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Ignoring boys' emotional needs fuels public health risks

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Re: Ignoring boys' emotional needs fuels public health risks

#91

Post by version_five »

Natsu wrote: post #76
hkt wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally. When my kid was young and I was out with him the other parents (invariably women) treated me as an oddity and assumed I would be incompetent. Yet, many don't like the fact they're saddled with the majority of childrearing. Dating is much the same: the majority of the hetero/bi female dating pool selects in favour of features that are often red flags for toxic masculinity. This gets better as one gets older,…

>> I think a lot of people who don't see themselves as "biased" still carry a lot of bias when it comes to gender, and it has an impact. ... > toxic masculinity Maybe we could make progress by tabooing words that frame being male as a bad thing?

I found the post you replied to very incongruous, because as I read it started with the idea that men are casually discriminated against (responding to the "men suck" thing) and then skewed into something that may be an issue but is completely in a different spirit (men defying stereotypes by being primary child carers) and then committed exactly the same offence the original post was pointing out with "toxic masculinity". It's almost like a weird simultaneous attempt to find victimhood while still toeing the "men bad" line.

Re: Ignoring boys' emotional needs fuels public health risks

#92

Post by underlipton »

jl6 wrote: post #11

> New research shows that when fathers are present and emotionally invested in children’s lives, they are more likely to develop a stronger sense of self-worth and excel in everything from school to relationships. Regardless of the debate on how tough (or not) love should be, the absent fathers issue seems like something concrete and impactful that we should be trying to address.

Without evidence, I'll suggest that this is an oversimplification. In a model where boys require masculine modeling from older, adult figures, "absent fathers" are most an issue when a boy's regularly-accessible social unit has been whittled down to the nuclear family. That seems to be a crisis in-and-of-itself. When I look at socially-successful men, they often have had multiple older men in their lives to model themselves after - usually grandparents, uncles, teachers, etc., on top of their father (or in lieu of). This is two-fold redundant, in creating fallbacks for both a central father figure and in skills or traits which that figure may lack.

I think this is important because the "absent father" is often used as an excuse, when it rather represents the last breached line in a long list of failures of society, which have ripped boys from the men who would look after them.

(I admit that there's likely some who won't like hearing this, as it cuts against the grievances of those who find pride in specific fatherhood ("I will raise MY child.") and see society's manner, or the dissolving of the nuclear family into a larger community unit, as working against that.)

Re: Ignoring boys' emotional needs fuels public health risks

#93

Post by fatherlessthrow »

voldacar wrote: post #49
rr808 wrote: post #31

Its interesting how in Ukraine and Russia and countries which really need soldiers and heavy security how males are treated. It seems in Western comfortable countries there isn't any advantage in being male, women can do everything just fine. Until someone invades, then everyone wants the thugs to come out and do their thing.

How are men treated there? I'm not sure what your point is. Most of us haven't lived in Ukraine or Russia.

Men have a place. They’re necessary for the continuing existence of Ukrainian society, and the nation itself. Women know what a good man is, and search it out — and so if you are a good man, you will be fine on that front. You can be terribly un-ideal by modern sensibilities, but if you are a reliable man that can provide for his woman, and the family — you have done your job.

The corollary is that if you do not fit into the men “mold,” you will not prosper. Most men in the Western countries would not have a place in Ukraine or any slavic country (except as an ATM) — because the values needed to be internalized are at odds with more polite societies.

This is true in much of Russia outside Moscow, St. Petersburg, etc. (the more metropolitan and “Western decadent” parts of Russia).

Re: Ignoring boys' emotional needs fuels public health risks

#94

Post by thriftwy »

908B64B197 wrote: post #18
rich_sasha wrote: post #12

My impression is, men are stuck in a world where they are told not to be men. Toxic masculinity is perhaps a thing, but boys are told endlessly how they shouldn't behave and how their nature is flawed. Girls on the other hand, all is well.

With shrinking recess time and PE disappearing from some schools, boys with normal needs for physical activities are increasingly labelled as "sick" and medicalized for completely normal behavior by the taxpayer funded school system. Energy has to go somewhere so it ends up manifesting itself in behaviors that are deemed "disruptive" (really, not sitting still and being unable to concentrate on tasks). That's the beg…

People seem to disregard that a disproportionally large part of autism spectrum is also made up by boys.

Nothing would make me more miserable than shoving PE up my throat on account that I got to 'need' it. It was the worst part of my school and uni days, which in turn was the worst part of my life, period.

The assumption that boys are all extroverted, physically active and agressive is a big part of the problem.

