This is where it all begins. Even though the passage from boy to men, from men to conceiving boys and then again from boy to man is a circle, this still is where it all begins, where men dedicate themselves to boys. The idea, no the principle, is as old as humans have populated earth. It is the idea that masculinity needs modeling and guidance. It is the idea that such guidance works best when it is ritually and culturally anchored. It is the idea—and by now solid scientific fact—that, without such guidance, boys and men are greatly more likely to become depressed, to become addicted, to become violent, to fail in school, and later in life, to choose the wrong partner, to choose too many partners. In short, men’s guidance for boys is crucial to keeping boys and men from running amok. However, far more encompassing than ideas of culturally and ritually anchoring boys is the idea of men being emotionally connected with boys.
This emotional connection is a two-way street. It affects boys and men alike. Today, I’d like to take the time to look at this reciprocal affectation. Starting with how men affect boys, then moving into how boys affect men I would like to show that the connection between boys and men can be a life-long one and is full of opportunity of nurturing and learning about each other and ourselves.
EMOTIONAL CONNECTEDNESS WITH BOYS
What I mean quite simply with this currently quite popular term “emotional connectedness” is love. When it comes to their sons, men have the great responsibility of loving them. Being truly loved by a grown man—a father, an uncle or grandfather, or simply a friend—assures in the boy so loved the passage into his own manhood. This love is a crucial factor of boys growing up to be solid, honest and moral men. It is as if the failure to love a son might seem to the son like a denial of his manhood. Such boys nevertheless grow up to be men, but the hurt they experienced from not being loved stays with them. Psychologist James Garbarino talks extensively talks about this in his book “Lost Boys.”
He begins his book by introducing a most unusual concept the psychologically and scientifically minded reader: the concept of the soul.
From what I have seen, the more likely course of development is that, when forced to live in hell, the soul withdraws, perhaps shutting itself off from the world outside in a desperate attempt at preservation. Once hidden away, it covers itself with layers of insulation. As the years pass, this protective shell may harden to the point where eventually the soul seems dormant, so out of touch with the day-to-day self has to become even to the tormented person himself.
There are such individuals in our midst, although most of them seem to end up in prisons or mental institutions. Some are violent boys. In such boys, the soul is buried deep under layers of violence and distorted thoughts and emotions. (34-35)
How does the soul survive? Garbarino asks. Conventional psychology has a three part answer: The soul survives in certain individuals due to temperament, resilience and love.
Temperament is the factor that describes the natural differences in sensitivity between children to stress, chaos and abuse. Resilience is the ability to bounce back from adversity. Love “may be the small voice of kindness coming from a relative too weak to change the situation but nevertheless able to fee the child’s soul enough tidbits of love to sustain it during its hibernation, its long winter of discontent.
There is a fourth factor for which, in order to mention it, Garbarino has to take off his psychologist’s hat. This factor is “divine intervention.” “Sometimes” he says, “it seems like an amazing grace that finds the spark in a child’s soul before it dies out entirely.”
So, we can see that there are factors that we cannot control: resilience, temperament and, perhaps, divine intervention. There is the one factor of love. The experience of being loved, at least weakly, but perhaps even unconditionally, will inoculate the boy to the hazards of growing up male in ways that few other things do. If he doesn’t get this love, he will never be able to forget this denial.
In that case, his manhood will either flourish only at night, when nobody else sees it, in angry assertions against nobody and fantastic conquests of people and territories. During the day, such a man will act passively, if not slavishly, to protect himself from the storms and attacks, the crises and catastrophes that he might encounter.
Or he will aggressively demand love and respect and adoration. He will do so during the day and most everyone will fear him. However, when the night falls on him, he will feel lonely, fearful and, yet again, unloved.
A boy who knows himself to be truly loved by a man will not have to steal his manhood like a thief at night or demand it aggressively like a tyrant in broad day-light.
But what is the quality of this “love” of men for their sons, for boys? It is, I believe, a peculiar mix of different aspects of what we might want to call an “intimate relationship.”
Such love is physical.
