, speaking about children and youth. Foremost among many reasons is the fact that boys have few advocates in Canada. Girls are fortunate to have the women’s movement behind them to promote their issues. No similar support exists for young males. Making matters worse is the belief, held by some, that boys don’t need support, and that girls’ issues alone should occupy our attention. Such a position has far-reaching negative consequences for efforts to heal our society. There is simply no empirical, moral or ethical justification for this unfortunate and narrow view of our children’s welfare. England, by contrast, acknowledges the plight of boys and has had an affirmative action program to support boys and youth for over 10 years, particularly in the area of education. Another problem is inequity in the allocation of research funding. Funding for research on boys and young men has not been forthcoming in any significant way from any level of government, or from foundations or non-governmental organizations. When research on male youth is undertaken, it is frequently poorly designed. Biased research questions, narrowly defined concepts, and the lack of interpretive frameworks that are male-centred and boy-positive have created enormous blind spots in our understanding of boys’ and young men’s issues. For example, past studies on male victimization have used questions and theories borrowed from studies of female victims. Consequently, many studies of boys have rendered their experiences invisible from the outset. Academic research also tends to privilege an “expert model” of knowledge, and devalues or excludes boys’ own accounts of their lives. In my experience, many educators, counsellors and social service professionals have little understanding of boys’ learning styles or male victims’ issues, nor do they have even a basic awareness of the literature on boys’ and young men’s life experiences. A lack of knowledge and skill on the part of counsellors has serious consequences for the few males who seek treatment. Many young males drop out of therapy because they soon sense that their gender-specific issues are being glossed over by counsellors still using female-centred therapy models. Time and again I see adults ignoring or discounting research findings that do not conform to social stereotypes about boys. A prime example is in the area of interpersonal violence and aggression. An erroneous belief, held by some, is that aggression is exclusively a boys’ issue and that girls are aggressive only when defending themselves. However, all the published longitudinal research on human development using large population samples in numerous countries concludes that there are no statistically significant differences between the sexes when it comes to the use of direct and indirect aggression over the life span. Further, when studies control for self-defense, they show that most acts of aggression by girls are offensive in nature. An extensive Scandinavian review of the worldwide literature on aggression concludes that culture, not gender, is most predictive of the use of aggression. Those who promote the false belief that males alone are “the aggressive sex” have caused devastating problems for boys and young men—and especially for male victims. The overwhelming evidence from extensive research suggests that the use of interpersonal violence and aggression is rooted in complex and interacting factors such as: child abuse and neglect, ineffective parenting, mental health problems, brain-based illness, personality disorders, parental criminality or substance abuse, learning disabilities, temperament, poverty, relationship dynamics, corporal punishment, and social norms legitimizing the use of violence and aggression to meet needs and deal with conflict or frustration. The evidence just does not support the simplistic and reductionist belief that violence and aggression are the result of “male socialization” to the exclusion of all other perspectives or considerations. Most damaging to this belief is the fact that the vast majority of boys and young men are not violent. On the other hand, an extraordinary amount of violence and aggression is directed towards boys and young men. For example, violence in the form of child abuse is a significant problem for males. Research on child maltreatment in Canada shows that, across all categories of maltreatment, 51% of substantiated cases involved boys as victims. Looking at specific categories, we find victimization rates as follows:
Unfortunately, our current understanding about child abuse is still limited and continues to reflect primarily girls’ and young women’s stories. This is neither good nor bad, right nor wrong. It is simply a reflection of the history of who has been doing most of the advocacy. However, as a result, victims have a female face, while perpetrators have a male face. This has made it very difficult to bring boys’ stories forward. Girls and women have permission to recognize themselves as victims. Boys and men do not. For a male, even to consider himself a victim sits uneasily; disclosing his victimization to someone else is especially daunting. Those who do so soon learn that compassion and support often do not follow disclosure. Shame does, along with indifference rooted in rigid gender role expectations that males ought to take care of themselves. No matter what’s been done to them, they’re expected to take it “like a man.” Boys also fear the stigma of being considered “weak” or “gay” if their sexual abuser is a woman or an older teenage girl. Boys, after all, are supposed to enjoy all sexual experiences with teen females or women. It is a mythical rite of passage for a younger male to be “initiated” into sex by an “older” woman. Males do not possess the concepts of “sexual assault” or “rape” to label their experiences of being sexually victimized by adults. Girls are “raped”; boys are “seduced.” Our indifference to boys’ pain starts early. When little girls