The War For Boys or Healing the Pain
I had a situation with a man who suppressed his feelings which I intepreted as cruelty to find that I didn’t really understand him. I realised he was not the only man who did this. I saw my own father denying pain, running away as my mother said, refusing to deal with issues head on. He now doesn’t speak to his children as he doesn’t know how to. I have brothers who are in pain, trying to find their manhood, feeling inadequate. I look around myself at the world and see so much violence.
The previous blog outlines a revelation I had at 5am in the morning where I saw the deeper issue. Men are in pain. The tough image, the status of control are lies, keeping up appearances because society doesn’t allow them to be real men, to cry. I felt compassion when this realisation came to me and I started to look at men out shopping, much more deeply. I see there is a crisis. I found this excellent article below from Harvard Medical School. Here is the link if you wish to read in more detail.
The “War” For Boys: Hearing “Real Boys’” Voices, Healing Their Pain
William S. Pollack, Harvard Medical School
Boys are in a crisis— boys in treatment and boys next door. Practitioners need to know more about research that helps to elucidate this crisis of boyhood as well as new clinical insights, derived from a modern rethinking of boyhood. The results of the Listening to Boys’ Voices project (see W. S. Pollack, 1999) are reviewed as a springboard for pragmatic suggestions for changes in clinical attitudes toward, and treatment of, boys and young men. Practitioners are also urged to help society stem the tide of pain that today’s boys must face in the midst of changing attitudes toward the normative journey toward masculinity.
Traditional psychological models of strength and healthy development for boys have emphasized the development of autonomy, separation, and individualistic coping styles, especially enforcing premature separation from nurture and an early silencing of boys’ genuine expression of an interdependent, humanly vulnerable self or voice—often beginning as early as ages 3–5. Representing the values of the dominant Caucasian Euro-American culture, this creates a “boy code” (Pollack, 1998, 2000) that shames boys toward extremes of self-containment, toughness, and separation. It is a pervasive socialization system, which too often permeates traditional psychological assessments and treatments of boys. In turn, it shames boys away from their emotional vulnerability and basic need for human connection, just when they need it most. This pervasive male-based socialization code creates what I’ve referred to as gender straitjacketing (Pollack, 1998, 2000). Through an all too well-known series of admonitions to boys (especially as they enter into organized settings of growth such as schools and sports at approximately ages 4 or 5)—such as “Stand on your own two
feet”; “Be a little man”; and “Don’t be a . . . mamma’s boy, a sissy, a wimp, or a fag!”—we diminish their genuine emotional voices. By these standards, therefore, too many boys self-critically judge themselves (and are judged) as immature, undeveloped, or deficient in intellectual– emotional skills and as failing the impossible test of masculinity. Boys are shamed away from exhibiting their species’ normative characteristics of vulnerability and thereby cut off from healthy relations with each other and a full range of emotions within their own selves.
This article briefly shares aspects of an empirical research study on boys’ lives and the recording of their own voices (Pollack, 1998, 1999, 2000). In particular, it attempts to bring to clinical consciousness the struggles and pain everyday boys next door are struggling with, often in silence, because of the boy code. Indeed, it seems present socialization systems are dangerous to boys’ physical and mental health and to those around them, leading to increased school failure, depression, suicide, lonely isolation, and, in extremis, violence. Visions and programs for change—clinical, cultural, and individual—are suggested.
Boys Are in Crisis
Boys today, indeed, are in serious trouble, including many who seem “normal” and to be doing just fine. Confused by society’s mixed messages about what’s expected of them as boys, and later as men, and pushed prematurely to separate from the bonded and connected love their “sisters” rely on for psychological sustenance, many feel a sadness and disconnection they cannot even name (Pollack, 1999). Research (Levant, 2001; Pollack, 1998, 1999) has begun to show that boys are faring less well in school than they did in the past and in comparison to girls, that many boys have remarkably fragile self-esteem, and that the rates of both depression and suicide in boys are rapidly on the rise (see also Poe, 2004). The boys whom psychologists treat, much like the girls whom psychologists treat, frequently experience intense sadness, vulnerability, and a troubling sense of isolation, disconnection, and despair. Although many boys are in deep emotional pain, their suffering often remains difficult to detect, sometimes invisible. On the outside a boy may seem cheerful, playful, and resilient. But on the inside he may actually feel lonely, afraid, and desperate. Because of the pressure society places on boys to act tough, follow a strict code of masculinity, and hide their emotions at all costs, itis often terribly hard to notice when boys are actually fairing poorly at school, when their friendships are not working out, and when they’re feeling depressed or even suicidal. Clinicians and parents are often fooled by the cheerfulness, the rambunctiousness, the ruggedness boys project on the outside. Society has a unique set of expectations placed on boys that calls on them to brave life’s ups and downs independently (autonimously), stoically cover their pain, and, above all, avoid doing anything that might shame either themselves or their parents. These rigid gender guidelines, or gender straitjackets, push many boys to repress their yearnings for love and connection and to build an invisible, impenetrable wall of toughness around themselves—a “cool pose” (Majors & Billson, 1992) hidden by an emotional “mask” of masculine bravado or invulnerability, leaving them to experience a gamut of lonely painful problems that range from academic failure to drug abuse, from struggles with friends to clinical depression, and from attention deficit disorder to suicide and murder. Behind their masks of pseudo-invulnerability and the drama of action, it is often hard to hear boys’ stifled but genuine voices of pain and struggle, their yearning for connection. Indeed, the same kind of shame that silences girls from expressing their voice as adolescents takes a toll on boys at a much earlier age.
