REBELS WITH A CAUSE

The importance of nurturing connection in boys.

Way, a professor of developmental psychology and the author of Deep Secrets, draws on considerable research, including her own longitudinal studies into the lives of boys, to show how society’s construction of “boy culture” undermines their well-being. That culture, she writes, “is rooted in ideologies that intersect with one another, including but not limited to patriarchy, capitalism, white supremacy, antisemitism, and Islamophobia.” As boys grow up, they learn that “soft” qualities, such as “vulnerability, dependency, sensitivity, feeling,” are associated with the feminine, while “stoicism, independence, assertiveness, thinking” are considered male. The author shows how this insistent binary gets in the way of fulfilling friendships. The early- to mid-adolescent boys she studied valued friendships, which were characterized by trust and involved sharing secrets and problems. However, by late adolescence, holding onto or finding male friends became a struggle. Although boys know that friendships are crucial for their mental health, they are indoctrinated into believing that “it’s not ‘normal’ for boys to want or have such relationships,” and they learn that showing emotion is considered unmanly. Boys at this stage, writes the author, become increasingly isolated, depressed, and angry, in some cases leading them to suicide or even homicide. Way also demonstrates how the media abets these feelings of loneliness and disconnection. She suggests that “listening with curiosity” is a crucial first step to addressing the crisis of connection in all settings: the workplace, the classroom, and the home. “Nurturing our relational and emotional intelligence,” she writes, is “necessary to disrupt a culture that brings out the worst in us and makes us treat ourselves and one another poorly and sometimes even makes us kill ourselves and/or kill each other.”

A thoughtful, well-informed look at contemporary boy culture and its many inherent problems.