It might be that this aspect of men’s love for their sons is the most challenging of them all. The cultural and emotional boundaries we have built against such love are endless. To some extent every relationship between two males—whether they’re friends, father and son, grandfather and grandson, uncle and nephew or just business partners—has to contend with these boundaries. What might have still been “allowed” to the 2-6 year old boy, i.e., to race into his favorite adult male’s arms, to hug him passionately, or to look for physical protection from some scare, will, later, gradually but steadily make way for increasingly stunted physical interactions until, in the end, we’re left with a handshake, perhaps, a pat on the shoulder. We call this attitude “hypermasculinity”, machoism or just masculine bluntness. Behind it, though, is nothing but this simple truth of many boys and men: I am afraid to admit to my need of being loved and to show it as physical affection.
Strangely, for me this issue keeps coming back to the same question: Can men love babies? Or, more specifically, can men love baby-boys? How close are they willing to become with that baby-boy in their arms? Are they able to give themselves permission to take in the physical elements of this love? Can they allow themselves to smell their babies, to look into their eyes until their son’s fragile yet strong nature brings them to tears? Can they accept that their hands want to feel their skin, touch every nook and cranny in marvel about vulnerable and yet tough they already are. Can we accept being drawn into this baby-boy’s sphere, a sphere that demands that we make peace with whatever is troubling us in our competitive and bleak male lives, a sphere that only allows love.
Such love is spiritual.
The spiritual love-bond between men and boys is far from being a denial of the physical bond they need to have. Rather, the spiritual bond between them comes from a man’s willingness to be open about that which encompasses him. When a man can talk about the things that truly transcend his comprehension, his power of understanding and of manipulation, when he can express how he feels related to the infinite, then his sons and the boys that are entrusted to him will recognize and begin to trust their own deep rootedness in a spiritual world.
Such love is admiring.
A grown man’s admiration for a younger man or boy is a rare thing. Men are usually and most commonly pre-occupied with not giving other males any advantage. Admiration would clearly violate that principle. And yet, there is so much that men can and really must admire in their sons: alertness, agility, suppleness, speed, depth of convictions, depth of questioning, staying power, power to resist. I truly believe that, if we let them, if we don’t hold them back, our sons can easily out-perform us by the time they’re ten. No, they’re not as strong as grown men are, they haven’t made much money yet, and, of course, they haven’t pursued romantic love yet. But the man who says he can’t see anything admirable in a boy is either afraid of him or so blinded by his own arrogance that he fails to see the boy in his full existence.
I know many men who admire professional athletes. But do they admire their sons? Would they tell their sons “I admire you.”? Why do we have this fear of admiration being the cause of hubris? Why do we believe that showing admiration to our sons would spoil them, make them unuseful in practical life?
Such love is challenging and encouraging
Men can set challenges for boys. Such challenges are not about humiliating the boy, they’re not about putting the boy in his place of being the weaker, less able male. Rather they speak of the belief and faith the man has in the boy that he can do the job, that he will be able to push through what he has been asked to do. Male teachers have an awesome responsibility in this matter. They can learn to communicate their learning goals not just as expectations for their male students but also as belief/having faith that the students will be able to accomplish what is asked of them. This mixing of expectations with faith in the students’ abilities will lend not only optimism to the student but also give him focus and a sense of intent in what he is undertaking.
Such love is boundary-setting.
We, too often, think of boundary-setting as restricting. Especially with boys, we’re concerned with “keeping them from something”. Whatever that “from” might point to. When boys demonstrate “too much” energy, too much aggression, too much of the jokster spirit we tend to react with rigid rules and admonitions. I keep thinking about Robin William’s character of the teacher in Dead Poets’ Society. What are the boundaries that he finds for his students? How does he develop them? He finds them by destroying the rigid system of boundaries that are in place already.
He rips out the introduction of the poetry textbook and encourages his students to do the same.
He stands on his desk rather than behind it and encourages his students to do the same.
He talks to the students about death and the importance of the moment: Carpe diem. Seize the day.
The boundaries for learning are set through activities: shooting a soccer-ball while screaming out favorite lines from poetry
The boundaries of learning are taking out of the class-room into a cave, a womb of learning.
The boundaries are set by the teacher’s absence. He is not part of the cave-meetings.
(this is, of course, a reminder of Nietzsche’s Zarathustra’s insight that the ultimate moment of teaching comes when the teacher leaves the student to his own devices).
Boundaries are set as resistance and self-determination. If you want to be the King in Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s dream. Go for it. Seize the day. Don’t let your father’s judgment scare you.
Such love is honest and frank
Directness, openness and honesty are highly valued male interactional characteristics. Not beating around the bush and being clear about things—this includes being open about expectations (I think you can do better), being open about personal experiences, talking openly about “taboo” issues (sexuality, masturbation, drugs, drinking, etc.)