Boys Are Failing
A new “gender gap”—with boys at the bottom of the heap—is academic, attitudinal, and emotional. When eighth-grade students are asked about their futures, girls are twice as likely as boys to aspire to a career in management, the professions, or business. Boys experience more difficulty adjusting to school, are five times more likely to suffer from hyperactivity, and account for 71% of all school suspensions (see Pollack, 1998). In fact, while girls have been making great strides toward closing the gap in math and science, boys have been severely lagging behind in the arenas of reading and writing—skills essential in the capacity to express oneself without having to fall victim to endless bouts of action.
Their reading scores lag behind girls’ scores throughout elementary and high school, and they are less likely to graduate high school or go on to college or graduate school programs than girls are, at the present time. Indeed, from the ages of 15 to 24, young men are four times more likely to be the victim of a homicide than are young women and five times more likely to kill themselves (to commit suicide). African American male youths are at such risk that some have suggested they are an “endangered species” (Centers for Disease Control, 2004; Conlin, 2003; National Institutes of Health, 2003; Poe, 2004; Pollack, 1998).
Given the profound insights being uncovered about the social and emotional struggles of today’s girls, it is striking how scant research on boys has been over the last several decades. American society has not yet sufficiently studied the experience of boys and young men and thus has come to misunderstand how they truly feel and who they really are. In particular, we have developed a set of outdated, inaccurate assumptions; myths have developed about the range of boys’ emotional experience (which we tend to see as far more limited than it actually is) and the basic capacity boys have to be loving and empathic.
In much of current culture boys (and men) continue to be portrayed as psychologically unaware, emotionally inept, physically dangerous creatures. Yet clinical experiences (Pollack, 1998, 1999, 2000; see also Levant, 2001) have shown a more complex picture. Far from fulfilling the stereotype of the tough, unfeeling, toxic male, the boys—in a “male friendly” treatment— often voiced profound feelings of sadness and fear, were concerned about the quality of their relationships, and expressed the importance of having good male and female friends. Boys are far more emotional and empathic than our clinical stereotypes would lead most practitioners to believe.
Listening to Boys’ Voices: Initial Study
The Listening to Boys’ Voices Study, conducted with the collaboration of colleagues from the Harvard Medical School and the McLean Hospital Centers for Men and Young Men is an ongoing research program that formally began in 1996. In addition to collecting clinical stories involving boys, young men, and their parents gathered from my own and my colleagues’ years of practice, Phase I of the study (Pollack, 1999) conducted an intensive phase of empirical testing and one-on-one interviews with boys that have been reported more completely elsewhere (Pollack, 1998, 1999, 2000). For this phase of the study, over 200 boys between the ages of 12 and 18 (Grades 7–12) were recruited. All the boys who participated in the study lived in the Northeastern United States and were primarily middle-class White Euro- Americans. Some boys (approximately 10%) were of workingclass backgrounds, and another subgroup (10%) comprised African American, Hispanic, and Asian American subjects.
Of the 200 potential subjects involved in the first 2-year phase of this study, 175 boys agreed to undergo (and 150 completely finished) a 2-hr quantitative battery of confidential tests that measured the following:
1. Self-esteem (the Coopersmith Inventory; Coopersmith,
1981).
2. Traditional views of masculinity (Pleck’s Male Role Attitude Scale—modified for young men and boys; Pleck,
Sonenestein, & Ku, 1993; see also Pollack, 1998, 1999).
3. Egalitarian attitudes toward boys and girls, men, and women (King & King’s, 1993, Sex-Role Egalitarianism
Scale [SRES]).
