Weaved into the fabric of who I am is worrying about the state of our boys. So, naturally, friends send me articles about the topic or they pop up in my feeds. The crux of most of these pieces is that the narrow male gender role is hurting our boys and men, causing toxic masculinity with dire consequences for both males and females. One of the goals of this blog is to share the voices who are framing this epidemic, backing it up with research and offering hope and strategies to combat it. Most recently I read The Miseducation of the American Boy by Peggy Orenstein in the Atlantic and I hope you will too.
The subtitle reads “why boys crack up at rape jokes, think having a girlfriend is “gay,” and still can’t cry—and why we need to give them new and better models of masculinity.”
Describing one of the many boys she interviewed Orenstein says “for Cole, as for many boys, this stunted masculinity is a yardstick against which all choices, even those seemingly irrelevant to male identity, are measured.”
Orenstein shares many findings and insights from her interviews. Painting a picture of masculinity that begins at birth she says:
“There is no difference between the sexes’ need for connection in infancy, nor between their capacity for empathy—there’s actually some evidence that male infants are more expressive than females. Yet, from the get-go, boys are relegated to an impoverished emotional landscape.”
As always, I encourage you to read the article and to have conversations about the landscape we are giving our boys.
whatsaboymom 