are hurt we tend to hold and reassure them. Boys we pick up, dust off, and send on their way. We withdraw affection and touch from boys early in childhood to “toughen them up.” This often leaves them “touch-wary,” hungry for attention, and awkward or uncomfortable at expressing physical affection. Sibling-on-sibling violence is a serious problem that is greatly under-reported. This type of violence is overlooked by parents and rendered invisible by expressions such as “rough-housing,” “sibling rivalry,” or “squabbling.” Boys are some-times even encouraged to fight to “make men out of them” and get them ready for the “real world.” The most common form of family violence, sibling violence occurs more often than parent-child or interspousal violence, and it affects boys more than girls. Corporal punishment, another form of family violence, has begun to emerge in the discourse on child welfare and children’s mental health. More corporal punishment is directed at boys than girls. More males report being hit by parents and more parents report hitting sons than daughters. The most chronic pattern of hitting, in terms of frequency, is mothers hitting their teenage sons. The situation is no better in the community. For example, Statistics Canada reports that the risk of personal victimization is highest for persons who are male, young, single, and residents of urban areas. Ten percent of boys aged 10 to 16 experience a non-sexual genital assault, usually a kick by someone their own age. The rate for girls is 2%. Forty percent of the perpetrators are girls and in only 25% of the attacks are the girls acting in self-defense. Boys who wear glasses or have other physical limitations are three times more likely to be kicked. A year after the assault, one in four boys still suffers depression from the incident. When speaking about the high rates of male abuse and victimization, I often hear claims that it is not a “social problem” because the perpetrators are other males (fathers, brothers, relatives, peers, strangers, etc). This insensitive and inaccurate statement reveals a belief embedded in our society that boys can take care of themselves and that there are “worthy” and “unworthy” victims. Further, the empirical evidence documenting the high incidence and prevalence of male victimization at the hands of mothers, sisters, girlfriends, and other females, such as babysitters and peers, should retire this myth once and for all. Canada has one of the highest suicide rates in the Western world: a little under 2% of all deaths in Canada are caused by suicide. In 1997, 3,681 Canadians of all ages killed themselves. Of these, most were male; almost four times as many males as females commit suicide every year. Suicide rates for young people have increased remarkably since the 1950’s, especially for young males in their late teens and early twenties. Gay male teens and Native youth are at especially high risk. It is easy to find media images that support violence and aggression towards young males. A study I conducted concerning depictions of violence towards boys and teens in comedy films, comic strips and comedy entertainment revealed a number of disturbing themes: sexual assault, injury to the testicles, seduction of male minors by women, child abuse, pedophilia, prison rape, humiliation, shaming, ridicule and support for female-to-male bullying and violence. These themes appear so regularly that they have become invisible to the average person and a norm in comedy films and entertainment. If you can laugh at a victim, you don’t have to take him seriously. The media often compound life problems for boys. A good example is a Toronto newspaper editorial about the recent Statistics Canada study on young adults living with their parents. The study reported a higher number of young men living at home than young women. Even though both sexes were in this situation, the writer referred to the young men as “momma’s boys” and suggested they were lazy, ungrateful and a disappointment to their mothers. Nothing negative was said about the young women. The editorial reveals a double standard when it comes to reporting on the plight of young men and women. One serious consequence of this bias is that it silences much-needed discussion of the issues contributing to the young men’s life situations. The many possible reasons why a young man might live with his parents include, for example: shrinking employment opportun-ities in traditionally male manu-facturing jobs due to these jobs being exported to low-wage countries (unlike traditionally female clerical, retail and social service jobs); poor employment prospects due to leaving school early; a job lay-off; regional economic issues and seasonal employment patterns; the shortage of affordable housing; a mental or physical illness or disability; addiction; a work injury; illiteracy; cultural group norms that value children living at home; belonging to a working-poor family; being a recent immigrant who cannot find work; returning to school to upgrade skills; losing a relationship or marriage; needing to contribute to the family income due to his parents’ job loss or dire financial situation; having aging or ill parents who need help around the home; or being gay, bisexual or transgendered and experiencing discrimination in employment and housing. Much has been written in recent years about girls and body image. The topic has become a prominent theme for girls’ advocates, yet it has not been given any serious consideration as a boys’ issue, despite research documenting the need to do so. A recent Canadian study shows that media exposure to the “ideal” form—thin for women and physically fit for men—is internalized and that this exposure is related to problematic eating behaviours, self-objectification, and body shame for both sexes. Boys regularly tell me about the pressure they feel from male peers and girls to be “cut”—to have a muscular body. The devaluation of the short, overweight or skinny