By admin 
Things aren’t going well for American boys.
According to Richard Reeves, the author of Of Boys and Men, Men fare poorly compared to women on virtually every educational, health and social indicator there is.
In the field of education Boys have long had more learning and behavioral problems at school than girls, and now men perform worse than women in college admission and completion, as well as placement in graduate and professional schools.
As a university professor for almost fifty years, I have seen the composition of my classes shift from almost all men to almost all women, especially at the graduate school level. In the field of health men die 6.7 years earlier than women and have more diseases in every major disease category, largely due to behaviors that endanger their health.
Gentlemen address more than 30 harmful behavioral health risks such as refusing sunscreen or seat belts, not getting help for medical symptoms and using dangerous medications. Socially speaking, we do anecdotal reports that younger men are not dating and many still live with their parents.
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This did not happen overnight and was the result of a combination of female progress and male stagnation over the past half century.
In the immediate post-World War II era, women had fewer rights than today and were not active in the labor market in large numbers, especially mothers of children under the age of six. But in 1985, half of all mothers were of small children were in the labor force.
After gaining financial independence, women began leaving bad marriages en masse, in what was then known as ‘the divorce revolution’, with half of all marriages expected to end in divorce by 1985.
During this period, young women were guided in navigating a world of changing gender relations. For example, as a student at Berkeley in the 1960s, I knew that women who took assertiveness training to overcome the effects of their gender role socialization became dependent on and different from men.
Meanwhile, boys were – and still are – socialized to conform in the same way they were in the 1950s traditional masculine normssuch as limiting the expression of emotions, self-reliance, aggression and dominance, as well as a ‘playboy’ orientation to sexuality.
Most fundamentally, boys avoid anything stereotypically feminine. Most guys know that the worst thing they can do is walk, talk, act or throw like a girl.
Coming back to the present, we live in an era where masculinity is and has been contested on the ballot this year. Competing versions are framed in terms of the two types of alpha malesas described by the late celebrated primatologist Frans de Waal, in his research on chimpanzees (our closest primate relative): the dominant alpha and the populist alpha.
Newly elected President Donald Trump is the dominant alpha. A recent article by The Washington Post declared: “Trump has long appreciated being seen as an alpha male who never apologizes or shows weakness.” In this light, his criminality may be part of his profession. Newly elected Vice President JD Vance, meanwhile, takes the low road of being alpha by demeaning women who don’t have biological children and calling them “childless cat ladies.”
Harris and Walz are both populist alphas who care for their voters and promote their well-being, as evidenced by their series of new economic proposals targeting food prices, taxes, housing and medical costs that they say will will strengthen the middle class. As governor of Minnesota, Walz supported GLBTQ rights and undertook an initiative to place feminine hygiene products in schools.
Walz knows how to raise guys who are likely to do the same growing up to be nurturingconfident men. His 17-year-old son, Gus, demonstrated this vividly at the Democratic National Convention when he stood to give his father a standing ovation, tears streaming down his face as he placed his hand over his heart and shouted, “That’s my dad!” It was Guus immediately denounced by the conservative choruswho called him weird and a bloated beta male and offered him a tampon.
Mikhail Nilov | Pexels
In my opinion, this episode highlights what is the central problem in traditional male socialization – namely the prohibition of expressing emotions.
I have been researching this problem for the past forty years and proving it this socialization practice increases the risk that boys will grow up to be emotionally inexpressive men, a phenomenon I have called “normative male alexithymia.” Alexithymia is a clinical term and literally means ‘no words for emotions’.
“Normative masculine” refers to the fact that this happens as a result of socialization according to traditionally masculine standards.
It is likely that a boy is introduced to this masculine norm when he cries. He may then be told, “Big boys don’t cry,” and in many cases he may be threatened, “If you don’t stop crying, I’ll give you something to cry about.” This message could come from his father or from other boys. He then learns to suppress his tears – when he is sad or even, as in the case of Gus Walz, overjoyed.
Think of the damage this is doing to this boy. First, all humans have tear ducts. Second, crying releases hormones such as oxytocin and endorphins, which relieve feelings of sadness and make you feel better. And if you still think crying is such a serious offense of masculine norms, consider the shortest sentence in the New Testament: “Jesus wept.”
I have counseled parents who want to raise their sons in a gender-neutral way who have asked me, “In our house we let Jimmy cry, but we worry about how other people would react to him if he cries in front of him. them.” I tell them that they are right to be concerned because there are people who believe in traditional masculine norms and may react negatively to their son’s crying.
But they can protect their boy by telling him, “In our family, we think it’s okay for boys to cry, because it’s normal to cry when you’re sad, and crying makes you feel better.” But not everyone agrees. Some people think boys shouldn’t cry. So you should be careful when you are around such people and not cry in front of them because they might get angry with you.
Finally, socializing boys to conform to masculine norms can be harmful in even more general ways.
Personality traits are usually normally distributed in the population, so that some people are low on a given trait and others are high, but most are near the midpoint. If your son happens to have little aggression (a male norm), and you feel like a man, he should do so conform to masculine norms and therefore be more aggressive, and tell him so, thinking of the damage you may be doing to his personality.
First, by doing this you are distorting his personality. But by making him be someone he’s not, you also place him at odds with the overarching theme of the West Civilization, that is Individualism (as opposed to Eastern civilization’s emphasis on collectivism).
Individualism has been set as a central theme throughout the centuries, from Aristotle to Shakespeare to this day: ‘Be true to yourself’, ‘Be the self that you really are’, or as Oscar Wilde say it (tongue in cheek): “Be yourself, everyone else is taken.”
In summary, a child-centered rather than a norm-centered approach to parenting is the way to raise boys who will grow up to be nurturing, confident men.
Dr. Ronald F. Levant (he/him/his) is professor emeritus of psychology at the University of Akron. A feminist scholar with 18 books and numerous refereed journal articles and book chapters to his credit, he is widely regarded as one of the most important people responsible for creating the new field of psychology of men and masculinity. He recently published The Problem with Men: Insights on Overcoming a Traumatic Childhood from a World-Renowned Psychologist.
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