Good Life Project - Building Better Boys | Michael Reichert

Episode Date: August 20, 2019

Michael C. Reichert, PhD (http://www.michaelcreichert.com/)is founding director of the Center for the Study of Boys' and Girls' Lives at the University of Pennsylvania and a clinical practitioner specializing in boys and men, who has also conducted extensive research globally. In his recent book, How to Raise a Boy, he shares powerful stories and research about the behaviors, roles and expectations we place on young boys and how that often locks them into ways of being that are destructive not only to their own lives, but also potentially to their relationships in all parts of life and to society writ large. In our conversation, Reichert also addresses a number of societal myths and offers more constructive, science-backed reframes. At a time when we’re all reexamining questions of gender, identity, behavior and the way we bring ourselves to the world and our roles in teaching those who look to us as models of behavior and values, this topic has never been more important.-------------Have you discovered your Sparketype yet? Take the Sparketype Assessment™ now. IT’S FREE (https://sparketype.com/) and takes about 7-minutes to complete. At a minimum, it’ll open your eyes in a big way. It also just might change your life.If you enjoyed the show, please share it with a friend. Thank you to our super cool brand partners. If you like the show, please support them - they help make the podcast possible. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

So when you think about how boys, especially young boys, behave, what comes to mind? Chances are, if you're like so many other people, some form of aggressive behavior, fighting, rambunctious, too much energy. Turns out that so much of this is complete myth, and so much also is not something that's actually a natural part of that experience, but it's learned, it's taught. So my guest today, Michael Reichert, is the founding director of the Center for the Study of Boys and Girls' Lives at the University of Pennsylvania. And he is a clinical practitioner specializing in boys and men who has also conducted extensive research around the world. And in his recent book, How to Raise a Boy, he shares really powerful stories and research

about the behaviors and roles and expectations that we place on young boys and how that often locks them into ways of being that are destructive, not only in their own lives, but also potentially to their relationships in all parts of life and to society writ large. And in this conversation, we also address a number of societal myths and offer kind of a more constructive science-backed reframe.

And at a time when we are all re-examining questions of gender, identity, behavior, and the way we bring ourselves to the world and our roles in teaching those who look to us as models of behavior and values, this topic has never been more important. So excited to share this conversation with you. I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life Project. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist,

whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you 8 hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series 10. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required. Charge time and actual results

will vary. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were gonna be fun. On January 24th Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're gonna die. Don't shoot if we need him. Y'all need a pilot? Flight Risk. I think the field that you've been practicing in clinically for decades now, I guess three and a half decades or so, and researching in,

is something that has sort of, you know, like, it has met its match in the zeitgeist over the last few years. But I want to take a step back in time with you. I'm curious how you actually got into your practice. I know a couple months back you actually published an op-ed in the New York Times. And in that piece you relayed a pretty horrifying moment from when you were in high school. Would you share that with us? I would.

Yeah, so I was attending an all-boys urban school in my hometown, and I think I was somewhat naive as a boy. I hadn't been exposed to a lot of male violence prior to that. But once in this bigger pond of a somewhat tough school, boys from many different walks of life, suddenly there were fights after school. And I remember, I just have this vivid visual memory of, you know, we wore white shirts to school. And these boys that would bloody each other's white shirts, the bright stain of crimson on their shirts was shocking to me. As was the phenomenon of people rushing to where the fight was going to take place, often across the street in some vacant lot or something. And one day, one evening, I attended one of the dances in ninth grade. So I'm, I guess what, I'm 14, 15 years old.

And someone, a boy I didn't know very well, quiet boy, but in classes with me, I learned later that he was exiting the door after a dance, a school dance, and got into some kind of altercation with another guy that I knew only mostly by reputation, who was older and said to be crazy. And they got into some kind of altercation. And what happened was that he was knocked to the ground and kicked to death after this dance. And I remember thinking at the time that, you know, that was sort of the last straw for me. I was over my head. I hadn't been exposed, like I said, to too much male violence, but this was extreme. And I think that it, I recognized that, you know, I probably didn't have to deal with this.