male is a perennial issue. Boys encounter all types of health problems by using illegal steroids; some have even died. Using steroids has also caused some boys to develop uncontrolled, explosive behaviour called “roid rage.” Young men often isolate themselves in their bedrooms, fixated on “working out,” and some follow an overly restrictive diet in the hope of staying lean and building muscles. Boys have also told me that they feel humiliated when they are “rated” or sexually taunted by older, attractive and popular girls in their school. As well, they resent being treated like “a wallet” when girls expect them to pay for everything on dates. They say girls ignore guys who don’t have money and a car. They complain that girls will not date them if they don’t wear the right clothes, have “the right look,” or supply them with drugs or alcohol. They resent it when a girl causes trouble with another guy or with a female peer, and then expects them to step in and defend her when things turn violent. And they feel shame when a girl accuses them of being “gay” or “not a real man” if they decline, or are not ready for, sex. Boys have also told me that they feel humiliated when they are “rated” or sexually taunted by older, attractive and popular girls in their school. As well, they resent being treated like “a wallet” when girls expect them to pay for everything on dates. They say girls ignore guys who don’t have money and a car. They complain that girls will not date them if they don’t wear the right clothes, have “the right look,” or supply them with drugs or alcohol. They resent it when a girl causes trouble with another guy or with a female peer, and then expects them to step in and defend her when things turn violent. And they feel shame when a girl accuses them of being “gay” or “not a real man” if they decline, or are not ready for, sex. Boys say they are given little credibility when they complain about being sexually harassed. In fact, there are adults in the school system who still believe boys are not or cannot be sexually harassed by girls, despite evidence to the contrary. American researchers have found that 42% of boys and 38% of girls report being victims of sexual harassment and that 85% of girls and 76% of boys have experienced unwelcome sexual behaviour that interferes with their lives. The past decade has seen an explosion of studies on aggression in intimate relationships reflecting the experiences of both boys and girls. However, virtually all prevention materials I have reviewed in this area present boys in a negative light or as the aggressors, and girls as victims. The unfortunate result is that boys tell me they tune out and ignore these materials—not because they dispute the need to take responsibility for their behaviour but because they feel the curriculum is biased. They are angry that a similar message about respect and personal responsibility is not given to girls, and that their own stories and experiences are excluded. While significant resources have gone into examining girls’ self-esteem, nothing has been done for boys in this area. In fact, large-scale studies on the decline of self-esteem in boys have been ignored and, in some cases, deliberately not published by the authors. The same has happened with research documenting the negative experiences of boys in the school system, and girls’ and boys’ perceptions of teachers’ preferences for female students over male students. Contrary to the beliefs and advocacy of some people, schools are not such great places for boys—especially boys who are poor, marginalized, or “at-risk.” The issues raised here point to a need to expand our Canadian conversation on children’s well-being and social justice to include the stories of boys and young men. We will never heal ourselves as a society until we do. The problems of boys and young men are real; their need for hope and inspiration is urgent. Will we continue to ignore them, or will we respond with compassion and wisdom?
Why Boys Don't Do as Well at School as Girls Recent research throws light on the intriguing question of why the average boy student is at a disadvantage compared to the average girl student, as outlined here by the Conseil supérieur de l’éducation, a Québec government advisory body on education.
Over the last 15 years, it has become apparent that girls do better than boys at school, not only in Québec but in most of the developed world. The difference in boys’ and girls’ academic achievement only came to light as mixed schools became the general rule. As new cohorts of girls and boys went through the education system in the same schools and classrooms, it became clear that gender is, in its own right, a significant variable, beyond the central influence of socio-economic background on a student’s progress in school. Given the same social origins, girls do better than boys at all levels of education. This phenomenon is even more obvious among students from a socio-economically disadvantaged background. At the elementary level, boys’ academic difficulties manifest themselves mainly in three ways. Compared to girls, more boys experience:
However, one should guard against creating rigid dichotomies. Some boys do very well in school and some girls experience difficulties. Overall, there is no substantial difference between boys’ and girls’ achievement in the various school subjects, with the exception of the language of instruction (reading and writing), in which girls do significantly better than boys. The difference between boys and girls in reading achievement is not exclusive to Québec but has also been found, to varying degrees, in countries included in samples for major international studies. As for writing achievement, on the 1995 compulsory exam administered in the sixth year in Québec elementary schools, 57% of the girls attained an adequate or higher than adequate score of 70% or more, compared with only 38% of the boys. Conversely, 21% of the girls and 33% of the boys showed inadequate writing skills, having scored 59% or less on the exam. (The remaining students fell into a middle category with a score of 60% to 69%.) In 1997-98, 25.3% of boys experienced academic delay by the end of elementary school, compared with 17.3% of girls. This difference is not a recent phenomenon, and has, in fact, remained fairly constant over the last 35 years. Grade repeating accounts for most academic delay, but the concept of “academic delay” offers the advantage of taking into account the delay accumulated over a period of time, while data on grade repeating only reflect the number of students who have fallen behind in a single year. Similarly, among students aged 6 to 11 who were identified as having learning or adjustment difficulties as of September 30, 1997, there were approximately 2 boys for every girl. And the figures for behavioural difficulties show a ratio of 5.5 boys for every girl. The difficulties observed at the elementary level generally remain the same at the secondary level, except that they follow a cumulative logic. In other words, the gap between boys and girls grows slightly wider from one grade level to the next. Moreover, at the secondary level, there is the added phenomenon of early school leaving, which, again, is more prevalent among boys than girls. As regards the language of instruction, a 1998 Canada-wide study called the School Achievement Indicators Program (SAIP) showed that girls’ advantage over boys tends to increase between the ages of 13 and 16 at the higher achievement levels in writing and even more so in reading. And yet, at these ages, slightly more boys than girls reached the higher achievement levels on the SAIP science and mathematics assessments held in 1996 and 1997. Looking again at academic delay, the difference between boys and girls is also greater at the end of secondary school than at the end of elementary school. In the 1997-98 school year, 40% of boys at the secondary level in Quebec had fallen behind, compared with 27% of girls. In addition, while almost twice as many students in the 12-16 age group had learning or adjustment difficulties compared to the 6-11 age group, the ratio of boys to girls was still 2 to 1. However, with behavioural difficulties the ratio of boys to girls was 4.2 to 1 as of September 30, 1997. The data on academic delay, and on learning or adjustment difficulties, are consistent with graduation rates. In 1997-98, 41.3% of boys in the youth sector left secondary school without a diploma as compared to 26% of girls. These figures inevitably have an impact on the post-secondary education levels. In the fall of 1997, women accounted for 55% of students admitted to Québec college programs and 56% of full-time enrolment in undergraduate programs at Québec universities. Explaining the Gap between Boys and Girls The gap between boys and girls with respect to academic achievement is not a matter of intellectual potential. All of the studies conducted over the last 40 years have shown that there is no significant difference between the sexes in this respect. However, these studies agree unanimously that, overall, boys and girls, particularly at the elementary level, do not have the same attitudes towards academic learning and the general demands of their role as students. That is, girls are proportionally much more interested in and open to school life than boys. Some researchers do not hesitate to explain this attitude difference exclusively in terms of biology, whereas others speak only of the socialization process. Findings in the field of neurobiology in the last 10 years suggest a more complex interplay of these factors. Contrary to common belief, human beings do not interact with their environment using a fixed set of aptitudes. Rather, what they learn as they interact with their environment in turn affects their ability to understand the world around them and to interact with it. Not only do innate and acquired aptitudes influence each other, but it would appear that the socialization process is the strongest influencing factor on children. According to this view, if, given equal intellectual potential, boys do not do as well in school as girls, it is because social forces affect children differently depending on their biological sex. These forces are so distinct as to create differences in the way boys and girls understand the world around them and interact with it. The differences can be traced to two main sources of socialization. First, socialization by the adult world gradually leads children to internalize and conform to the social gender-role expectations that correspond to the representations of men and women prevalent in their socio-economic environment. From 18 months on, children are aware of their biological sex and, because sexual identity is the central element of their burgeoning sense of self, they naturally try to identify the social behaviours and attitudes defined by their environment as appropriate for their biological sex. Children thus shape their identities based on the messages they receive from adults as to the kind of behaviour expected of their sex. Adults play a very active role in this process by reinforcing or repressing certain forms of behaviour. In this way, through the models children are given, through the different types of pressure placed on them depending on whether they are male or female, boys and girls develop certain characteristic attitudes which predispose them to conform to the expectations associated with their social gender role. However, socialization by the adult world does not explain everything. A young child may exhibit stereotypical behaviour without having learned, given his or her age, the concepts tied to these stereotypes. In particular, socialization by the adult world does not explain why boys prefer more physical types of games and girls more social types of games. Because these distinctive forms of interaction appear very early in childhood and involve