4. Inner attitudes about gender roles (a complete-the sentence questionnaire developed specifically for this
study to generate rapid responses to probative questions about boyhood and gender dilemmas in such arenas as sports, relationships, gender roles, and sex).
5. Unconscious attitudes and feelings about other people, self, and relationships (a modified Thematic Apperception Test [TAT]—see Morgan & Murray, 1938—or picture-story exercise—see Pollack, 1998, 1999): This consisted of a series of pen and ink drawings used as stimuli for boys to write stories about the central figures in the drawings, expressing their fantasies about the protagonists’ behaviors, feelings, and relationships. The specific drawings used in this research unit are described more particularly later in this report.
6. Depression and sad feelings (Beck Depression Inventory; Beck, Ward, Mendelsohn, & Erbaugh, 1961): This is one
of the most simple but widely utilized batteries to pick up on depression and sad feelings. Although it is used for
diagnosis in a clinical population, in our series it was meant primarily to pick up on the experience of sad
thoughts and feelings among the boys in the study.
In addition to completing the test battery, boys in the study also participated in a semistructured one-to-one, up to 2-hr private interview designed to evoke their genuine voices—the true feelings and thoughts boys have that they might not usually feel safe sharing with others. In these interviews, we attempted to cover the following areas:
1. Extent of emotional connection to (or disconnection from) mother and father, relationship with larger family,
friendships with girls and other boys, use of talking to communicate emotion, and use of action (including
sports and play) to release emotions.
2. How expressing emotions affects boys’ self-esteem; romantic relationships; interpersonal conflicts; emotional
pain; masculinity and the fear of being shamed by peers; teasing, razing, and bullying; and sexuality and sexual
orientation.
3. Advice they would give to younger boys on maintaining their integrity and identity.
4. Handling complex feelings such as shame, vulnerability, anger, and sadness.
5. The role of sports in their lives and the mentors and heroes (male or female) in their life and why they look up
to these individuals.
At the end of each interview, we also allotted time for open-ended discussion between the interviewer and the individual boy. (For a more complete report of the research aspects, see Pollack, 1998, 1999.)
On the basis of academic study and clinical experience pertaining to boys, men, and masculinity, we began our work on this study with several hypotheses about what we might discover about boys and their inner emotional experience. We hypothesized, first, that the boys in this study would manifest subconscious feelings of emotional pain associated with what I’ve referred to as the “trauma of premature separation”(Pollack, 1995, 1998; see also Levant & Pollack, 1995). In clinical work with men, we have learned that many of the psychological and emotional issues that men face as adults are linked, in one way or another, to the way in which society traumatically pushes boys “out on their own” by removing
them from the succor and support of mother (and father) at too early an age (often at the time they enter school, between the ages of 4 and 6) and by heaping shame on boys if they attempt to reunite with their parents. Accordingly, we anticipated that in this study we would uncover boys’ unconscious feelings of loneliness and alienation related to this trauma of premature separation.
Second, we hypothesized that although the boys’ outward expressions of self-esteem would be in the normal range, consistent with past research conducted with children, measures of underlying covert insecurity would be found among the sample and that correlations might occur between such masked insecurity and the depression scores registered by the boys. Third, given the rigid social code of masculinity and the system of socialization still used to bring up young boys whereby they are teased and mistreated when they fail to conform to this code, we expected that the boys would express ambivalence about fulfilling masculine roles and resistance to “becoming a man.” In particular, because society has changed so radically for girls and women— thus putting pressure on boys to become open and vulnerable while encouraging them to meet traditional macho standards of being a “real boy”—we expected the boys to express confusion about what behaviors are considered “masculine” today. We thought that much of this could be found only by tapping into the boys’ deeper psychological processes. Accordingly, a two-pronged empirical approach usually not attempted in gender studies was used, simultaneously giving the boys two different measures about masculinity (one traditional and one egalitarian). We also collected related data through in-depth interviews and psychological tests such as the picture-story exercise.
Finally, we hypothesized that boys would show specific patterns of resistance to society’s rules about male behavior and masculinity. Specifically, we hypothesized that within the privacy of an intimate interview, the boys would reveal themselves to be just as relationship and friendship oriented, loving, and empathic as girls but that they would manifest these attributes through different behavioral mechanisms and approaches. The full results of this study of “normal” everyday boys are presented elsewhere (Pollack, 1999). It is reasonable, however, to frame the results pragmatically for use by professional psychologists, by commenting that the results showed that although boys on the surface appear to be doing fine, beneath the outward bravado— what I have call the “mask of masculinity”—many of the boys we often believe from their outer demeanor to be doing just fine are, indeed, in developmental and emotional crisis. As I discuss in greater detail below, this initial phase of the study reflected the following:
1. Boys feel deeply conflicted about what is expected of them as males in American society (i.e., about what behaviors and attitudes reflect healthy masculinity).