And I could transfer out of that school, find a co-ed school, and go to a different environment. And I did that and did it happily. But, you know, that was sort of the most severe introduction to violence that actually was everywhere. I mean, you know, I remember being at, you know, swim club parties in the summer and gang fights starting. I would sit at my lunch table with boys that came from the same part of town that the guy that was said to be crazy came from. They would talk about having had a gang fight

with another gang. I was transferring schools from that boys' school to the co-ed Catholic school and had the brilliant idea of having a party in the basement of my home. And I invited guys from both schools, not being very aware. And what ended up happening was it turns

out that there were guys from two rival gangs at my party, and they got into a fight, you know, in my house. So, you know, there was a whole way in which I think that male violence was something that I was spared, except it was everywhere. Sort of an odd contrast, really, you know? Yeah. I mean, it's interesting also, because depending on where you live and where you've been brought up these days, you have varying levels of exposure to that level of just pervasive and persistent violence, I think. The way you're describing it is just being all around you. It seems like for you, it was just this experience

that you almost couldn't step out of. Yeah. You know, I actually think, Jonathan, that even, even, I mean, I spend time observing boys on playgrounds, for example, at schools. If you go across the street, you know, to the local school here and just happen to watch at lunchtime playground or something, what you'll see will be young boys jumping on each other, pushing each other, you know, stealing each other's toys or balls or whatnot. I do think that, you know, my two and a half year old grandson sometimes comes home from preschool and says that, you know, his buddy, you know, rah-rah, you know, pushed him that day.

I mean, I think that I really do think that the piece that you reference is a, I talked about the ubiquity of male violence. I do think that our lives are steeped in violence. It's everywhere. Which is kind of a scary reality to own, to a certain extent. And I guess one of the things that I know you explore and have researched and write about, most recent work also, is the idea of where this comes from. Because I think there are a lot of myths. There are a lot of sort of cultural overlays. There are a lot of sort of cultural overlays or a lot of assumptions or a lot of boys are X way.

And this is just like there are certain DNA level elements of masculinity. And this is just how they behave or how they act. And it's not entirely true. Yeah, no, I think that the stereotypes, what one writer calls the archetypes, male archetypes, just obscure our ability to see boys clearly. by hormones and by aggressiveness and competition, that violence is somehow woven into the fabric of our beings instead of being culturally conditioned. And, you know, I say a lot in talks I give to parents and so forth that we no longer say that biology is destiny when it comes to females, but it's still likely that we believe that male biological anatomical differences are determinative for us. You know, yes, there are some predispositions to

maybe more competition and aggressiveness, but that doesn't mean that our minds can't trump those biological inclinations in the ways that society requires of all of us. And I think that, you know, boys are not by nature violent for sure. It's hurt people who hurt people. And when we violate boys' fundamental natures in the ways that boyhood does, we are going to have outcomes that are, in a certain sense, against our natures. You know, the breakdown of empathic connections, the breakdown of compassion for other people, the blind acting out of aggression that you see on playgrounds, you know, in the competition for dominance and hierarchy. I think that those are signals that something's out of whack with boyhood, that we're violating boys, you know, the restraining force of boys' connections to other people.

Yeah, I mean, it's interesting that you say that, because I think for a lot of people, the assumption is, well, that is the nature of boyhood. Right. And that that's sort of what you, quote, have to move through in order to then discover your limits, discover your values, discover all this thing. And that's just the way it is. And what your argument is, no, in fact, if that is how we're defining boyhood, then it's a broken paradigm. Yeah, I am saying it's a broken paradigm. And I'm saying more than that. I think it's a paradigm that breaks boys and that the kinds of developmental outcomes that we see as products of boyhood. For generations, we have normalized losses and casualties, not just losses of life, as in my classmates' example, but losses of virtue, losses of educational opportunity, losses of health, losses of intimate connection. I think that we've normalized the sacrifices that we impose on boys for generations.

In fact, what I say is that this is the, I think, the best time in human history to be raising a son because we're finally, I think, coming to terms with the boyhood that we've created and managed for boys for generations. Yeah, I mean, it does certainly seem like a time of reckoning, but in a good way. It's a time of peeling back. And a closer scrutiny of the assumptions we've made. And one of those assumptions is that just boys will be boys, you know, that we're just hormonally driven creatures and can't help ourselves. You know,

we're sexually predatory and violent and, you know, indisposed to invest in education and learning and not really very capable of emotional expression or intimacy. Those kinds of rationalizations, I think, are being called out in the reckoning you're describing. Yeah. I mean, if we try and deconstruct some of those things, I think you sort of just listed out four or so of the really big assumptions. What are the truths underlying those? Well, let's begin with the most fundamental truth, you know, which is that human minds are wired to connect. We are creatures, human beings, that have a certain hardwired nature. And that nature, it's anatomical, it's built into our brains, requires us to be nurtured in close synchrony with other human beings. Children require emotional and the presence of an adult in order to really flourish. We need to feel scared and alone. And, you know, too much of boyhood has been about pushing boys out of the nest