Re: Ignoring boys' emotional needs fuels public health risks

#95

Post by ineedasername »

This plays out at all levels. I felt extremely insulted just a few days ago when my youngest’s preschool held a gathering to celebrate their “graduation” to pre-school.

At least 4 times mothers were called on to step forward— once to have a song sung to them, another to receive a flower, etc. Fathers were not mentioned at all.

This prompted me to look around, get a rough sense of the distribution… Counting the kids & counting the male attendees, I can’t say for sure that all were fathers but it roughly balanced the # of kids.

Re: Ignoring boys' emotional needs fuels public health risks

#96

Post by number6 »

j-bos wrote: post #86
icegreentea2 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Emotion support is showing loving, care and/or empathy. Mentorship and emotional support can have significant overlap.

Is that how it was defined in the article?

No you should buy the book

Re: Ignoring boys' emotional needs fuels public health risks

#97

Post by Viliam1234 »

KptMarchewa wrote: post #82
michaelt wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Girls on the other hand, all is well. Girls, on the other hand, get told their body is flawed. Gotta constantly be on a diet, and spend like an hour a day on beauty stuff. We are all victims of society.

Do you think millions of gym rats are thinking something different? I think it's weird that you present this as feminine problem when it's men who on average participate in more sports.

Surprised to see this downvoted. Both men and women are told that their bodies are wrong. Maybe using different words, but still.

That said, gym and sports (typically recommended to men) seem healthier to me than starving (typically recommended to women).

Re: Ignoring boys' emotional needs fuels public health risks

#98

Post by Vt71fcAqt7 »

leodler wrote: post #14
xdennis wrote: post #7

[flagged]

It's unfortunate that you're (willfully?) uninformed to such a degree that you perceive these passages as slighting your identity or something, but what they're saying isn't controversial scientifically.

The quoted paper in the article is from a psychiatrist with a PhD in philosophy debating to himslef whether "maleness is a genetic disorder." He spends the whole article talking about how boys get sick more often than girls, which is only true until puberty at which point the opposite is true. He then shifts to life expectancy and suicide. So if we define being "fragile" as "shorter life excpectany" then "the human male is, on most measures, more vulnerable than the female," as he says. By all sensible messures, however, the claim is otherwise false. For example, "the prevalence of major depressive episode was higher among adult females (10.5%) compared to males (6.2%)"[0]. Of course, males are also stronger than females.

[0]https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/major-depression

Re: Ignoring boys' emotional needs fuels public health risks

#99

Post by motohagiography »

fatherlessthrow wrote: post #80
motohagiography wrote: post #75

We don't need a critical theory of boyhood, we just need to stop institutionally empowering people who hate their dads. I know many good men, and the defining characteristic of every single one of them is that regardless of who their father was, they accept him, and by extension they accept themselves. If you are still mad at him or have contempt for him, I recommend considering how it's manifesting in your beliefs a…

Provocative notion, but I agree. n = 1 : no father, but had some stabilizing male influences in my formative years. People without good enough “father figures” turn out emotionally volatile. I see it in myself, and I see it in others. Sometimes, emotions should be observed and not yielded to. “Toxic masculinity” is just taking this to the extreme of disregarding all emotions. “Toxic femininity” is just yielding to al…

"Toxic mascilinity" is a canard, and unless that father figure was an actual man respected by other men, they were probably just in search of a hit of narcissistic supply (or worse) from a child in need. Some agony aunt of whatever sex that's always around when the chips are down because it makes them feel needed is a just another predator.

The best way to raise boys is to become a good man.

Re: Ignoring boys' emotional needs fuels public health risks

#100

Post by Viliam1234 »

rubicon33 wrote: post #25
rich_sasha wrote: post #12

My impression is, men are stuck in a world where they are told not to be men. Toxic masculinity is perhaps a thing, but boys are told endlessly how they shouldn't behave and how their nature is flawed. Girls on the other hand, all is well.

I think it actually is far deeper than that. I believe our entire school system is setup to offer success to women, and failure to boys. Take as one point the fact that boys brains develop slower and later into life than women. Should then boys be competing against women of the same age given what we know? Take as another point the decline in physical activity in schools and the reduction is recess time. Does this ne…

> Should then boys be competing against women of the same age given what we know?

In a perfect world, education would not be a competition at all. Everyone would proceed at their own pace, differently in different subjects.

And maybe at the end, where would still be a certification of people who mastered something versus people who didn't. But we would not freak out so much about whether someone understood something e.g. at the age of 12, instead of 13 or 14. The important thing should be that at some age they did.

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