Reimagining Boys in the 21st Century *

At long last, adhering to norms of masculinity has been identified by the American Psychological Association as a risk factor for boys’ and men’s mental health. The new APA guidelines help mental health professionals better serve boys and men and bring the dangers of masculine stereotypes into the mainstream conversation. As a researcher who has been studying boys for almost three decades, I have learned a lot about their human capacities for empathy and connection, as well as the negative consequences of living in a patriarchal culture that demeans these capacities by making them “girly and gay.” Listening to the same boys over many years, I have also learned about a crisis of connection that occurs during middle to late adolescence as a result of adhering to mainstream masculinity and the steps necessary to effectively address the crisis.

Boys have revealed to me and my research team, first and foremost, that they have the same social and emotional capacities and needs as girls, as well as all other humans. Yet they live in a culture that assumes boys do not have inherent social and emotional skills and have less desire for deep connections. It is a culture that not only genders core human qualities and capacities such as thinking (masculine), feeling (feminine), and relationships (feminine), it also idealizes the stereotypically masculine and mocks the stereotypically feminine. In such a culture, boys are pressured to deny or repress their feelings and their desire for closeness in the name of being a man. Anthony, one of the teenage boys in my developmental studies, said that “it might be nice to be a girl because then I wouldn’t have to be emotionless.” Marco, another young man in my studies, said “I don’t need others, I am man enough.” Yet, the boys also revealed to me that they rely on these so called “girly and gay” capacities and desires to have the relationships that they want and need to thrive. The high rates of loneliness, suicide, and mass violence among boys and young men are a product, in other words, of a clash between their social and emotional nature and patriarchal culture.

My research focused on friendships among black, Latino, Asian-American, and white boys from early to late adolescence reveals not only boys’ social and emotional capacities and needs, it also shows us what happens when they are pressured to “man up” (Way 2011, 2013). During early and middle adolescence, the boys in my studies spoke openly about their desires to share secrets with their best male friends. At 15 years old, Justin said:

My best friend and I love each other…that’s it…. you have this thing that is deep, so deep, it’s within you, you can’t explain it. It’s just a thing that you know that that person is that person…and that is all that should be important in our friendship…I guess in life, sometimes two people can really, really understand each other and really have a trust, respect, and love for each other. It just happens, it’s human nature.

Like Justin, Hector, at 14 years old, said:

I’ve got two best friends—Willy and Brian. Like sometimes when me and Willy argue, me and Brian are real close. Then when me and Brian are not doing so good, me and Willy are real close. It’s like circles of love. Sometimes, we’re all close.

And then there is Jason at 15 years old:

My ideal best friend is a close, close friend who I could say anything to…‘cause sometimes you need to spill your heart out to somebody and if there’s nobody there, then you gonna keep it inside, then you will have anger. So you need somebody to talk to always.

At the edge of manhood, when pressures to conform to norms of masculinity intensify, the boys speak about their male friends with abandon, referring to them as people whom they can’t live without. Rather than a focus on independence, the boys in my studies suggest that what they most want in the world is emotionally intimate friendships.

During early and middle adolescence, boys also speak about the links between friendships and mental health. When asked about whether friends are important, Stephen said:

You need friends to talk to sometimes, you know like you have nobody to talk to, you don’t have a friend, it’s hard. You got to keep things bottled up inside, you might just start…crying or whatever.

When asked the same question as Stephen, Alan explained: “Someone to talk to, like you have problems with something, you go talk to him. You know, if you keep it all to yourself, you go crazy. Try to take it out on someone else.” Another boy concurs saying that “Without friends you will go crazy or mad or you’ll be lonely all of the time, be depressed…. You would go wacko.”

During late adolescence, boys begin to sound different than when they were younger. They begin to talk less and occasionally use homophobic slurs such as “no homo” to align themselves with the heteronormative standards of manhood. When asked how his friendships have changed since the beginning of high school, Justin, who expressed having a friend that he couldn’t “live without” four years earlier, said in his senior year:

I don’t know, maybe, not a lot, but I guess that best friends become close friends. So that’s basically the only thing that changed. It’s like best friends become close friends, close friends become general friends and then general friends become acquaintances. So they just…. If there’s distance whether it’s, I don’t know, natural or whatever. You can say that but it just happens that way.

When asked how his friendships have changed since he was younger, Michael told me:

Like my friendship with my best friend is fading, but I’m saying it’s still there but…. So I mean, it’s still there ‘cause we still do stuff together, but only once in a while. It’s sad ‘cause he lives only one block away from me and I get to do stuff with him less than I get to do stuff with people who are way further.…It’s like a DJ used his cross fader and started fading it slowly and slowly and now I’m like halfway through the cross fade.

Late adolescence for many boys in my studies was a time of disconnection from the relationships they held so close to their hearts. As their bodies are almost fully grown and their minds are increasingly attuned to homophobic and misogynist messages about manhood, boys begin to distance themselves from the very relationships that they relied on previously to avoid going “crazy.” Boys know by late adolescence that their close male friendships, and even their emotional acuity, put them at risk of being labeled “girly,” “immature,” or “gay.” In response to a culture that links close male friendships with a sex (female) and a sexuality (gay), boys “mature” into men who are independent, emotionally stoic, and often disconnected from both themselves and others.

This crisis of connection among boys is not only evident in my studies but also in the national data that reveals the suicide rate in the United States among boys rises dramatically at the ages of 15 and 16, as does the violence rate. Elliot Rodgers said in a video he made the night before he killed 6 people on the campus of the University of California, Santa Barbara, that his act is against “all humanity…who has made me rot in my loneliness” As mainstream masculinity fosters anger at girls and boys, Rodgers’ rage was directed at both.

So what do boys teach us about how to effectively address their crisis of connection? They reveal an urgent need to reimagine them for who they are rather than how we stereotype them to be. Once we see boys for how they see themselves, we will be able to change the culture so that we value stereotypically feminine qualities as much as we value autonomy and independence. A culture, in other words, that nurtures our nature rather than gets in the way. Boys want to share secrets with their friends, express their vulnerability, and not be pressured to laugh at a joke at their own expense. They want their insights into human nature and culture to be heard and valued. They want us to stop giving core human qualities and capacities such as thinking, feeling, and relationships, a gender and a sexuality. If we reimagine boys by listening to what they are telling us, we will free them, as well as everyone else, to better see their own humanity, as well as the humanity of others.