Boys to men

A loose group of Boston-based authors believes there's a way to stop boys' violence: by talking.

by Michelle Chihara

In December 1997, a 14-year-old boy picked up a gun in Paducah, Kentucky, shot eight of his classmates, and plunged America into a state of deep concern about its boys.

Since then we have seen boys turn violent in Mississippi, in Arkansas, in Oregon, and in Littleton, Colorado. For one group of researchers and authors, all these shootings were like a spotlight clicking on. Their field didn't even have a name -- call it boys' studies -- but suddenly the nation needed answers, and it turned to its only experts on boys.

Authors William Pollack (Real Boys, 1998) and Michael Thompson and Dan Kindlon (Raising Cain, 1999) saw their books appear on the New York Times bestseller list. Since Columbine, Pollack in particular has been much in demand. He has toured the country on speaking engagements, was invited to speak in Littleton, and has appeared on national talk shows from 20/20 to The Oprah Winfrey Show. And boys'-studies specialists -- a surprising number of whom are based in and around Boston -- have found themselves with a voice
in the national conversation.

Right now, however, attention is focused on a political sideshow that's playing out over boys' heads. Christina Hoff Sommers, a fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, just published The War on Boys (see "The Feminist Threat?", facing page) to much fanfare and controversy. And although they're pleased about the attention to boys, the authors in the small mainstream of boys' studies are also worried that their message is being lost. They are not complaining about a war on boys. They are pointing out something subtler and more sweeping: that gender roles for women and girls have changed drastically in recent decades, but roles for men and boys have not.

These authors describe masculinity as an impossible set of pressures -- to be tough, invulnerable, and unfeeling. And as one set of gender roles changes while the other remains the same, the pressure mounts to the point where occasionally someone is going to crack.

This is not an easy subject to address. Nothing gets people worked up like talking about gender roles, and nothing makes people squirm like talking about men expressing emotion. But meanwhile, we're all paying the cost of not dealing with boys.

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POLLACK: "Girls may not be sufficiently heard, but boys can't even say anything."

BILL POLLACK, Real Boys

Two years ago, in his book Real Boys: Rescuing Our Sons from the Myths of Boyhood (Owl Books), Bill Pollack cited a remarkable piece of research: before the age of five, boys are actually more expressive than girls. Once they hit age five, though, that expressiveness disappears. Pollack blames this on socialization: from early on, he says, parents, educators, and peers are teaching boys to be more stoic than is healthy.

Pollack is a psychologist at Harvard Medical School as well as the director of the Center for Men at MacLean Hospital. His best-selling 1998 book describes how boys hide behind a "mask of masculinity," suppressing their feelings and vulnerability until they become disconnected, isolated, and occasionally violent.

In his new book, Real Boys' Voices, published last month by Random House, he tells the story of a boy named Ricky, a trombone player who is repeatedly taunted and beat up to the tune of "You wuss . . . you little band fag." The bullies destroy his trombone, but Ricky is too ashamed to tell his parents. Unaware of how he feels or what really happened, they punish him.

Pollack sees this bullying, and Ricky's inability to talk about it to his parents, as the perfect illustration of what he calls the "boy code" -- a rigid set of social mores that define what is and is not okay for boys to do. Boys must be perpetually "macho, cool and on top of things," as one young man says in the book.

All that rigid socialization is harming boys. "These boys are not making it into adulthood," Pollack says. "They're going to prison, or turning to drug abuse, or at worst committing suicide." Eight to 10 percent of boys in America take psychological medications. Of students graduating from college, 60 percent are women, with those numbers rising.

Meanwhile, Pollack says, adults are reacting to incidents such as Columbine in precisely the wrong way. Increasingly strict policies in schools -- more metal detectors, stringent zero-tolerance expulsion rules -- make boys feel scrutinized, misunderstood, and therefore even more lonely and isolated. And these are the conditions that can, according to Pollack, lead to more violence.

"One of the myths I talk about in Real Boys," he says, "is that boys are toxic. That's been exacerbated by Columbine, this sense that boys are a danger. We've confused boys. We're making them think that they're violent."

"The fear isn't based on thin air," he says. "It's based on some reality. Boys do have more trouble expressing themselves. But blame and shame were the cause of the problem to begin with."

We all have reason to care. The "boy code" eventually creates men terrified of appearing vulnerable, even of dealing with their emotions. As a result, Pollack is adamant that loosening the code -- by reaching out to boys to get beyond their aggression and help them express whatever is motivating their behavior -- will benefit not only men, but girls and women.

"Those 94 percent of girls and women who want to mate with a man," he says, "well, they don't have a set of boys and men who are up to interacting with girls and women."

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Michelle Chihara can be reached at mchihara[a]phx.com.