“In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.”
― C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man
My suspicion is that our public education system is increasingly
being setup and oriented to focus on quantifying the development of children at
younger ages, and to direct those children towards activities in which they can
be measured, tested, and ranked relative to their peers - for instance,
"teaching to the test." I think in such an environment of increasing
pressure to conform to a standardized system, and to engage in things which can
be converted neatly into a spreadsheet to submit to the authorities for review
of one's performance as an educator or administrator of educators, there is a
pivot or shift away from those activities which would engage young boys and
allow them to feel they are free to assert themselves, explore, play, have
adventures, and focus their energies in a positive direction.
That isn't even to speak of the mindset which has little boys being suspended for eating their Pop Tarts into the shape of a gun. As it seems to me, our culture has become so preoccupied with preventing another Columbine that much of the rambunctiousness and rowdiness of masculine childhood and adolescence is being quietly and subtly demonized in a misguided and disproportionate reaction to and attempt at prevention of school shootings.
Further, I think feminism has a part to play, insofar as there seems to be a conscious resistance to and attempt at reversing and counteracting societal norms with regards to gender which feminism sees as counterproductive towards egalitarian visions for the future. In short, little girls are getting encouragement to be assertive and reach their potential as leaders, and little boys are getting conscious feminizing out of a misguided attempt to make society more equal.
The problem with that being if little boys and little girls are hardwired differently, generally speaking, and if they are supposed to be permitted and encouraged to thrive along the lines of which they were created. It is my position that little boys have been endowed by their Creator with certain relative qualities which it's our job as parents and other authority figures to celebrate and guide, not suppress, amputate, reverse, or punish.
And it isn't just a waste of time, it's likely also a very great frustration to
little boys, who then respond to these efforts to penalize and reverse their
masculine nature by acting out and acting up.
Fathers not being present has very real and dramatic implications for the imparting of even reasonable instruction which isn't attempting a sort of gender-bending. The subconscious implication for a young boy who only ever receives instruction and guidance from a mother-figure is that she doesn't understand first-hand what it is he needs to prepare for: namely, manhood. She's a woman, so she could give this little boy guidance on what to expect if he were a girl, but the little boy knows he's not a girl, and if he's healthy he doesn't want to become a girl. Best case scenario, if the little boy is only receiving instruction from a mother-figure, with no father-figure consistently and reliably present, all that instruction is discounted in his mind because he's trying to leave himself an exit in case it turns out at some point that authentic masculinity is to be found along some other path than the one he's being told to follow.
Meanwhile, our society sees a little boy who's frustrated, distracted, defiant, and wayward; and if you throw in a lack of moral instruction and spiritual authority, a refusal of parents to administer corporal penalties (i.e. - spanking), or a confusion about when and how and why to administer corporal penalties, and a lack of will and commitment to consistently apply discipline, and not only a lack of support for this from society at large, but rather an ardent opposition, what's left for that boy except for psycho-pharmacology?
It is an epic tragedy, and the long-term consequences are going to be dire, I'm afraid.
I think another handicap to a boy receiving only mother-figure
instruction is that it tends to, in my experience and observations, relative to
preparing a boy to someday become a man, rely heavily on negative examples of
masculinity which the boy should avoid growing up to resemble, and typically lacks
sufficient positive examples of masculinity which the boy should pursue and
emulate.
The high divorce rate in America, and the high percentage of children (including boys) who are born out of wedlock in the U.S. - it doesn't just have implications for whether a father-figure is consistently present in that boys life to instruct and guide him. It also means that there is likely a great and powerful stigma attached in the mind of the mother-figure to the male example who does have or would have had the greatest potential for impact on the development of that little boy, and this stigma is then passed on to the son. Those sons who grow up without fathers don't just grow up in a neutral rather than positive position; rather, they start behind the 8 ball, so to speak, when it comes to having an optimistic outlook on what to expect when they reach manhood.
The divorcee mother who resents and blames, openly or not, the boys' father who she's no longer married to due to a marital failure on one or both of their parts - this mother, intentionally or not, places a stigma on the first example of masculinity which that boy has to look up to and learn from.