complex forms of behaviour, it is difficult to understand how infant boys and girls could, even before they are fully aware of gender roles, decipher adults’ social expectations towards them. Secondly, children also gradually internalize social gender-role expectations through socialization with each other. Between the ages of 4 and 11, whenever children are not subject to the rules of the adult world, peer socialization is governed by the implicit rule of separation of the sexes. During this period, children learn to classify and sort the social characteristics that are associated with their own sex by renouncing and rejecting those associated with the other sex. The impact of children’s socialization by the adult world is manifest in this process, and boys’ and girls’ experience in groups is sufficiently different to support the claim that there are, in fact, two cultures among children. Not only do groups of boys and groups of girls engage in different forms of play, but the styles of interaction and the interests of the groups are different too. There are two main differences between groups of boys and groups of girls. The first of these differences has to do with the amount of effort each group puts into distinguishing itself from the other: while boys construct their masculinity by rejecting femininity, girls feel no need to prove that they are free of any masculine traits in order to accept their femininity. The second difference lies in boys’ and girls’ attitudes towards adults: while boys give more importance to other boys’ reactions, girls are more open to adults. In a general way, these differences are still evident at adolescence. These two types of socialization—by the adult world and by peers—continue in school and entail consequences from an educational perspective. Not only do they affect the conditions in which children fulfill their role as students, but they also affect children’s cognitive processes. While there is no difference between men and women in terms of intellectual capacities, they use their intellectual capacities differently. In other words, men and women have different cognitive styles, although this difference cannot be considered absolute. (While differences may be observed in the way men and women in general store and use information to solve problems, there are significant exceptions among individuals; an individual man or woman may have a cognitive style that runs counter to the general tendency of members of their sex.) Teachers also have an impact on the socialization process. Even if teachers think they are neutral and view all the children in their classrooms simply as students, they contribute, through their comments, attitudes and expectations, to the representations of men and women that are prevalent in society. These projected or perceived differences often lead teachers to adopt a double standard of behaviour, that is, to behave differently depending on whether they are dealing with a boy or a girl. Moreover, the rate at which boys and girls mature would be similar were it not for major differences in language acquisition and in the development of self-control. Girls, because of their greater self-control—which should not be equated, as it often is, with passivity—generally conform to the type of interaction teachers expect. They also more readily meet the demands of the student’s role, especially because of their greater openness towards adults, and therefore perform better in school than boys. Is the gap between boys and girls with respect to achievement in the language of instruction due to a difference in the rates at which they mature, or is it the outcome of different processes of socialization? Although current research does not provide conclusive proof of the first hypothesis, it is nonetheless true that reading and writing are presented in the symbolic world as feminine realities. Girls’ greater proficiency in reading and writing is a reality perceived by both students and teachers. Therefore, both tend to see reading and writing as “feminine.” Not only does this perception influence teachers’ behaviour, but it also influences boys who, under peer pressure, try to avoid being associated with “feminine” areas of learning. This explanation, based on the process of construction of sexual identity, seems all the more plausible given that, curiously and against all common sense, boys’ difficulties in learning the language of instruction appear to have no impact on their learning in other school subjects, since no significant differences have been found between boys’ and girls’ achievement in other subjects at either the elementary or the secondary level. Difficulties in learning the language of instruction nonetheless have short- and long-term consequences. In the short term, the combination of problems in both the language of instruction and mathematics is a major factor in identifying students with learning difficulties and in justifying the decision to make a student repeat a grade. In the long term, being labelled as having learning difficulties or repeating a grade has an impact on the student’s academic progress. While no study has provided evidence of a direct correlation between language achievement and grade repeating or the identification of learning difficulties, the difference in girls’ and boys’ achievement in the language of instruction appears to be a key factor explaining why more boys are held back and/or labelled as having learning difficulties, since no significant difference has been found between the sexes’ math achievements. Graduation to secondary school is the outcome of a process dictated by a cumulative logic that favours girls over boys. At this point, boys and girls must determine the meaning their studies have for them—and that meaning will have consequences for their future. The gap between their achievement levels, which has increased over time, will often translate into divergent strategies, as evidenced by their respective