2. As they grow older, the inner conflict boys feel about masculinity is exacerbated, and they feel compelled to hide their confusion by acting more self-confident than they truly feel (a sense of false self-esteem, leading to increased sadness).
3. Boys have grave concerns about growing up to be men: They overwhelmingly see manhood as filled with unrewarding work, isolation from friends and family, unhappiness, and disappointment.
4. Despite the outward appearance they often give of being cheerful and contented, many boys of all ages feel deep feelings of loneliness and alienation.
Discussion
Although hundreds of analyzed responses and their categorizations are reported in the original research (see Pollack, 1998, 1999), for purposes of policy and clinical intervention, listen particularly to the voice of Hamilton in regard to what a boy’s future as a male adult is looming in response to one card of the TAT:
This guy is sick of working, and he doesn’t want to deal with his job or family anymore. He is thinking about what his life would be like if he hadn’t married and how much it sucks to work all the time. He wishes he could leave and be by himself and have fun. But he’ll work for 25 more years, hate it and then retire. The kids will move out and he’ll realize his life was dull and boring. He’ll be old then and what will he have to show for all this? Not much.
A negligible number (only 15%) of the boys projected positive, forward-looking sentiment regarding their futures as men. Also, scores on the Beck Depression Inventory were negatively correlated with Coopersmith Inventory scores; more depression was associated with less positive self-esteem in our subjects. An increased depression score was also shown in boys who, on the basis of their response to questions included in the Pleck’s Male Role Attitude Scale, appeared to feel pressured to fulfill traditional roles relating to masculinity and male sexuality. (See Pollack, 1999, for full data set and correlations.) These findings about boys are unusual in the literature of research psychology of “normal” samples. I believe the boys in this study expressed painful feelings so intensely and pervasively because we used psychological inventories specifically designed to measure subconscious emotional states—states that boys may avoid showing in social contexts. If questioned directly, especially in the presence of their peers, boys will tend not to express the feelings of sadness, fear, and isolation elicited in this study.
Because boys feel ashamed of the painful feelings that surround separation from their parents and are often teased or mistreated if they openly express such dependency and vulnerability, many of them feel pressured to cover this shame and replace it with false displays of confidence and bravado. Indeed, the second hypothesis— that boys in this study might show covert expressions of low self-esteem and possibly achieve self-esteem scores correlated with depression—was also corroborated. Although, as expected, the boys did not show overall low scores on self-esteem, we found correlations not only between relatively low self-esteem scores and increased incidence of depression (as described above) but also between age and “false” self-esteem (bravado in the face of actually diminished genuine self-view as measured on the Coopersmith “Lie” Scale), with the degree of false-positive responses increasing significantly in older boys.
Therefore, as boys become older (and closer to manhood), they feel increasing confusion about who they are, whether they are sufficiently masculine, and how well liked they are by their peers. Because these feelings increase in intensity and frequency during adolescence, older boys are more likely to project a personality that appears to be cheerful, confident, and forward looking when, in reality, they may be feeling unhappy, uncertain, and afraid about the future. It is not that boys suffer decreasing self-esteem over time. Rather, it seems that the older they become, the more pressured they feel to hide their feelings of insecurity and vulnerability. Their mask hardens. Likewise, we also found that among older boys, the subgroup that endorses the idea that boys will “lose respect” if they talk about their problems significantly increases in size.
At the heart of boys’ fears is their concern over masculinity. Our hypothesis—that the boys in this study would express ambivalence about becoming men and about society’s expectations of them as males—was also affirmed in several portions of the research. By taking the research step of administering both the SRES and Pleck’s Male Role Attitude Scale, we were able to show that many boys simultaneously endorse both egalitarian and traditional notions about men and masculinity. Today’s boys, in other words, are being socialized not only to conform to conventional rules about masculinity and maleness but also to support “new” rules that enforce notions of equality between the sexes. I term this dual set of expectations as the double standard of masculinity because many of the boys in this study seemed confused about how to reconcile the conflicts inherent in these competing sets of rules and expectations. Indeed, the boys’ scores on the two contrasting scales (on the SRES and Pleck scale) increased as they got older, and as discussed above, correlations were shown between those boys who frequently endorsed traditional macho expectations about male sexuality on the Pleck scale and those with higher depression scores (and therefore with lower self-esteem).
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