WHAT MEN LEARN FROM BOYS
We should also understand, however, that while much has been written about the significance of men in the lives of boys, very little is known and even less has been written about the significance of boys in the lives of men. This state of affairs is testimony to our preconceived one-directional sense of development. We think of men as that towards which, or better towards who, boys are developing. We consequently think of men as mentors, teachers, educators and guides. We fail to see the immense impact that boys can have on the lives of grown men. This is the topic I would like to explore for the rest of my talk today.
Let me begin with some theoretical assumptions of my own:
While it is said of men that they often behave in immature and boyish ways, most men have a rather ambivalent relationship with their own boyhood.
This ambivalence could be caused by memories of being bullied, of being behind in school, of not making it in a sports competition, of being the last of the boys to grow a beard, of not having a friend—the possibilities of what might have been painful to a particular man during his boyhood are literally endless.
In a backward projection—i.e., literally speaking in a “re—jection”—men often think of boys as weak, as immature, as in need of formation.
The purpose of such backward orientation often is the intense need of the man to reassure himself of his current strength and achievement. In order to continually feel that way he needs to compare himself to the boy he once was. He can do this by remembering himself or by simply looking at other boys. What he sees is a weaker, smaller version of himself now.
If necessary and under pressure, men will repress their own boy-like tendencies and patterns in order to seem mature and “up to the task.”
What are such “boy-like tendencies?” What I have in mind here, are things like creative playfulness, a strong sense of fairness, getting dirty as an acceptable part of the whole experience, finding boisterous pleasure in success, finding perfection not in matching an ideal, but rather in the concrete outcome of a project, production, being uninterested in impressing girls or finding impressing them at best a secondary benefit, realizing that homework simply isn’t as important as are the various games, books other activities he has in mind for the afternoon. Other less theoretical tendencies are, for example, finding the next tree to pee, being extremely unworried about the fact that this is the fifth day of wearing the same underwear, eating potato-chips for breakfast, lunch and dinner, never tying your shoe-laces, being extremely clear that you’re not impressed with someone else’s “natural” authority.
Many men, I’m afraid, have channeled these boy-like tendencies into a narrow range of activities that include drinking, speeding, having affairs and, if they’re lucky, the occasional outdoor adventure (but most men don’t even get that). In their adult lives men are more likely to live the life of robots and automatons: responsible, reliable and really boring.
The Task of Forgetting Our Boyhood
As strange as it may seem, I strongly believe that growing up to be a man comes with the cultural requirement of forgetting that we were boys. In fact, we often are put on that path long before we are men. Think only of the expression “little man” which is so often used in reference even to an infant or toddler. It may seem strange to think about it as a requirement to forget, because we often see and hear about men who behave in boyish ways. But isn’t that only proof for what I’m claiming here. Being “boyish” is seen as an undesirable way for a man to be in the world. His boyish charm should most certainly not come with boyish actions.
This forgetting includes, as far as I can see, not just the painful events of our boyhood, but, even more so, the happy ones. The boisterous experiences of huge surpluses of energy that went towards building tree-houses forever, playing cowboys and Indians, pulling the occasional prank, racing our new bikes into mud-holes to see who would make it through without falling off, and climbing, climbing, climbing.
A former client of mine described his rejection of his own boyhood in this way:
When I was twelve or thirteen, I had this idea of “threading our neighborhood streets.” A friend and I went out after our parents thought we were in bed and began to tie strings on trees and pull them across streets to tie them to a tree on the other side. It was wool, so it would break easily, but give enough resistance to be felt. Boy, did we get in trouble. My friend was caught by his parents and he fessed up. But before someone could take down the strings someone had already called the police about it and before I knew it they were at my door. I have never felt worse in my whole life. I really messed up there. Everyone thought I was so mature. I had disappointed everyone and myself.
I worked hard with this client to learn to be compassionate and sympathetic towards the boy he was and is. He had internalized the standards of what constitutes a masculine code of behavior, a work-ethic and rules against goofing off to such an extent, it was a miracle that he could tie those strings at all. Another remarkable thing about him was his love for climbing trees.
I love to climb trees, by myself and with others. It’s really the quintessential experience of friendship and a shared experience for me to be able to say to someone, “hey, how about finding a good tree on campus and climbing it. There is something about feeling those tree-limbs, pulling yourself up on them, judging and trusting their strength to hold you . . . it just makes me feel incredibly happy. Really powerful. Connected.