secondary-school graduation rates. In short, students are not just reacting mechanically to role expectations. Their behaviours, which may then be considered strategies, are governed by a broader interpretation of their situation. Although students are not aware of all of the consequences of their choices, they have reasons for behaving one way rather than another. These strategies, in spite of their diversity, can be explained in terms of two main factors that influence each other: namely, sex and social background. Generally, the more advantaged a student’s background, the higher the student’s academic achievement. While the gap between boys’ and girls’ academic achievement is evident in all social strata, the humbler the origins, the wider the gap. The academic strategies developed by students depend on the meaning their studies have for them, but it appears that boys and girls, especially those from a working-class background, do not see school the same way. On the one hand, there is no doubt that academic success is a stepping stone to a better life for both girls and boys from working-class homes. On the other hand, although the rebalancing of social gender roles and of the associated social expectations over the last 40 years has encouraged girls to seize the new opportunities afforded them, for boys, these changes have not opened up new opportunities, especially in light of the fact that the working class generally does not equate post-secondary education with entry into the labour force. Given that sexual stereotypes are based on the premise of an unequal relationship in which males are viewed as the dominant sex, working-class boys experiencing academic difficulties are likely to strongly support masculine stereotypes. The negative perception of their social class is compounded by their academic difficulties, so they try to compensate by according more importance to their gender—a behaviour which can only lead them to place even more distance between themselves and the classroom. While girls from a working-class background more naturally perceive academic achievement as the key to a rewarding career and to a family life over which they hope to exercise greater control than did their mothers, boys from the same background more spontaneously fall back on their prerogative as males. Consequently, education is more readily perceived by girls as an investment in their future, while boys do not always see the benefit of spending more years in school given that working-class men have traditionally been able to find employment with minimal education. If there is a common denominator or a common thread that explains what most differentiates boys from girls in terms of their academic achievement, it would undoubtedly be the difference in their attitudes towards education and academic achievement. This should not be considered an absolute dichotomy, however, studies and field observations converge towards the disarmingly simple conclusion that girls generally like school more than boys do. As early as elementary school, girls take to their role as students more readily and therefore do better than boys. Girls’ greater ease in adjusting to school life is perceived and then integrated into gender representations by teachers and students alike, at a peak time in the construction of the students’ sexual identity. Once this process has started, it feeds on itself so that, with every grade level, the gap between boys’ and girls’ academic achievement grows wider. The more modest the students’ socio-economic background, the greater the impact of the process. Policy Guidelines for Supporting Boys and Girls Throughout Their Schooling
Research over the past decade has revealed increasing evidence that boys and men in our society are suffering in a number of ways—depression, anxiety, difficulties with intimacy, and other problems are all too common—yet the socialization of males forces them into denial, repression, and displacement behaviors. Mary Pipher’s 1994 book, Reviving Ophelia, described today’s world as “a look-obsessed, media-saturated, ‘girl-poisoning’ culture” that causes young girls to “stifle their creative spirits and natural impulses, which ultimately destroys their self-esteem.” The book’s title refers to the story of Ophelia in Shakespeare’s Hamlet: “As a girl, Ophelia is happy and free, but with adolescence she loses herself. When she falls in love with Hamlet, she lives only for his approval. She has no inner direction; rather, she struggles to meet the demands of Hamlet and her father. Her value is determined utterly by their approval. Ophelia is torn apart by her efforts to please. When Hamlet (despondent over the death of his father) spurns her, she goes mad with grief. Dressed in elegant clothes that weigh her down, she drowns in a stream filled with flowers.” Four years later, the release of Real Boys by William Pollack drew attention to the fact that today’s boys are also in trouble: “Hamlet fared little better than Ophelia. Alienated from himself, as well as from his mother and father, he was plagued by doubt and erupted in uncontrolled outbursts. He grew increasingly isolated, desolate, and alone, and those who loved him could not get through to him. In the end, he died a tragic and unnecessary death.” Pollack, who has since released The Real Boys Handbook, a guide for parents and others, says that as a society we shame young boys and men into repressing and denying their more tender feelings. Pollack talks about the “Boy Code” that commands a boy to “be a man, be strong, be brave, don’t be a sissy, don’t show your feelings.” He suggests that the Boy Code is learned at an early age in sandboxes, playgrounds, classrooms, and our homes. Boys who don’t learn quickly to conform to this code are taunted and shamed until they do. As a result, they learn to be silent and to suffer quietly, retreating behind what Pollack calls “the mask of masculinity.” Parents often unintentionally play a significant