Worried Books about Youth

 Jutta Chorus,
 Translated from NRC 16 July 1999

Since the 60s, girls and women have started an advance in society. 
For boys, however, life has become much more difficult. 
They now have not only to show their muscles, but also speak about their feelings.
But with whom?
US therapists try to decrease the emotional stress of the suppressed boy.

Willuam Pollack: Real Boys; Rescuing Our Sons from the Myths of Boyhood. Random House, 398 blz. Fl 59,95. De Nederlandse vertaling verschijnt in september bij Kosmos.

Dan Kindlon en Michael Thompson: Raising Cain; Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys. Ballantine Books.

Steve Biddulph, Raising Boys; Finch Publishing, Australia, 1997.

Centraal Bureau voor de Statistiek: Jeugd 1999. Cijfers en feiten. Divisie Kwartaire Sector en leefsituatie. 

[National Office for Statistics: Youth 1999, Figures and Facts. The Netherlands]

[...] During the last year, 38 schools in the USA are evacuated. In two cases, police arrested heavily armed students. 

Violence by and among youth has lead to heated discussion and confusion in media and in politics. In talk shows and in the House of Representatives people discuss about 'the hidden life of [North-]American teenagers'. [...]

"I saw my son at least once each week", told a mother of a gun-armed adolescent last month to Oprah Winfrey. "But I never have had the impression that he was unhappy or not content. After the murder, he simply went to the freezer for a coke."

It always concerns boys. What is wrong with these chaps? About this question, a stream of popular-scientific publications appeared in the USA. [...]

There is a market for such books. Last week, when clinical psychologist William Pollack signed his bestseller  Real boys; Rescuinig our sons from the Myths of Boyhood in New York in Barnes & Noble's bookstore, there was a very long queue waiting on Fifth Avenue.

These books from the USA are quite accessible and reader-friendly. The authors don't hesitate to draw conclusions about the whole society from their experience in their therapy rooms. In contrast, the Dutch psychological literature about the adolescents' problems are more academic in comparison with those self-help books. They correctly obey the demands of the empirical science, but are less usable for patents who worry about their son who entrenches himself on his boy's room. 

Learning [and other] problems

Pollack says in Real Boys that all US boys are in a crisis, even if one may not conclude that from their behavior. He bases his statement on alarming hard figures. Boys have twice as much learning problems as girls, and far more than half of them get extra lessons. Boys show ten times more than girls hyper-activity. Suicide by boys is four times that of girls. 

The expectations of boys concerning their future appear to be much lower than those of girls. Research of the US Department of Education found that much less boys than girls plan to continue their education after school. 

According to Pollack, the 'boys' crisis' is not amazing. In modern after-war society, girls have won much self-confidence, but boys more often wrestle with the question what is a man? Boys are confronted with contradictory claims: 

Boys have to respect women who are now present at all fields that once have been the typical domains for men. This pressure causes an emotional split: they have to accept their new status as the tamed macho, but without loosing their masculinity. Pollack:

"It is not impossible to be masculine and empathic, strong and vulnerable, bit is still is quite difficult."

[...] Girls manifest themselves everywhere stronger than before, boys have been forced into the defensive. Girls speak loudly in classes, Pollack observed, while boys hide their desire for knowledge. 

"They use a mask and do everything to look not interested. Being smart isn't cool."

Behind that mask, a depression might develop, says Pollack. [...]

In the Netherlands, the situation of boys is less alarming than in the US. Here, we have no bombs at school. We only have separate swimming hours for boys and girls in some swimming pools, after a girl was raped by a young boy. 

Nevertheless, Dutch data show the same tendency as in the US is observed. Recently, the National Office for Statistics found that girls succeed twice as much as boys at high school. Boys are six times more suspected of crimes. Suicide happens three times more by boys than by girls. One third of the boys at high school labels themselves as heavy alcohol drinkers. 

Thus, also in the Netherlands, people speak about a 'boys' crisis'. [...]

According to the US boys-psychologists, society does not understand the internal conflict the boys have nowadays. This is a great problem, because the boys themselves are not able to solve the problem themselves. They only have learned to hide their feelings behind a sturdy Boys' Code that society demands from them since ages ago. Boys are factually emotional illiterates. [...]

On turn, girls are better equipped to solve personal crises. Also, girls are treated far more softly. [...]

About the US education, Pollack states that primary schools as well as high schools respond better to the needs of girls than of those boys. Teachers use to correct the boys, and to listen to the girls. Girls are easier in the classroom: they pay more attention and they work more easily independent. Boys prefer action. 

Segregation

How should we go on with the boys? For some of them, segregation seems the answer, not only in the swimming pool. Pollack pleas for separate schools for boys - with the same arguments in earlier days has been pleaded for girls' schools. 

"In a single-sex class, a constructive atmosphere can develop, which results in better achievement. As son as there are girls in the neighborhood, boys become standoffish and macho-like." 

The US [? Australian ?] family therapist Steven Biddulph blames the problem of the boys to the parents. They should better lead them through the phase of the eruption of testosterone around the age of fourteen. in his book Raising Boys, he categorically states:

"Alcohol and drug use, as well as criminal behavior among adolescent boys occur because we have found no ways to lead their desires for fame and heroism in the right ways. "

Thus, their impulses are quite natural, but they have to be correctly canalized. 

modern parents fail in this aspect, but especially the man does. he blames the modern fathers to give too little attention to their offspring. "You should fight to be a good father for your children", he says in macho style. Lack of attention [of the father] results in exaggerated substitute masculine behavior of the son. 

Biddulph pleas in his book to search the help of a mentor, an extra-familial man, who is able to carefully guide the pubertal son. [...]

Wild Boys

Raising Boys has the spirit of the "Wild Man Movement", an association from the 80s, which tried to fathom the soft characteristics of men by more or less primitive rituals and esoteric meditation practices. It is a kind of therapeutic crisis resolving, which is in the 90s has been followed by its counterpart, The New Lad,  recently observed in the UK by De Volkskrant [a Dutch newspaper].

The New Lad goes to soccer with his friends, he burps and farts in the pub, and he merely reads magazines about breasts, beer and soccer. They want to be arrogant and jocular man, averse to the image of the soft and neat caring father. For them, the advance of the women and the cultivating in the male feelings seems to have reached the turning point: these boys refuse to be the ideal modern man. at the same time, their pose is a perfect sign telling how drastic reality has been changed - and this reality does not go away. [...]

But also in this new culture, a segregation of gender gives a chance. Boys must have more opportunity to identify with man, as recently is said by a secondary school teacher in the Dutch [educational] magazine J/M [ B(oy) / G(irl) ].

Because of that, it is a problem that there is a lack of male teachers. Among each other, boys feel their ancient force. Remarkably enough, much boys appeared to be delighted with their boys' hours in the swimming pools. Now they at least could go their own way. Moreover, the queues at the slide and the diving board were considerably shorter.

It might be a solution [...]