However, this love does not come without ambivalence for him:
I usually don’t tell people about this until I really feel I can trust them. Most think it’s weird for someone who is 23 to want to climb trees. It looks infantile and childish to them. I think it is, really. There are days when I hope that I will grow out of it. Certainly, I wouldn’t want my parents to know that, instead of studying for my exams, I’m actually climbing the Oak tree on Wright Street.
Often men feel pressure to grow up when they find out they’re expecting. Clients have described this period of feeling the need to give up a “vagrant life-style”, needing to “provide”, “quitting the playing and becoming serious,” and—my sad favorite—“telling the boy inside he has to leave now, because there is another boy, a real one, on the way.”
The repression of boy-like qualities in men is a serious problem. It is something that men are exposed to culturally and it is something that men do to themselves and other men as they work on fitting in with the cultural expectations that surround them. Is it even necessary to point out that such repression will always end up failing, only making it more likely that the energy will come out sideways, perhaps in maladaptive and risky ways?
Being with boys—having sons—then, is a chance for men to recover their own boy-hood. This is, in my opinion, a necessary chance. It is a gateway for men to come in touch again with the pains and joys of their experiences as boys. Being with boys is our opportunity to look at what we had repressed for so long. Here are three vignettes of experiences with my sons that demonstrate what I mean.
Climbing Trees and Other Adventure Invitations
Recently, my son Jacob and I were outside shooting hoops. We had played for a while and I was ready to head back inside when he asked me to climb the Lindentree in front of our house with him. My first response was “no.” I felt a bit out of breath, I had some work to do in the house, I simply didn’t feel right—being an adult—climbing into that tree. Also, I felt a bit rusty. The idea of swinging my legs up on those branches, possibly hanging upside down for a while before I could manage to swing upwards into a safe sitting position on a branch, this idea seemed absurd and somewhat disconcerting to me. Yet, I was also intrigued. I had loved climbing trees for much of my boyhood period. I sensed that Jacob’s invitation was more than a simple request by a son to have his father join him (although it certainly also was that). This was also an invitation to re-experience a long-forgotten feeling of power and accomplishment as I was climbing higher and higher into that tree.
I had almost disappeared into the house when I changed my mind. Just the lowest two or three branches I promised myself. I felt uneasy at first. Would I slip and fall? I didn’t really know my body enough anymore to know how to shift my weight best to get to the next highest branch. Once I even lost my foothold and was sure I’d fall. But then I got higher and higher and didn’t stop until I had cleared the top of our house and could look west towards Woodlawn Cemetery and Busey Woods. And as I was up there leaning against the trunk of the tree, feeling the texture of the bark, smelling it, I remembered. I remembered climbing as a boy, I remembered the fear and exhilaration. I remembered how I could barely resist the temptation to climb as high as possible. I realized that this was certainly worth infinitely more than whatever it was I thought I had to do inside the house. It wasn’t only that Jacob had gotten me into a neat small adventure. He had, knowingly or not, gotten me in touch with “Martin, the boy.” Nothing was new in this experience, just almost forgotten. We stayed in the tree for a while, just enjoying the view, not talking much. When we came down again, we agreed that we wouldn’t tell his mother, my wife, about this as she finds the thought of him climbing trees too scary. Knowing I had joined him would probably make her doubtful as to my inclination to parent responsibly.
Here is the point: I know many men who like to be physically active. They work out, go to the gym, play a sport, swim, cycle, etc. These are all, of course, wonderful ways to keep in shape. Fortunately, more and more men realize how important that aspect of their life really is. But, I hazard to say, that most of those men would never in their lives think of climbing a tree. Why not? Well, partially because it’s not “manly”, it’s silly, and, perhaps, dangerous. But, even more insidiously, because they don’t think of it! We forget about that urge to climb. We need boys to remember. We need them to tempt us to do it again.
Snowball Fight
My son Noah loves the snow. Even when he was a toddler, I can remember watching him from inside our warm living room, while he was jumping around in snowdrifts during a major snow-storm. He was fine then going out by himself and he still is now, although the frequency of it has certainly decreased. This winter, though, he has been on me to go outside with him for a snow-ball fight.