role in perpetuating the stereotypes of what it is to be male (and what it is to be female). Men and women both learn what it means to be male primarily from adult and peer examples in their own formative years. As a result, both fathers and mothers tend to reinforce the models for masculinity that they themselves learned as children from their own parents and peers, a style which typically does not engage the child’s feelings but rather teaches them to “tough it out.” Differences in how parents react to male versus female children are apparent even in infancy. For example, parents tend to try to calm and comfort their sons when they are distressed, to “fix” the problem as quickly as possible. Of course, the desire to comfort an unhappy child is in itself neither abnormal nor a bad thing. However, the response to distressed sons is different from the response to distressed daughters. With daughters, parents tend to respond by encouraging them to express how they feel and—when they’re old enough to speak—to talk through their feelings. Perhaps because young boys tend to be more intense or aggressive in the way they express emotions, their parents tend to hold back and respond less expressively than they would with their daughters, which again can inadvertently send the message to boys that feelings are “bad”—something to be avoided. Pollack refers to research showing that “not only do mothers allow girls to express a greater range of emotional states as infants, but, as girls get older, mothers also simply communicate more with them than with boys. Mothers not only speak more to daughters about feelings but actually display a wider range of feelings to them. [The mother] may actually use more vivid facial expressions, allowing both girl and mother to develop better skills at recognizing each other’s emotions. But with sons, mothers tend to hold back, to respond less expressively, conforming to the stereotype that girls should be more emotionally expressive and that boys should be more emotionally constrained.” As these parental messages are given repeatedly through childhood, the different expectations that parents have of their sons and daughters become crystal clear to their children. The same messages are then reinforced by peers in the schoolyards and playgrounds, by teachers in the classroom, by coaches in the locker room, and by other significant adults in boys’ lives. Perhaps most significantly, what is conveyed to boys is, as Dan Kindlon and Michael Thompson say in their book, Raising Cain, that they must be “not feminine—perhaps even antifeminine—and so they consciously and deliberately attack in others and in themselves traits that might possibly be defined as feminine. These include tenderness, empathy, compassion, and any show of emotional vulnerability.” By the time boys become teenagers, most of them have become so adept at repressing and masking their more tender feelings that they often no longer have a vocabulary to identify or describe these feelings even to themselves. The exception is anger—the one “acceptable” male emotion. Anger hides other, less acceptable feelings from the people around them and even from the boys themselves—especially feelings like fear, anxiety, and depression. Clinicians and counsellors are aware that anger is often a warning flag—a signal that something else is wrong. For example, anger is typically the first observable sign of teenage depression. As a result, parents often feel confused by the silence and by what they see as “inexplicable bouts of anger” or “wild mood swings” in their sons. They ask themselves, “What is happening to him? He used to be such a happy little boy.” Parents, fearing for their son’s well-being, will often point to outside influences as they try to understand changes that do not make sense to them. Not knowing how to connect meaningfully with their sons, parents talk about feeling bankrupt. Kindlon and Thompson say that, like Superman, who retreats into his icy Fortress of Solitude, “boys typically avoid discussing their feelings with anybody. They struggle alone, often with tragic consequences.” As these boys grow into men, their wives and girlfriends complain that “He never talks about his feelings. I never know what he’s thinking. He doesn’t share anything with me.” And, as we have seen, when these men become fathers, they pass on the myths they have learned about what it means to be male to their own sons and daughters. Philip Lee, in an Ottawa Citizen article (March 7, 2001), quotes Christina Hoff Sommers, author of The War Against Boys, as criticizing Pollack and others for “attributing pathology to normal boys” and seeking to “socialize boys away from conventional maleness.” I think Ms. Sommers’ complaint is based on a misunderstanding of what Pollack, Kindlon, and Thompson are saying. In fact, it is the Boy Code, the crippling myth of maleness (Kindlon and Thompson call it “The Big Impossible,” a term they borrowed from the Fox Indians of Papua, New Guinea) that social-izes and “pathologizes” boys and men. As William Pollack says in Real Boys and perhaps even more clearly in The Real Boys Handbook, the intent is not to strip boys of their masculinity but to “give boys back the other half of being human that we’ve taken away from them”—to help boys understand that the restrictive definitions of masculinity tacitly or expressly promoted by Western society are not the only ways to be male. The Parent’s Role Parents make boys into men. Like girls, boys need their parents’ love, and—if it’s a love that recognizes and respects their sons’ feelings—it will support them in the struggle to become emotionally mature adults. Fathers have an important role to play. For better or for worse, men provide models of masculinity for both their sons and their daughters, in particular by conveying to their children what they perceive to be the acceptable limits of emotional closeness and emotional expression for males. By learning how to talk about