at a way too early age, not in any sense of their choosing, but really in service to the message, you know, that a real boy, a true boy, stands on his own two feet and aspires to be the Lone Ranger. So that fundamental violation of male nature is how I explain a lot of the negative outcomes we're seeing. Yeah. And I guess, you know, what is, is what drives that, that impulse, the bigger societal construct about what, what boys do and don't need and what they quote should become? think that there's a lot of hope that that's changing and there are signs of it's changing for sure. But I'm also struck by the continuity, the overarching perpetuation of those stereotypes. In fact, even the exaggeration of those stereotypes. You go into a toy store and everything's, you know, blue and pink. For example, G.I. Joe has gained 20% more muscle mass over the

last 20 years. I think that as we approach more gender equality as a society, I'm seeing kind of on a throwback, you know, last hurrah way, this emphasis on traditional masculine tropes. And so I believe our sons are going to have to contend with that, at least for this next generation or more. And consequently, I don't think that we can protect our sons from those tropes. I think what we can do is build their resistance to them. When we think about raising boys now, and we think about the different people

who influence their behavior currently and who we hope they become, one of the things that I know you talk about is the different people along the way. So parents are certainly one of that. And when you think about a parent, do you find that fathers and mothers relate differently, have different expectations? And if so, does that then lead to different behaviors and outcomes? And then if that's true, what do we do about it?

Right. No, it's an important question. For sure, I think historically we have believed that it takes a man to raise a boy to manhood, you know, as if we are going to initiate our sons into the secret fraternity of being a man. And consequently, that impacts both fathers and mothers differently. For fathers, I think there's this idea that we need to teach our boys how to be men. And we need to pass along to them some of the secrets of masculinity. I tell a story in my book about unwittingly finding myself in the grip of one such idea with my son who was being bullied at a playground down the corner. And, you know, I was, you know, 20 years into the project of examining my own masculinity and coming to terms with what was unhealthy about it. And still I found myself when my son was being bullied and threatened by mean boys, I found myself drawing upon some old tropes.

You got to fight for yourself. You got to be strong. And I think we all do that. I think that there is a way in which we men, we fathers feel like we have an inside track on what manhood is about. And we have to teach that to our sons in order to prepare them for it. Mothers, on the other hand, get a parallel message that they don't know how to raise a boy to manhood. And that in fact, if they try to keep their son close, they risk spoiling him, undermining his masculine independence, turning him into a mama's boy. And what we find, you know find happens behind that sort of cultural demand is that moms begin to doubt themselves and pull away from their sons.

And the net effect of that is that the boy doesn't have that kind of emotional synchrony or connection that he needs in order to flourish? We think, you know, overall, we think that we have to help our sons be strong, not understanding that strength comes not from disconnection and independence, but from deep connection. Yeah, that's big. Yeah, and different. Yeah. Yeah. And it sounds like also, you know, like a father figure would translate what that attachment or connection means differently than a mother. figure and mother versus mother figure and gender identifying around their role identifications, because we certainly see, you know, the average family today can look very different than what the average family looked like a couple of generations ago. Yeah. And, you know, I don't

know that in talking, I mean, so I'm asked a lot, you know, single moms, for example, will often ask me, there's no men in my son's life, and is that a problem for him? And what I say about that is it's certainly helpful to a boy to be around adult men, but not for the reasons that I think the cultural tropes hold, not because that boy needs to be somehow introduced to masculinity by an adult man, but more getting to actually rub shoulders with a man, getting to see him in a human light, getting to see how he brushes his teeth,

how he shaves his face, how he, or not, how he cares for the world and for himself. Demythologizes masculinity. One of the things that research teaches us is that in the absence of a male figure, boys often default to a hyper-masculine stereotype. In the absence of real flesh and blood content, the myth, these cultural myths that we've been talking about, I think seem truer. A boy that's rubbing elbows with men gets to see that,

you know, not so much. Yeah, so it's almost like if you're reading books and seeing movies and watching TV, and this is what's being shown, you just, that's what you think it is. That's reality. Right. The day-to-day foibles and complexity and falling down and nuance.

That's so interesting. Yeah. Yeah. And that makes a lot of sense. When we sort of move beyond the influence of parents in this experience of boyhood. I know one of the things that you've really spent a huge amount of time exploring is education. That's right. Is the role of the school environment and teachers in this.