I can’t tell you how much I dislike snow-ball fights. They bring back some of the worst memories of my childhood. Being hit in the face by an ice-ball or taking an ice-ball against the ear, no thank you, I thought. This is not what I want to experience again. But he kept asking and finally, in a wave of feeling that I’d really be a bad father, if I kept denying his wish, I agreed.
Of course, all the old bad feelings came back right away. I was afraid of getting hit. Noah is a strong thrower. But there was something else too. This something I had missed out on as a boy: joy. There was pure joy in being out in the snow, picking up this white stuff and throwing it at each other. Noah ducked many of my balls successfully, but you wouldn’t believe my joy when I avoided some of his throws and—yes, I admit it—when some of my balls hit him. This is the experience I had never had as a boy. Then it seemed that no matter how strong or weak the throw, I was the one who got hit by it.
You can tell, this is definitely something I was afraid of reenacting. Doing it in the most playful way possible, with my own son, was probably the only way I could do it. Had this come up in my men’s group, I might have exempted myself from the activity altogether. There were so many things I was afraid of, Noah helped me to be afraid of one less.
Saying “No” and Meaning It
My youngest son, Gabriel, is only 2 years and four months old. How much could a grown man like myself really learn from him? But there is plenty. Gabriel is usually a very agreeable child. One of his newest expressions when he is told not do something, or to stay away from the hot oven, etc. is a simple “Ah”. Clearly an expression of insight and responsibility, favorably looked upon by every well-meaning adult. “Gabriel, could you please put away that scissors, it is sharp. “Ah”, he says and puts it away. No, we can’t go outside right now, it’s raining. “Ah.” And so on. Does it come as a surprise that his insightful and agreeable nature is balanced by an equally pronounced clarity of when he does not want to do something? Gabriel’s “no’s” are decisive. If he doesn’t want to read a particular book, he will say no. If we give it to him, he will take it and either immediately put it back on the shelf, or, if he is mad about it, simply toss it. If we still don’t let go of the issue, he might even put the item in question into the garbage .
I find this sense of balance he exhibits hugely refreshing. This is a balance between “yes, I accept your reasoning” and “no, I reject your reasoning.” He doesn’t care that we are the adults who should know better. He goes with his own sense of judgment. Yet, at other times, he is clearly willing to let my judgment guide him. In and through this, I am learning how important it is to say “no.” Saying “no” is an adventure of sorts for me. It is something I’m not used to. This little guy is teaching me about a balance I never had as a boy and have struggled to find as an adult. He doesn’t hesitate to say “this idea is garbage, let’s put it where it belongs.” Well, I’m not there yet. But I am getting closer.
Come, wrestle with me
Just a few days ago I had the opportunity to mentor a group of six-grade boys. This is part of a program that runs for ten weeks. It is geared towards boys at risk. These boys wanted to wrestle. They were leaning on each other, they were pushing each other, lifting each other up and there excitement knew no end when the activity of the day—Electric Fence (an activity in which the group has to figure out a way to get every group member safely across the fence—was introduced. The pleasure of physical contact that resonated in these boys and that surrounded them and held them together like an invisible bond was palpable. It reminded me of the many times when my sons want to wrestle with me rather than having me read to them. Every time I have to overcome something in me to let it happen. With the mentoring group, I kept wanting to stop them. With my sons I keep wanting to say “no”. And yet I know how having such a strong physical exchange can create a kind of intimacy with others and self that is life-giving. The boys I know require such intense intimacy. They whither without it and, often in an attempt to make it happen anyway, become aggressive and physically violent.
Conclusion
So, the relationship between boys and men is indeed a two-way relationship of teaching, nurturing and guiding. For boys to have adult men in their lives, men who care about them and nurture their souls, is almost a guarantee that they will grow up to be strong and reliable men, compassionate and with a sense of care for others. For men to have boys in their lives is a way of breaking through the glass walls and ceilings of adult male existence. This existence prioritizes work over play, income over intimacy, and stoicism over emotional expressiveness. In this existence men die early, unhappy and saddened by a life that seems to have ended decades earlier, when they entered the sphere of adulthood for the first time. Men do well to take seriously boys’ invitation to play. Not just because it makes them better fathers, but because it will make them happy and exuberant beyond any imagined happiness that might come from a raise or promotion.
Deeply happy men are men who will see the absurdity of fighting wars, they will understand the value of time spent in conversation rather than pursuit. Happy men will live mindful lives, lives that are an invitation to others to join.
