One Minute Read: How We Fail Our Sons
It isn’t their gentle ways that hurts our sons, it’s our fear.
As parents, we teach our boys to be emotionally tough because we know that a boy who projects sensitivity or too many emotions will become a target. We suppress our sons’ emotional expression out of fear for their safety.
And fathers? We know what’s waiting for our little sons out there. Because the same thing was waiting for us.
So, we set them up to fail in life by teaching them to fly below the radar, to conform, to align themselves with the bullying, emotionally tough culture of American manhood. They go on to perform traditional manhood just fine.
What our sons fail to be able to do is create and sustain a circle of strong friendships. They succeed at marriage maybe, but not at creating a network of authentic, meaningful relationships with other men. Instead, their friendships are surface level. They are about proximity. There is little love in them.
Because “real men” never learn how to do that.
And so, our sons end up falling prey to our uniquely American epidemic of loneliness which impacts 42 million Americans age 45+.
Chronic loneliness has a health impact equivalent to smoking.
Sooner or later, it kills them.
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Read more by Mark Greene:
Why Do We Murder the Beautiful Friendships of Boys?
Explore more of Mark Greene’s work at RemakingManhood.com or join the conversations at our Remaking Manhood page on Facebook.
Want to raise sons who can create and sustain lasting joyful relationships? Get The Relational Book for Parenting, by Mark Greene and Dr. Saliha Bava.
The Relational Book for Parenting uses comics, fables, articles, and games to help families’ grow their relationship superpowers in the daily back and forth of parenting. It’s a joyful, accessible, parent-friendly cure for what ails our isolating culture, helping us to raise a generation of young people better able to connect, collaborate and innovate across differences. The book is available here: http://a.co/ej1kAgi
Here’s a two minute video on The Relational Book for Parenting. Have a look! See more of what’s inside our book at ThinkPlayPartners.com.
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Get a powerful collection of Mark Greene’s articles in his book REMAKING MANHOOD–Available now at Amazon.
