IT’S HIGH TIME TO SHAKE UP INFLUENCE OF OLD BOYS CLUB
Author pins emotional repression as the No. 1 problem facing boys
Navigating parenthood at a time when masculinity is being redefined can be a mystifying experience for parents of boys. In Michael Reist’s new book, Raising Emotionally Healthy Boys, the Caledon-based educator seeks to help parents and teachers understand boys, accommodate boys’ needs and encourage them to express their feelings.
What should parents avoid doing?
My central thesis is that the No. 1 problem affecting males today is emotional repression. And the question is when does this repression begin? When boys enter school, the first thing they experience is a shutdown of their boy energy, their need for movement and space. The whole world tells them that there’s something wrong with them. By Grade 3 they realize this isn’t working for me, I’m not welcome here. My energy is a problem. My main message, really, is to teachers I suppose when it comes to entering school: We need to do better at accommodating boy energy in school and modifying the environment of school to be more boy-friendly.
You talk about us, as a society, coming to the end of thousands of years of patriarchy. What do you mean by that?
Well, the biggest revolution that we have experienced in my lifetime is feminism and feminism has totally changed the world. This history of western civilization is basically the history of patriarchy where men ruled. Since the 1960s, that has completely changed and the whole dynamic of society, the whole power structure of society, has changed. This is a fantastic thing. But women have had incredible role models in feminism.
On the male side, there’s been absolutely nothing equivalent to that. Young boys and men are going to have to retool to fit themselves into this new economy which is about language, which is about connection, which is about relationships. To be a man is no longer to be silent and strong and the breadwinner. That world has passed away.
How should we help retool boys for the future?
It all comes back to modelling. Boys need men who are comfortable with their emotions. We’ve got to get away from the idea of the stupid, irresponsible male — you get the Charlie Sheen (character on Two and a Half Men) . . . who’s only interested in sex and that becomes the ha-ha-ha image of masculinity.
Are you suggesting parents should sign their kids up for art lessons?
It sounds frivolous. But signing girls up for hockey, that doesn’t sound stupid. We really have a problem with boys with the arts, with the so-called soft-skills. Creative writing, discussion groups — anything that involves expression of the self — the arts includes drama, dance, singing, all of those things (are positive).
Does one parent typically have more of an impact on boys’ emotional health? Mom versus dad?
Mother is still generally the primary caregiver in the early years. Fathers have to increase their role. At puberty, the boy needs a model of what it is he’s going to become. One of the reasons we have these man-boys — playing video games while the wife runs the house — is because of the lack of initiation into positive male manhood. It’s an essential element of emotional health for males to have male role models showing them what positive manhood is.
When you say, “Men are as much the victims of patriarchy as women are,” what do you mean?
Men are crushed by the rat race of patriarchy. Their lives are so damaged by the competitive patriarchal world of oneupmanship, the Donald Trump world of, “Take care of yourself, forget about the rest.”
It doesn’t serve women, nor does it serve men. It serves the bullies. Let’s change the whole system. Don’t just come in here and join the old boys club — let’s change the club.