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THE SPITTIN' IMAGE
We
are hearing a lot lately about how important it is
for children to have dads -- especially boys. Women, it is said,
cannot raise a boy properly.
Two books with opposing viewpoints delineate how our culture has defined men and set up traditions and taboos that are passed on from generation to generation.
One takes the orthodox viewpoint.
Family therapist Michael Gurian, in his book, A Fine Young Man claims that boys naturally start to move away from mothers about the age of 5 or 6 and strongly at the ages of 10 to 12.
He believes that boy's brains are "hard-wired" to move them to the world of men and that is the way it should be. His solution for raising healthy boys involves "increasing the presence of men and decreasing the presence of women."
It is men who teach boys how to channel male energy. Connecting with dads is how they learn male emotionality, he insists.
William Pollack, a psychologist differs.
He
writes: "Mothers are encouraged to separate from their sons, and the
act of forced separation is so common that it is generally considered to
be 'normal'.
"But I have come to understand that this forcing of early separation is so acutely hurtful to boys that it can only be called a trauma -- an emotional blow of damaging proportions."
In his book, Real Boys: Rescuing Our Sons From the Myths of Boyhood, he argues that though both parents are vital, the men who had good relationships with their mothers through adolescence are healthier physically and psychologically than those who did not.
These men are the opposite of "Mamma's boys" that some parents fear creating.
He credits moms and the world of women for teaching boys how to escape the myths of the macho male.
"Moms break the gender straitjacket of boys. You cannot have too much mom." Their influence, he declares, is helping to create the kind of boys who can relate to the girls of today. He looks ahead to when women and men of the 21st century do NOT come from the separate planets, Venus and Mars.
Self defined women can relate to his thesis. We continually observe how the male dominated culture and its firmly held, often dangerous and stupid traditions separate women and men.
We may note how insidiously these harmful concepts are buried in our customs and in our day to day life, but some always continue to escape us, and we cannot escape them.
Right now we are hearing news of or experiencing the devastation of two hurricanes, both with women's names.
When men first started naming these storms, they called them by women's names because in their view they represented how women were violent, dangerous and unpredictable. Female names and pronouns are often used to designate objects in our culture.
A few years ago as our movement grew, women protested, and so men's names were alternated with women's names for hurricanes. This was but a Band-aid covering over a mortal wound since the underlying attitude did not changed.
Alternating male names with female names for these storms did not change the cultural construct of woman as object. Almost all of the announcers on radio or TV, female or male, have referred to HURRICANES, Bonnie and Danielle, as "SHE" or "HER."
Listen when a hurricane named for a male approaches the coast and becomes a menace. Whether it is a Tom, Dick or a Harry, it is an IT. An inanimate object. It is never referred to as HE.
Then there is our friend, Bob, who recently told us that he had left his toddler son off at his folks for a weekend visit.
When he returned to pick Charlie up, Grampa proudly had the child demonstrate what Grampa had taught him -- how to spit.
Bob, a 21st century dad, was disgusted and questioned why he had taught this to the child. "You didn't teach your other grandchildren, Linda and Jean to spit, why did you teach Charlie?"
"Why?" said Grampa, "Because he's a boy."
While spitting may be a relatively innocuous rite of male passage (unless one is trying to watch a ballgame without barffing), it serves to show the almost limitless, idiotic barriers that our culture puts up between the genders. Incredibly fantastic as it seems, girls can and do spit.
We also get dirty, climb trees and grow up to be women in control of ourselves. We are strong, brave and CONSTRUCTIVE, but not enough of us are yet tuned in to the constant deleterious effects of a society that works to diminish us and our humanness.
1998-036
Copyright 1998 Renee T. Louise and Ruth M. Sprague, Ph.D. These articles may be republished for noncommercial use only, provided that they are copied intact, and that this copyright notice is attached. Address all queries to: twanda@together.net.
G e n d e r G a p p e r s T M
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"hearing a lot lately"
For the popular psychobabble and the public discussion on this issue, see MenMag on Blankenhorn (author of Fatherless America.) For the "unpopular" opinion, pointing out some of the flaws in the arguments decrying the rise of "single mother households," see liznotes on Wade Horn's National Fatherhood Initiative. For a (WARNING: NOT PLEASANT) look at the less-than-seemly political side of these not-necessarily-academic debates, see The Father's Rights Movement: In Their Own Words, and also see liznotes, generally, on family law politics in the United States.