I recently read BoyMom: Reimagining Boyhood in the Age of Impossible Masculinity by Ruth Whippman, a journalist and mom of three boys who wrestles with her own fears, frustrations, and biases as an avowed feminist raising boys in a world with conflicting views of modern masculinity.
As the father of two young boys myself, I found the book deeply relatable, validating, challenging, and illuminating. It facilitated a lot of great discussions with my wife as we try to envision a better, more wholehearted life for our wild and wonderful boys.
Here are some random thoughts and takeaways.
The ‘buddy’ system
Whippman shares an anecdote of her preschooler’s male teacher welcoming students into the classroom, greeting the girls with nicknames like “sweetheart” but the boys with “buddy.” It’s such a small thing, but it’s an example of how language can create emotional distance with boys compared to girls from a very early age, and set an expectation for which terms of endearment are acceptable for each gender.
After reading that, I realized I too call our 5 year old “buddy” (and our 1 year old “mister”) almost unconsciously. So I’ve resolved to start training myself to use different nicknames that aren’t gendered (Bun and Muffin) so that they know they’re much more than my buddies.
Breaking the wheel
A key point Whippman makes is that the movement to counteract “toxic” masculinity with more positive alternatives like “healthy” or “aspirational” masculinity is, though well-intentioned, a kind of half-measure that still perpetuates the expectation of fulfilling prescribed masculine ideals. Instead:
Boys don’t need more masculinity, but freedom from that paradigm; they need permission to be fully human without the pressure to conform to oppressive masculine norms.
This idea reminded me of the Daenerys Targaryen line in Game of Thrones: “I’m not going to stop the wheel—I’m going to break the wheel.”
Stopping the wheel isn’t enough, because it can always be restarted or rebranded using the same structure. We need to break it altogether and offer alternate modes of transportation, so to speak.
Too much of a good thing
There’s a book called Too Much of a Good Thing: How Four Key Survival Traits Are Now Killing Us by Lee Goodman, and it lays out why some of humanity’s behaviors and biological functions helped us thrive as hunter-gatherers but are detrimental for the sedentary office workers we’ve become:
- Overeating was good when every calorie mattered, but now causes obesity.
- Preferring salty foods helped retain water, but now causes high blood pressure and heart disease.
- Blood-clotting saved us from bleeding to death from injuries, but now can cause heart attacks and strokes.
- Hyper-vigilance and aggression saved us from predators and enemies, but now make us destructive to others and ourselves.
I think about gender in a similar way. Whatever combination of nature and nurture that modern masculinity and femininity entail, they contain evolutionary adaptations developed over tens of thousands of years. That’s not something you can fundamentally alter or remove overnight. (As E.O. Wilson wrote: “The real problem of humanity is we have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and god-like technologies.”)
What are the good and useful elements of masculinity that helped us survive and evolve as a species? Which of those elements can still be used for good today? And which are now too much and have become detrimental—to both men and women? How we answer those questions will determine what masculinity will look like for current and future generations.
