Each semester, I ask my psychology students to imagine how people would grow up, think and act in a world without societal rules and expectations. This may seem like an easy task, but their initial answers are similar to what you’d expect a fish to say if asked what it’s like to live in water. “What norms?” they ask. This is especially the case for the young men who, like me, had never explicitly questioned messages like, “Boys don’t cry” and “Be a man” before going to college. Amid a resurgence of rigid masculinity—and as a psychologist who studies these issues—I’ve grown increasingly concerned with these unacknowledged pressures that can thwart the healthy development of boys and young men.
This question I pose to my students is based on research I and others did a couple of years ago, looking at how pervasive social norms, especially current views of masculinity, can shape people often in unideal ways. As I’ve noted before in Scientific American, many boys and men report feeling pressured to be stereotypically masculine. This means, for example, pressure to be tough (physical and emotionally), able to fix things and in positions of power – what we call “hegemonic masculinity.” These pressure are often rooted in fundamentally human needs, such as men’s desire to provide for their families, or simply to belong and accepted by others.
Importantly, we’ve found that pressure to be a certain kind of masculine leads to aggressive thoughts and feelings, especially among adolescent boys and young adult men who are in throes of forming an identity. To me, it’s not masculinity that is inherently bad or toxic. Rather, problems arise when rigid masculinity is pressured onto boys and men.
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In psychology, pressure is the antithesis of autonomy—or the basic human need to act in line with one’s true self. This is why acting out manliness for pressured reasons leads to “fragile” masculine identities. Instead of a healthy identity rooted in authenticity and autonomy, fragility stems from an insecure need for external validation. As a result, these boys and men feel compelled to prove their manhood to others through stereotypically masculine means. We see the results in the disproportionate rates of men’s gun violence, homophobia, sexual aggression, political bigotry and even anti-environmental behavior, compared to women.
Against this, parents are a critical part of how boys see themselves, and how they understand masculinity. With the rise of a “masculinity” that is increasingly pressuring, parents can help boys develop more expansive identities. This is not about demonizing one idea of masculinity, or boys and men as group, but reducing the pressure to be a narrowly defined man. Genuine and compassionate versions of masculinity exist, and it’s okay for boys to take those paths. Getting there means conversation, modeling desired behavior, and reckoning with our own definitions of what a man is. But it matters, because this pressure to conform to narrow norms is hurting boys.
While we were collecting data on boys’ aggression, we also surveyed their parents, asking them to agree or disagree with statements relating to current beliefs about masculinity. Some of these items had to do with relatively benign beliefs—like, whether men should be handy—and some were more consequential, such as beliefs about homophobia and gender inequality.
We found that parents’ beliefs about hegemonic masculinity related to pressure their sons reported to be stereotypically masculine; that is, parents who simply believed that men should have status and power over others had sons (some as young as 10) who reported feeling pressured to be manly. It’s no surprise, then, that these were the boys who responded aggressively when we challenged their manhood, especially when they were already in the throes of puberty.
These results tell us there is a consequence to raising boys in a man’s world: living up to these expectations is stressing them out. We know this because they report being bullied, or shut out of peer groups. They tell us they have low self-esteem. In their book on the psychology of gender relations between women and men, Laurie Rudman and Peter Glick propose that we are powerfully shaped by how societies are structured—with men most often at the top and women (and people of other genders) situated below them. For proof, look no further than government and business in the U.S. where only 27 percent of federal lawmakers, 10 percent of Fortune 500 CEOs and 0 percent of presidents are women.
Immediately, we think about what these disparities mean for girls, and we should, but to the extent that girls receive messages that they can’t get to the top, many boys are hearing that they must get to the top. It’s certainly a double-edged sword. Boys and men are afforded power and privilege, yet many are also pressured to earn and maintain it.
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We’ve made great strides in inspiring girls to achieve just as well as boys (and even better)—though there is still much work to do here—yet we’ve so far failed to encourage boys to aspire toward culturally feminized work and communal careers in fields such as nursing, child care and early-childhood education. Instead, in many capitalist cultures across the world, we continue to push and pressure our boys away from anything remotely feminine—away from the innate nurturing and caring tendencies that they demonstrate in childhood—and toward the pinnacles of what we (as societies) have defined as success.
Redefining masculinity starts with you. Not every expression or experiment in masculinity will be safe for your child to pursue, especially in certain areas of the areas of the world. (For example, we found that parents in conservative parts of the U.S. put significant pressure on their sons to be masculine, which may be rooted in a fear of openly challenging masculinity norms.) But, as psychologist Onnie Rogers notes, we can encourage boys to “run with intentionality in the opposite direction, against the grain, and more importantly, toward [their] full humanity,” and this means that ideas around masculinity are worth talking about.
As you talk to, play with, observe and guide your sons along their paths, here are some ideas to consider, what I think of as “four Rs” to get you started:
Realize that you can have these hard conversations; that you can intervene and guide. Although you might feel like your sons will develop in ways beyond your control, you do have a significant effect on your children’s core beliefs, values and worldviews. Psychologist Sylvia Perry recently wrote in this very column about how children and young adults can handle hard conversations about race. They can understand complex ideas, histories and perspectives about gender, too.
Reconsider the messages boys are sent (and not sent), both explicitly and implicitly. Children learn about gender through many pathways—summed up as direct teaching, experiencing, and modeling. You might try to directly teach your boys to combat gender stereotypes and even explicitly encourage them to take part in “feminine” activities; but arguably more important is what they learn by watching you and what they experience in their own worlds. What’s vital is that boys be given the space to develop apart from pressures to be masculine or feminine— nothing is inherently wrong with boys liking to play with trucks, and pressuring boys to do more “girly” things against their inclinations defeats the purpose.
Resist in the sense of equipping boys to resist messages about who they should and shouldn’t be. Even the best schoolteachers sometimes fall back on antiquated tropes like gendering pink versus blue pencils. If your son wants to use the pink pencil, why the hell shouldn’t he? A new and exciting area of research is looking at how easy it is for boys to actively resist masculinity norms and what benefits they may get from this.
Recognize that the way that society is right now isn’t how it has to be. You could, for instance, tell boys that even though there has never been a woman U.S. president, anyone can be president, regardless of their gender. Highlight women who are leading companies and, possibly more importantly, men who excel in HEED occupations (health care, early education and domestic roles).
These won’t be easy. It won’t be a onetime thing. But the sooner we can start dismantling gender gaps at all levels of society, the sooner we’ll see boys (and girls) less pressured to meet outdated expectations—and more fulfilled in finding authenticity.
This is an opinion and analysis article, and the views expressed by the author or authors are not necessarily those of Scientific American.