Talk to me a bit about that relational experience and how that works. There's a lot to say about that, Jonathan. And teachers and coaches, if I can just insert that. Thank you. Yeah. So that's where I've conducted three global studies. And I conducted the studies the way I conducted them because working in schools back in the early 90s, I was struck by the mythology about boys' education that wasn't producing very good outcomes. You know, all this drama about boys falling behind, boys failing in school, all of this rationalization about why it was true. Boys are just not cut out for education. They can't sit

still. Too many female teachers. A lot of ideological myths as explanations. And yet what we knew was that in some schools everywhere, some boys were flourishing. So we decided to build a theory of boys' education phenomenologically from the ground up. And we started with 18 schools, 1,500 boys aged 12 to 18, and 1,000 of their teachers in six different countries. And we asked a simple question in an online survey followed up with focus groups. We asked, what's working? And from that, we heard three major themes, the third of which, lots of overlap between what the boys and the teachers said, which gave us some reason to think it was true. But the third theme, overarching theme, came from the boys themselves, was that they were relational learners, that the most important feature that engaged them in learning was the connection that they had with a teacher or a coach.

Now, what was so surprising about that finding was that my research partner and I, between us, had about 50 years working with boys, and we were caught off guard. The best kind of research. You know, discovery. Yeah, that's what we're trying to do, right? And moreover, the thousand teachers who were in the trenches with these boys when asked what works didn't talk about their relationship with their students. They talked in technical detail about the lessons they'd crafted and how it fit this or that or this other theory of learning. Boys, on the other hand, were very, very detailed as they talked about the personality, the mood, the teaching style of the teacher. And, you know, we were really led to that conclusion that boys are relational learners by the boys themselves.

And we had to confront this fact that we were all, all of the adults were operating in a bit of a fog about how relational boys were. another study, a second study, where we really dug into, you know, what kind of relationships work and what kind of relationships don't work. And that we doubled the number of schools to 34, six different countries, another 1,500 boys and 1,000 teachers. And we were able to describe the features of relational approaches that really worked, succeeded at engaging boys, and the kinds of explanations that boys offered, teachers understood, to explain why relationships break down, and then some sense of what needs to be done about it. Because the truth is that every kind of relationship, including teaching and coaching relationships, cycles routinely through periods of connection,

disconnection, reconnection, your relationship with your partner or your child. Yeah. And the problem is that many schools are not set up very well to prioritize the relationship, the emotional labor for a teacher of managing, making sure that they have a connection with their students, fixing relationships that are broken down, continuing to try if, you know, if all the different tricks in their bag are exhausted. I think that what we learned was the job of being the relationship manager falls by default to the teacher. And yet many teachers don't feel particularly supported in that work by the setup of the school. And here we are saying that boys are relational learners, and in the absence of a relational connection with their teacher, they have a much

harder time engaging. You know, what we say is, it's not what a boy is being taught, it's for whom he'll work that matters. Yeah. I mean, it's so interesting, right? Because if you think about the way that so many schools have become structured these days, classroom sizes are getting larger. That's right. The educational paradigm very often is, you know, like the quote, teaching to the test. So you're, it's largely curriculum driven rather than relationship driven. It's more and more fixed in what's being delivered. And it's interesting because we have a number of friends

that have been teachers for a long time and they don't like it. I think if you talk to a lot of teachers, they would actually love to be in a much more relational style with their students, boys and girls. But they feel like the structure that's sort of like being built these days, it's that are attracted to the teaching profession begin, I think, that career path with the greatest idealism. They're in it to transform lives, to lift children up, to help them succeed. And I agree. I think the structure of education has moved away from a setup that really allows teachers to experience the rewards of, you know, it still happens, but it's become almost relegated to the margins of what they're required to do. And here's our research saying essentially that boys in general, and particularly disadvantaged boys, boys that are also fighting other social stresses like racism or poverty, require some kind of connection, some sense of being known and valued for who they are in order 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X, available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum.

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You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him. We need him. Y'all need a pilot. Flight risk. I know your research focused largely on boys. Has there been similar research done on girls?

And is it substantially different that you know about, if so? I have partners of mine in my center based at Penn conducted a parallel study with girls. And they found that, indeed, girls are also relational learners. What we think is that human beings are relational generally. But that the contours of the relationships and the different approaches, I think, are really fitted to gendered differences. You know, there's particular ways that boys can connect because of their experience of being gendered and likewise girls. I think there's understand, parents and teachers and coaches, to understand that gender matters, that boys are being gendered from the time they're

conceived. Tell me what you mean by that, boys are being gendered. Yeah, yeah. So I tell the story in a book about a friend of mine who was pregnant and carrying twins. She's a biology teacher. And she knew that one was a boy and one was a girl. And she said, I know which one's the boy. I said, how do you know? She said, he's the one who kicks me. From the time a boy is born, we are clothing them. We are providing different toys to them. We are making assumptions about them, seeing them in a different light, filtering how we interpret who they are in terms of the gender assumptions that we're carrying unconsciously in our minds. Yeah, and it starts from pre-birth. Yeah, that's right. From the idea of a child, I think, you know?