The single mother who was first impregnated, then abandoned by a dead-beat will always condemn, either by what she says of or by her silence about, that man who should have stayed and provided for and protected that family, and so again in that case the little boy is taught subtly or explicitly that he can look forward to shame, disgrace, and resentment when he grows up. Absent any positive examples of mature manhood which might enter his life, this will be all he has to go on. Even with the arrival of positive examples later down the road, however, there will always be that tinge of self-doubt relative to the infamy of his father.
And none of that even factors in the situations where the mother-figure may come to resent those masculine traits which she observes in her son which she has, consciously or not, come to associate with the husband who she is divorced from, or the sexual partner who abandoned her when she became pregnant. God forbid the mother blame the son for the sins and shortcomings of the father, but I fear this oft times happens, and its effect is not a positive one on the behavior and attitude of the boys in our culture. Women, like all people, can sometimes be vengeful creatures; and absent the father to punish, sometimes the sons are instead.
We must proactively encourage, guide, and celebrate the boys in our culture, since how we raise them today will impact greatly the kind of men we'll have in our culture tomorrow.
Do we really want 1 in 7 men learning that their masculinity is something to tranquilize? Or what if the other 6 of 7 men look on from a distance at the 1/7th and feel compelled to either stifle themselves or risk being likewise medicated into submission?
What will the implications be for alcohol and drug use and dependency for generations to come if we set and maintain this precedent regarding ADHD medication now?
What we need are men and women, fathers and mothers, who take responsibility for teaching and guiding their children, and the taking of that responsibility should start with figuring out what it is we're preparing our children for. My advice? Prepare your boys for manhood and your girls for womanhood.
The end goal should not be to raise a boy to adulthood who has learned (through the assistance of drugs, or out of fear of being put on drugs) to sit quietly and do his work without making a lot of noise or requiring much attention. The end goal should not be to drug a child into submission so he'll do well on tests, or at least not interfere with the other children and their tests. The end goal should not be an androgynous re-imagining of society.
No, our goal should be to raise young boys who take responsibility for themselves and those around them, and who towards that end use their God-given gifts, talents, abilities, and opportunities. Mistaking blessings for curses will be a terrible detractor from rather than benefit to this goal.
Much of my opinion on this matter has been tested and subjected
to having four little boys of my own, but I suppose the "proof in the pudding," as they say, may not be fully
realized until my young boys have themselves reached adulthood.
In the meantime, I find it somewhat surprising that such
mainstream venues as Esquire and The New York Times are pointing out a
disturbing trend which would seem to imply that America has the wrong idea
about boyhood.
It isn't just as simple as the breakdown of families, though this
is part of it. I say this is a part but not the sum of the matter because fathers
aren't just absent from the lives of American sons, but also of American
daughters.
When we
diagnose with ADHD and medicate so many more American sons than daughters, I
think we should conclude that there is a problem with how we view masculinity
and femininity, maleness and femaleness, in our culture; there is a problem
with how our views on boys and girls, men and women inform and shape the way we
relate to boyhood development. Clearly there is a trend
in the wrong direction which seems to indicate the need for a revision. If it
were just that the fathers were absent from the lives of their children,
wouldn't we see an equal rise in ADHD diagnosis for girls as for boys?
Parents leaving the raising of their children to educators is a
large part of the problem. This is in part because the educators and aren't in
a sufficiently advantageous position to successfully perform these duties for
society, and even moreso because parents are, to the contrary, ideally
positioned to do so.
An article or book like this one from Esquire comes my way, or I
hear someone conversing on the subject, and I feel the need to attempt to reverse the societal trend, "being
the change I wish to see in the world" as Ghandi so famously advised,
by speaking with confidence as a parent myself, and taking my responsibility as
a parent seriously; by proving with my confident assertions that a parent can
and should observe carefully the trends of society, attempt earnestly to make
sense of them, and think soberly and carefully about the impact these trends have
and will have on their children, and respond accordingly and appropriately.
The initial push-back will likely be that to do so requires
calling into question what many parents and authority figures have chosen to do
in America. But I ask you this: How else
can we as parents effectively guide our children in a way which will prepare
them to live as adults in the world, as it is now and as it is swiftly becoming,
unless we observe openly and honestly the pitfalls as well as the prizes which
are inherent to our society?
Those who refuse to learn from the mistakes of the past are doomed to repeat them. And how will we know which choices in our society were mistakes unless we're willing to take an open and honest look at the results we're seeing in the present? It may be difficult, but the future of our sons (and daughters) is worth it.
