A Real Man
Boys Don't Cry
By: Willow Lawson
Summary: How do we help boys grow up emotionally strong?
“Don’t be a mama’s boy.”
“Be a little man.”
These expressions, so embedded in American culture, are our early attempts to socialize young boys into the roles we will eventually demand of them, says William Pollack, a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and director of the Center for Men at McLean Hospital in Massachusetts. These sayings may seem innocuous, but such words “tell boys that they can’t show feelings of connection,” he says. “Boys are yearning for adult connection.”
Pollack, the author of the book Real Boys, believes our assumptions of how boys should behave—that anger, rage and aggression are normal, that “boys will be boys”—are at the root of rapid increases in the diagnosis of ADHD and depression in boys. He says violence is also a by-product of the struggles that boys and young men face.
“These are illnesses we create as a society,” says Pollack, who presented his research at a New York Academy of Sciences conference on youth violence prevention. He calls behavioral problems in boys a “silent crisis”: Many boys appear happy, tough and confident, but are really depressed, lonely and sometimes violent.
Parents often assume that giving boys too much attention and love will result in dependent and clingy kids, especially in their relationships with their mothers. As a result, boys are told to be strong and independent at the tender ages of 3, 4 or 5 years old, a process that stunts healthy emotional development and interrupts the attachment process, Pollack says. Frequently compounding boys’ detachment is the absence of father figures. Girls, on the other hand, are often encouraged to maintain a close bond to both their mother and father through childhood.
How can parents help their boys grow up emotionally strong? Pollack says parents should dispense with the notion that boys should get “hard knocks” to help them grow into independent, self-sufficient adults.
Source: relationships.blog-city.com
Men hide their feelings
Men are socialized not to say a word about the suffering they go through on a daily basis, since any mention of it around women will kick start their mother mannerisms. This is bad because she's unconciously marked you as a child and this is why this reaction takes place, to "take care" of the child.
Do you know that most rapes in the U.S. are committed by men against other men?
Do you know more teenage girls contemplate suicide more than teenage boys, though more than 2x teenage boys commit suicide?
Do you know women are just as likely to attack a man as a man would attack a woman?
Do you know the root of the word hero, comes from a word meaning slave? Do you know the gender of most heroes you see on TV? Do you that it's the same gender that in over 90% of court cases loses custody rights to their children?
The media is MIRED in sexist trash and inaccurate or intentionally lopsided reporting, so this isn't surprising at all. I hope this encourages you guys and gals out there to talk to your brothers, cousins, husbands and so on since you'll find that they're human and they hurt just like women (though they probably don't vocalize their pain as much).
Rex
Source: relationships.blog-city.com
Adult