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 While
much has been written of late about our society's shortchanging
of girls, a new trend--underscored by the devastating violence
of Santana, Columbine, and Paducah, among others--has shed light
on another population in trouble: our
nation's boys. The evidence
is clear in reports from the media, in research from respected
institutions, and in the hallways and playing fields of our nation's
schools: boys are in desperate need of help.
Rates of emotional disorders and
depression in boys are shockingly high, often with devastating
results. Boys are four to six times more likely than girls to
commit suicide and between four to ten times more likely to be
diagnosed with a serious emotional disorder.1
Alarmingly, one out of every four males in America has an arrest
record.2 Among the recent epidemic
of high-profile school killings, all but one incident was perpetrated
by boys. Experts, parents, community leaders, and teachers, faced
with these alarming facts have begun to ask "Why?"
According to ADRIFT Advisor Dr. William
J. Pollock, a leading expert on boys' issues, the crisis is one
of socialization where boys are driven underground behind a "mask
of masculinity". Forced
by society to disconnect from their parents and peers at a premature
age (less they appear weak and needy) "boys,
feeling ashamed of their vulnerability, mask their emotions and
ultimately their true self," Pollock
writes in his seminal book, Real
Boys. "This unnecessary
disconnection--from family and then from self--causes many boys
to feel alone, helpless, and fearful." Once
caught in this bind, it's difficult for boys to get out. Society
leaves no room for such emotions from boys, further plunging boys
into a universe of shame, humiliation, and buried feelings.3
But what is the real cost to boys
of emotional disconnection? As Pollock pointed out at the time
of Columbine, in the most extreme cases "unless
we let boys cry real tears, they'll cry bullets."
In most incidences, boys loneliness
and frustration is exhibited more subtly in bullying behaviors
towards peers, in denial of responsibilities such as fatherhood,
in lack of achievement in school and life, in pursuit of winning-at-all-costs
in sports, and in an inability to cope with life's myriad emotional
demands. Boys, in effect, become emotionally stunted in their
gender straightjackets from boyhood into manhood--forbidden to
express their full range of emotions, afraid to show their true
selves, unable to lift the mask.
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