Why the war on masculinity is a crying shame

Psychologists say our sons should be encouraged to blub more. Nonsense, says a former school principal – what they really need is manly role models

AS A boy growing up during the 1960s, my role models were men with noble qualities: bravery, moral courage and sporting prowess.

We didn’t analyse it at the time but, looking back, I can see that it was the many layers to these men’s masculinity that appealed to us growing up.

Men such as our heroes weren’t just strong and tough. It was the way their sense of honour and academic fervour married with more obvious male attributes that made us want to be like them.

Not so today, though, when many of the attributes I grew up admiring aren’t just frowned upon — they’re being held up as toxic.

According to the American Psychological Association (APA), male traits such as stoicism, competitiveness and physical strength are thought to be behind the high incidence of violence, depression and suicide among men.

Releasing its first official guidelines on how to treat men and boys, the APA argued that ‘traditional masculinity ideology’ pushes males towards ‘antifemininity’. It claimed this forces them to mask the appearance of weakness, while encouraging risk-taking, violence and aggression to solve problems.

It warned this goes on to limit men’s psychological development, with dire consequences for their mental and physical health.

It would seem, then, that men have become victims of their own masculinity.

SO, WHAT is the answer? According to these psychologists, boys should be encouraged to cry more. That way, their masculinity will pose less of a threat to their health and mental wellbeing.

In other words, they’re saying that we need somehow to teach them to be less male.

I personally baulk at the idea of encouraging half the population to walk around thinking that they’re intrinsically ‘bad’, which is one of the potential effects of this report. We certainly wouldn’t dream of suggesting that girls are the architects of their own mental health issues in such an uncompromising way.

So what makes it OK if boys receive this message?

That’s not to say our boys aren’t struggling. You only have to compare them statistically to their high-achieving female counterparts to see that they are. Boys trail behind girls at primary and secondary school, where their exam results are relatively poor.

On full-time courses in Irish universities, women marginally outnumber men at undergraduate level (51 per cent to 49 per cent) but that grows to a 55 per cent to 45 per cent gap at postgraduate level. Of those young men who do study for a degree, high numbers drop out before they graduate. Suicide rates among male students are far higher than for young women.

Men are also twice as likely to become alcoholic or drug- dependent and 40 per cent more likely to develop the mental health condition schizophrenia. Meanwhile, of the adult children who have yet to leave home, 58.6 per cent are men.

So our boys and young men do appear to have plenty to weep over, with too many failing to reach their potential during education or properly launch themselves into adult life.

And this is happening across the social spectrum, no matter how loving or privileged their backgrounds happen to be.

But, having spent huge swathes of my professional life watching male students chart their various courses into adulthood, I’m certain that handing them a box of tissues and urging them to cry about it isn’t a solution.

During my 35-year teaching career — at top private schools — I’ve observed masculinity as being a highly complicated and deeply nuanced state of being.

I’ve taught sensitive boys with feminine traits, tough types whose love of the arts belied their vigour on the rugby pitch, and alpha males whose driving force was to be top dog wherever they went. Their propensity to take risks and a cavalier approach to homework deadlines seems to cross that whole spectrum, testing my patience on many occasions.

But I can’t say their reluctance to cry on demand seemed much of an issue to me. In fact, I’d say the problems modern boys face aren’t down to not crying enough — more that they’re missing out on strong role models such as the ones I looked up to as the idea of manliness starts to wither away.

Reports like this only further emasculate the male ideal.

BESIDES, I don’t see that their lives are lacking in feminine influence at all. Quite the contrary: single mothers now raise about a third of all boys, while 79 per cent of teachers are female. Surely this makes their need for strong male role models more, rather than less.

My heroes were great athletes with sharp minds but, today, success in sport and academia rarely go hand in hand. Instead, Premier League footballers are admired as much for their millionaire lifestyles as their skills on the pitch — how many even consider university? Jobs that require the physicality men possess are in short supply.

A boy is more likely to think he’ll be able to provide for the future by larking around on YouTube than by taking on a role that would get his hands dirty.

Meanwhile, our youthful role models have been succeeded as a role model by TV’s perennial loser Homer Simpson, while the imbecilic cartoon character Daddy Pig (father of Peppa) is how popular media portrays a man’s role in the family to children from the earliest age.

There’s also a problem with parents. Over the past 40 years, authority has been transferred from them to children and it is boys who are paying the price. Fathers want to be friends with their sons, perhaps losing sight of the fact that they don’t need any more pals — they just need a dad they respect.

Time and again, I’ve talked to parents about the importance of controlling their sons’ internet access.

‘But how can I stop him?’ has, too often, been their exasperating reply. Telling them to ‘just take it away from him’ is often met with disbelief.

Our boys are struggling and these are the issues feeding it, which we need to address, rather than simply branding masculine traits ‘toxic’ and getting the hankies out.

All that does is to set young men up for a sense of identity crisis, while telling them they’ve failed before they’ve even started. If society wants something to weep about, that surely is it.