Yeah, and I guess, you know, like, I think one of the eye-opening things for me has been the notion that that may be causing harm, you know, whereas like, instead of just that's the way it is, you know, like that's, we all sort of like, we all have fun guessing and we all start to like, you know, we want to know the gender as soon as we can, you know, as soon as we can find out, you know, very often months before a child is born and then start to plan for that. It's interesting for me to start to ask the questions, like what were the assumptions that I made and what were the decisions that I made

from the earliest days based on knowing what my child's gender would be even before they came here? And again, we're not even addressing the more recent recognition of the difference between biological and felt identity, which is a whole, I think, separate conversation. Right.

But the fact that the thousands of seemingly small and innocuous choices we might make in relation to that gender can have a profound effect on how the gender is or isn't expressed. It's profound indeed. And that's what I would say in asserting the premise that children are relational. What I'm actually saying is that our brains are structured in such a way that I feel you. I read you. You don't even have to utter words.

I'm feeling and reading you. You know, what we call attunement. You know, my reptilian brain and yours are speaking to each other all the time. Children are remarkably astute at picking up adult signals. And what happens is they lean into those signals. They wrap themselves around those messages that they're receiving from us, and they internalize them. We are having a profound effect on our children in ways that we fail, I think, often to recognize. So much of my clinical work is actually helping parents to notice the power that they have. Often parents feel powerless

with boys, boys who become really stubborn or resistant or withdrawn or acting out. Parents often feel powerless with boys. And usually what I have to do is help parents to notice that they're beating their son with a club and to step back, appreciate how much their sons are feeling them and use that power, that influence more strategically, more sensitively. Yeah. I wonder what happens also when you have a child who does not conform to the gender expectations of the parents and they're comfortable not conforming, but the parents aren't. The parents are like, this is the way you're supposed to be in the world. And the kid is saying, you're like, no, actually, I get that that's what you think. And I get that's maybe what a lot of society thinks.

But I'm okay not being that way. And how sometimes we as parents will want a certain behavior and a child to step into a certain identity. Almost because of the way we feel it's going to reflect back on us and maybe out of concern for how we think our child is going to have a harder or easier time as they move through their life. Right. You know, it's as if we parents, you know, no matter how old we are, we think that we can read the opportunity structures that are actually in play for, you know, children that are, you know,

what, 20, 30, 40 years younger than us. It's a remarkable arrogance or blindness. The truth is that children are in the best position to read what the realities of the context that they're living in. And our job is not to put upon them some set of expectations for how they should act. That's doomed to fail. Because if we simply expect one generation to reproduce the features of the previous generation, they're not going to be very well adapted to the opportunities of a very changing world. What we know about the present world is that the gender landscape has changed dramatically, and our boys are being asked in a Me Too moment to adapt to radically different structures in marriages and workplaces in terms of their own identities. As you're saying, the fluidity of identity is probably

one of the more striking features today. And our sons know that much better than we do. So if we simply try to teach them or put upon them expectations for how they should be, because if they stray from a certain bandwidth, it makes us uncomfortable. What we're doing in some ways is handicapping our sons. We're actually interfering with their successful adaptation to the present. And I'm not talking, I'm not touting, you know, this idea that, you know, of a fad or children should be, you know, adopting whatever, you know, cultural currents indicate. I don't think that's true. I think the best way we can equip our sons to make principled moral judgments about how they want to be, is to strengthen our connections with them, strengthen their connection to themselves,

and equip them with that kind of confidence so that they can determine for themselves how to hold on to who they want to be. I mean, it seems like an argument to, if you're going to focus on one thing, to step away from trying to shape the gender identity of a child and step more into shaping or offering, inviting a child to explore the fundamental values and character, regardless of, and let that take the lead. And it's almost like they'll figure out where they fall in the context of defining gender and how they interact in that way. And that field of character education is one that's also fraught with a lot of myths. Yeah, tell me about that. We still have, I think, a lot of folks who believe that the way you teach, you build character is by teaching and preaching a set of virtues and values. As if, you know, these are going to be foreign to these feral creatures and we need to fit them into these character boxes. Yeah, exactly.

