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Raising Boys
An interview with William S. Pollack, Ph.D., author of the groundbreaking books "Real Boys" and the follow-up "Real Boys' Voices"
By Dixie
M. Jordan
©
2000 by Parents' Press
Our sons, brothers, nephews, students are struggling. Our boyfriends are crying out to be understood. But many of them are afraid to talk.
Scotty, a thirteen-year-old
boy from a small town in northern New England, recently said
to me: "Boys are supposed to shut up and take it, to keep
it all in. It's harder for them to release or vent without feeling
girly. And that can drive them to shoot themselves."
From "Real
Boys' Voices"
by William S. Pollack, Ph.D.
In his 1998 book Real Boys, William Pollack introduced the powerful image of the "Boy Code": the unspoken rules that straitjacket boys and young men in America today and characterize "masculine" as strong, aggressive, emotionally impassive.
In actuality, he says, boys are often sensitive, caring, sad, loving, or frightened but constricted by the Boy Code, they may hide these qualities and emotions behind a stolid exterior.
Yet in this year's remarkable follow-up book, Real Boys' Voices, dozens of boys do talk: about bullies and mentors, ideals and putdowns, friendship and violence, abuse and addiction. Given a "shame-free zone" to express their feelings in confidential, voluntary interviews with Pollack, they speak for themselves and for thousands of other boys whose voices are still unheard.
And that, said Pollack in an interview at the parent-teen.com office in Berkeley, CA, is just what he hoped to accomplish with the book: "to really hear boys' voices - because we would like to understand how boys feel, how to make things better, and they usually won't tell us."
What can parents do to help free their sons from the constrictions of the Boy Code, we asked.
One major step, Pollack said, is that "mothers should feel empowered to feel just as close to their sons as to their daughters" and not give in to societal pressures to prematurely push boys away.
Even when boys enter the preteen, "leave me alone" years, mothers don't have to disconnect emotionally, he stressed. "If the umbilical cord is a metaphor let it stretch and stretch, but never be cut."
It's equally important to truly accept boys' rough-and-tumble side as well, Pollack stressed, and as they go into their teens, to be less uptight about their sexual urges.
"We need to take a different approach to boys," he said. "We see boys as 'toxic' and they know it."
If parents talk explicitly about the "boy code" with their sons, he added, boys can learn that they don't have to behave the same everywhere. They can choose, if they wish, to be less expressive in school, knowing that they can come home to a shame-free zone where their emotions and sensitivity are accepted.
Pollack welcomes questions and comments at his website, "as long as they don't mind waiting sometimes - I handle all my e-mail myself." The URL is www.williampollack.com
Real Boys'
Voices, published
by Random House, is available in hardcover for $25.95.
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