his own feelings, hopes, worries, and fears, and by talking about such feelings to his children as they mature, a father gives the message that it is normal and acceptable for a man to have such feelings and to display them. Having themselves grown up with the emotional shackles of the Boy Code, men often find this difficult to do. And yet, it is something fathers need to do, not only for the sake of their sons, but also for their wives, their daughters, their grandchildren, and themselves. As Kindlon and Thompson point out, when a boy reaches middle childhood, “the way a father behaves during play or shared activities teaches his son how to manage his emotions. Research shows that young boys who are aggressive and low in prosocial activities—meaning they don’t share—have fathers who are more likely to engage in angry exchanges with them.” The authors remind fathers that “a boy observes how his dad resolves conflicts, cooperates, and works as a partner in marriage and family, in the community, and at work. In all arenas of his life, a father’s actions speak more loudly than his words, and a boy is listening carefully to both.” Mothers can give boys what they need to become healthier men by doing what is often in their hearts, giving their sons “complete and unconditional empathy and understanding for a full range of feelings, “ as Pollack puts it in Real Boys. Mothers, too, model what it is to be masculine. Mothers are the female mirror through which boys gain understanding of how men and women relate to each other. Pollack believes that “by empowering the mother, you empower the son— empowered mothers are a key to resolving society’s confusion about masculinity. Far from making boys weaker, the love of a mother can and does make boys stronger, emotionally and psychologically.” Being a single mother raising one or more sons creates additional challenges. As Pollack notes, more children live with their mothers than with their fathers following divorce. “How will she provide the key ingredient of her son’s upbringing—whether it be how to use the men’s room or how to throw a fastball—that we often assume a father’s steady presence contributes? How will she keep her own mixed feelings about men (which may include hurt, anger, or disappointment) from negatively affecting her son? How can she keep from unduly relying on her son to play the part of the man in her life, when he [even as a teenager] is still a child himself?” Pollack shows how many single mothers can and do overcome these difficulties, offering several “Dos and Don’ts” in The Real Boys Handbook. Adolescence is a particularly difficult time, not only for the adolescent girl or boy but also for the parents. Parents’ most common complaint about their teenage son is that he won’t talk to them about his thoughts and feelings, and/or that he is secretive about his life and activities. The teen may react to direct questions as if they were intrusions into his privacy— an interrogation, rather than a conversation. Often, the solution is twofold: First, find out what interests your son and look for opportunities to join him in that activity, even if only as a spectator (for example, watch him play one of the video games he enjoys). And second, talk to him—about anything. Have a “conversation” with him that presents repeated opportunities for him to enter into it, starting with non-threatening topics like movies, TV, music or games. Or simply tell him what you are doing, thinking and feeling in your life. He will probably not respond very much initially but by doing this you are, in effect, modeling for him what it means to you to have communication with your family on a variety of levels. Raising sons today requires dialogue, introspection, and feedback. It demands the ability to be open and the willingness to challenge past modeling about “being male.” And it calls for both fathers and mothers to reach out to their sons and break through the Boy Code by supporting the expression of their full range of emotions in an atmosphere of love, safety, and respect. The Invisible Boy, a 68-page report written by Dr. Fred Mathews and published by Health Canada, asks some tough questions about violence against boys and young men: “Why is it that Canada, a country that prides itself on being a compassionate and just society, lags behind other countries in advocacy for male victims? Why do the media refuse to give equal coverage to male victimization issues? Why do we support a double standard when it comes to the care and treatment of male victims?” Dr. Mathews goes on to say that the simplest answer to these questions may be “the fact that much of what constitutes male victimization is invisible to us all, especially to male victims themselves.” In The Invisible Boy, Dr. Mathews explores some of the controversies, issues and knowledge gaps relating to the experience of male victimization. The report encourages professionals and the public to listen to and acknowledge the voices and stories of male victims to get a full understanding of violence and how to prevent it. The Invisible Boy also provides practical information on findings about male victimization and what they mean for research, assessment, treatment and program development. While the focus in this report is on boys and men, Dr. Mathews asks readers “not to read into the pages of The Invisible Boy any diminishment of women’s experience with respect to violence and abuse. Unimaginable numbers of women and girls are harmed by violence every day in Canada.” He stresses that “if we are to advance the anti-violence movement at all in Canada, we have to move towards ‘gender reconciliation’ and away from the bullying of one another that passes for advocacy in many public discussions.” The Invisible Boy: Revisioning the Victimization of Male Children and Teens (1996) is available at http://www.phac-aspc.gc.ca/ncfv-cnivf/familyviolence/html/nfntsxinvisible_e.html.
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