You know, upload these virtues and values. And the truth really is, I think, that what we know about the science of character education is it begins with the experience of feeling cared for. And that's how we learn to care about other folks. And, you know, morality is rooted in empathy. It's rooted in actually caring about how our behavior affects others. Operating with integrity, being honest, being empathic, being compassionate. These are virtues that are rooted in our being able to feel other people. And we have to have experienced having that kind of relationship with somebody else in order to develop that, I think, or I think it gets underdeveloped or perhaps even blunted.

Yeah, and it makes a lot of sense. I mean, and also if you think about, like, we have one child who's about to head off to college, which is going to be a whole different world for us. You're about to go through that separation. Yeah, right. You know, and when I think about, you know, there's, I don't think there's ever anything that I could have said that would shape the way that she has created her own values. But I do know that no matter what I say, you know, as you said, from the earliest of years, she was a keen observer of my behavior. Yeah.

You know, and she would see how I treat other people, how I treat my wife, how I interact with colleagues, with friends, with my parents, with my siblings, and with complete strangers on the street. And, you know, when I think about character, like you were saying, it's less about, okay, let's talk about, you know, like the values that are deeply meaningful

and that you should adopt to become a good fully formed human being. It's almost you know i think it almost it's worse if i say that and then i behave differently in the world and she sees that right because then it's like there's this cognitive dissonance which just makes it all fall apart right yeah i think that that it's and and you know as i said i think it begins in in your relationship with her and what she experiences of you in that relationship. If you're honest, if you're consistent, if you're dependable, if you exhibit a capacity to care for her, even when it's difficult or inconvenient for you, she's going to absorb those moral lessons and she's going to internalize those. They will become a part of how she understands one relates to other people. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Moving beyond the role of a parent and sort of helping

shape a boy, one of the other things that you explore a lot is, and it kind of relates back to this earlier thing that you shared, which is that we are wired to connect. The sense of belonging, like a physiological, psychological need. It feels like it's beyond a yearning, but an actual need to belong in some way, shape, or form. Part of that comes from our peers,

from who we surround ourselves with. Which brings up this whole thing, which is how do we get our kids to be surrounded by a group of people that would help them become good human beings? Or is that the wrong question? Is that actually not our job? It's our job to just step back and trust that they'll figure it out. Yeah, so it's a common worry, isn't it, with boys in particular? And what we're worrying about is the bro culture that exists everywhere. The idea that there's a lowered common denominator, a hyper-masculine common denominator that our boys will be exposed to somehow pressured by and pulled away from themselves and there's certainly a lot of examples of that uh everywhere

i'm sure you were exposed to that i was too and you know i think that uh uh i don't, but I would agree with your question or the rewording of your question. I think that we do want to be vigilant and not just in terms of our children's choice of friends, but just in general, vigilant. But when it comes to who they're hanging out with, you know, that notion that you are who you're with, who you're hanging out with, it does reflect something of a child's, you know, value orientation. But I don't think the parent who's determined to regulate his child's or child's choice of friends is going to have much luck there. If they're successful, I think they're more likely to have created a dependency, you know, a child who's gotten the message that he has to conform to his parents' wishes and have a much harder time becoming an independent-minded person.

So I think that our job in some ways is to help our sons navigate that peer culture, which is ubiquitous, it's everywhere, and make principled decisions about who he wants to be in the context of that. There's a lot of things about the brotherhood that are really kind of fun and thrilling and yet way across the line in many other ways. And I think that a boy who's trying to navigate that is likely to make, you know, almost do it on trial and error basis, you know, try this and try that. And I think that he's in the best position to make the choices. If we have confidence that he has a hold of himself and that he's connected to us, he's able to talk about the kinds of pressures he's experiencing. If he's able to talk about

the kinds of mistakes he's making, we're in a better position to be what we call a steering mechanism to guide him through those difficult passages. Yeah. And which also ties into, you know, an area of focus for you, which is how boys and men eventually experience and express love, affection, and are willing to step into a place of vulnerability, which, you know, classically has been seen as weakness. And now, I think in the popular culture, we've seen a lot of that shifting. We've seen the work of Brene Brown that's going out into the world. But I still think very often people associate the work of people like that with still almost like a feminine way of being, which I think is completely

wrong. But curious how, because it seems like this is sort of, you know, what you're talking about is essentially a willingness to be vulnerable and still understand that that is a complete and acceptable and maybe even a deeply valuable part of being a boy, being a man. Yeah, you know, I feel like this is an area that I have a lot of good news to bring in from the field. I have led for 25 years a program at a boys' school outside of Philadelphia that we call peer counseling, but it's essentially effort to provide a space for boys to practice expressing, coding feelings with language and expressing those feelings so that they come into intimate relationships later in life with what one researcher calls communications awkwardness. They're just unfamiliar with the territory. It's like, I don't know what I feel. I don't have any words for that. You know, it's just

