The Male Gender Straitjacket

Educators are becoming increasingly concerned about boys. Much attention has been given to girls recently and they are improving in their access to opportunities and are improving in math and science achievement. Boys, on the other hand, continue to lag in reading, their self-esteem is now more fragile than girls’ self-esteem, are twice as likely to be labeled as learning disabled, and are ten times more likely to be diagnosed with a serious emotional disorder, especially “attention deficit” disorders for which potent medications with serious side effects are forced on them. Boys are three times more likely than girls to be the victim of violent crime and four to six times more likely to commit suicide. So says Dr. William Pollack in his Real Boys: Rescuing Our Sons from the Myths of Boyhood (1998), a work based on his research at Harvard Medical School.

Families are supposed to introduce their children to the outer world, but don’t tolerate any whining or stalling from their boys. Boys are supposed to “make the break” to “become a man.” Feeling ashamed of their vulnerability, they mask their emotions and ultimately their true selves. “Everything is just fine,” is all you’ll get out of them after that. Ask a boy or even a man how he feels about something, and he’ll often not know. Not only will he not know how he feels about it, he’ll probably not even have categories within which to know or think about such things (how he feels). Boys are getting a bad break, and we need to learn better how to teach them.