a thing I feel, you know, that kind of thing. So what I've done for the last 25 years is provided this opportunity in a peer counseling format for boys simply to exchange turns listening to each other. And I try to prime the meetings with a topic that I believe is of interest to them. And so we talk a little bit about relationships with each other, relationships with girls, relationships with parents. We talk about sex. We talk about pornography. And I'll provide just a little bit of an overview and send them off to talk to each other and then bring them back. And typically what I do in the final half hour or so of the meeting is I'll work with one boy. So one guy, 17, 18 years old, 40, 50 other boys listening to him. And I'll just simply ask him, you know, so how's this topic resonate for you?

The good news I'm bringing is I have not found boys unable to do this. In fact, just the opposite. What's surprising, what has really blown me away, is that they're not having those opportunities anywhere else. I meet with them once every other week, and what they're saying is that this is it for them. This is the only place that they can really... We had one boy, for example, talk about his mom dying and his going to the cemetery and setting up a folding chair by the grave. And no one in school knew that. You know, the extent to which boys keep things to themselves, not because they don't want to be vulnerable, but because there's no opportunity. There's no place. There's no relationship built for them,

available to them, to be honest like that. All we've done in this program is simply built it, and they come. You know, we just simply gather boys together, we legitimize what we're doing, we model it, and they fit themselves to it wholeheartedly. It's been very encouraging to me. And the other bit of good news here is that I have seen this transition from maybe 25 years ago where it was harder, it was such a counter-cultural program, to one that the boys are now calling the best program in the school. They talk about getting a high just from a five-minute turn, talking to someone honestly about some struggle that they're having. They feel so much lighter, so much less alone. So in terms of coding feelings with language in terms of being able to express themselves,

what we know in terms of the research on emotional development is that it's not the experience of emotions that distinguishes boys and girls. It's the expression. And the expression follows societal feeling rules that we're in charge of, not the boys. If we change those rules, if we legitimize for boys, that of course you have feelings and of course you have to talk to somebody about them. They understand that. They're ready. They're game. Yeah. It's more about opportunity. That's exactly right. And capacity. And we have to, we, the adults who are in charge of boyhood, have to build those opportunities for our boys. or sleepy. And it's the fastest charging Apple Watch, getting you 8 hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series 10. Available for the first time in

glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required, charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were gonna be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing.

Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him. We need him. Y'all need a pilot. Flight risk. It seems one of the things that you were really successful in doing also in the context you were just describing

was creating a believable experience of safety. And I wonder sometimes whether that's hard to find out there in the real world. And without that, you know, to me, I've always believed that safety is a precursor to openness and vulnerability. Absolutely. And what person, much less a boy, is going to risk being humiliated or teased or razzed? I mean, you know. And especially in these days, right? And we should probably touch on this too

because I think it's important. You know, when something that you say, you know, a generation ago, you say it in a room and somebody may razz you or make fun of you in the moment. And then 10 minutes later, it's gone forever. These days, everything you do and say

is captured in technology. And it's just out there and it propagates to thousands or hundreds of thousands or millions of people in the blink of an eye. So I almost wonder if the fear of that ripple creates pressure and creates pressure not to actually be open. So the guideline that we establish that in 25 years, Jonathan, I've actually never heard rumor of being violated is a guideline of confidentiality. You know, basically, I'm not going to talk about what you've talked to me about. I don't have any rights to what you've shared. Only you can bring that up

again. And boys understand it and they observe it as a matter of honor. And as really as a matter of, you know, you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours. We're in this together, you know? Yeah. It's amazing that that's been upheld for so, especially given the last five years of technology. Yep. Yeah. I think they really understand that if that were to be in question, the whole opportunity would be lost. Right. And they value it so much. And it's in their self-interest to preserve that. Yeah.

The other thing that tends to happen with technology while we're on that topic is, you know, you were talking about the importance of empathy. And, you know, over the years, I've had a chance to see some of the research on what happens to empathy when a lot of our conversations and relationships have a screen between us, and it's not a good thing. Have you seen that or have you done research?

How do you see that playing out in the context of how boys do and don't relate and develop? Yeah. So what I would agree with you about is that boys, kids today, your son or your daughter, they are living in a digital world that is part of the architecture of the boyhood that we've created. Our video games and our pornographic videos and our social media platforms have created an architecture that our children inhabit. And the features of that architecture are not ones that are being designed by human development specialists. So that, you know, in this peer counseling program, for example, I cover the topic of pornography. And I ask the boys, just a show of hands, how many of you access pornography? Everybody raises their hand. How many of you, you know, what age did you begin accessing it? 12 years old.

And does it have an effect on you? Hands go up. Is it a positive effect or a negative effect? They know it's a negative effect. They talk openly about the ways that it shapes, not just their expectations about sexuality, but about their expectations about bodies, including their own body. The growing self-consciousness of boys about their bodies is one of the ways in which I think this generation is being affected by this technology. So, you know, I think that I see a lot of boys, you know, what we know about, for example, the gamer stereotype and the idea that boys have, you know, that this is a space that's built for them. And one of the, I'm about to become involved in a project called a boyhood campaign launched by an NGO in DC that's going to analyze the images of the messages that boys are getting from the images about boys and girls in video games and other digital media.

I think what we'll find is that the stereotypes are remarkable. Yeah, I think we're in a time where also, I feel like we're in a time with all of this where there are more questions than answers right now. And things are moving so quickly. It's like, I think fundamental human nature hasn't really changed. But like you said, the things that, you know, whether it's porn or texting or Instagram, you know, the technology is being designed by people who are really good technologists who build, you know, to essentially reinforce addictive behavior. Yeah, I would agree with that.

And that can have some not great results there. Well, here's the good news. Yeah. I think that, and you know- I'm glad there's good news. No, I feel like there's a lot of alarm out there in the parent community about the impact of technology on our kids

to a point where I think parents are almost paranoid. You know, and I think we correctly perceive that we've lost a certain measure of control and that things are not necessarily going in a good direction. I agree with all of that. And yet I think the alarmism is, I think it's misleading. You know, one of my clinical specialties is dependency treatment, addiction treatment. And what I know from, you know, being steeped in that world, in the research and the treatment fields, is that disconnection precedes addiction. So if you want to strengthen your daughter,

your son against the pull of these very addictive technologies, it's really the same general direction as helping strengthen them against peer culture generally or other addictive agents like alcohol or exploitative sex. The thing to do is to deepen your connection to them yourself. I mean, what I say is if you want your son to hold on to himself, hold on to them yourself? That's powerful. You know, I think that the stronger the connection, the more your child is rooted in

a sense of being connected, a relational anchor, the more accountable they're going to feel, the more influence they're going to feel, the more they're going to feel known and loved, and be less pulled by those kinds of addictive seductions. It seems like everything keeps circling back to that. Well, there's a reason. The subtitle of my book is The Power of Connections with All Good Men. Yeah. It's interesting, too, for me to see what's happening now for adult men, which is that I'm seeing increasingly men's groups at scale, where the focus isn't bowling,

the focus isn't, it's not a league. It's not about getting together to do X, Y, or Z activity. It's about getting together in a safe space to talk about what it is to be a man in the world today and ask questions that you're terrified to ask in public. And stand there in your own feelings, your own vulnerability, your own ignorance, your own power, your own assumptions, your own beliefs, and be able to share that and explore. And it's interesting how I am seeing groups like that more and more these days. And I almost wonder whether that is now a blend of what's happening in the population of men realizing like, wow, what got us here ain't going to get us there. We all need to really reexamine who we are, how we behave, the decisions we make, and how we stand in our identities. And also realizing simultaneously we don't necessarily feel like we have a safe place to do this. And then yearning for and creating these spaces.

So it's interesting to see that happen as well. Some of the research that's been really interesting to me, more good news, is that men now, younger men now, care more about their mental health than their physical health. I think young men get it. I mean, I know that's true for these 18, 16, 17, 18-year-olds that I'm seeing in this high school program. They understand that being at peace with themselves makes a happier life, and they want that. I think that's the kind of opportunity we're creating in this disruption that we're going through. You know, traditional masculinity was called out, has been disrupted, and the blind, you know, intergenerational reproduction has sort of been interrupted. And we're in a position where we're getting to reinvent boyhood. And I think one

of the ways we're reinventing it is to recognize boys as emotional, relational creatures and providing for it. And they're claiming the right for that. Yeah. That is more good news. Yeah, I think so. Feels like a good place for us to come full circle. So maybe this is a good life project if I offer up the phrase to live a good life. What comes up?

I think that I would just have to conclude with what I said before, that the privilege of loving a boy involves knowing him and keeping him close. Not requiring him to fit himself to our wheelhouse, but following his lead and going where his mind goes, really backing him to live large. Thank you. Thank you so much for listening. And thanks also to our fantastic sponsors who help make this show possible.

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Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is?

You're going to die. Don't shoot him, we need him. Y'all need a pilot? Flight Risk. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping.

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