There’s a tearing inside me when I see my older son well up with tears in front of his peers, or as a result of a loss or mistake. The internal war is between what I know and believe is best for him, which is to let him cry and comfort him and help guide him through the sadness to resolution, or to tell him to be strong and stop crying.
Now, I know it’s bad to tell him to stop crying, but as his mom, I want to make his life somewhat easier and I can’t help but worry about him being teased or even indulging his emotions too much. I would worry about the exact same thing if he were a girl—in fact I suspect I’d worry about it even more. Also, to me, it’s easier to become a person who is able to get over obstacles quickly. Funny thing is, as far as everything I understand, kids whose feelings are validated do tend to recover faster than those whose feelings are denied.
I think that my first instinct, that of allowing his feelings to be validated and consoled, wins out almost all the time, but there are times when it’s tough for me. In wanting to protect him from life’s pains and struggles, sometimes I run up against what society has taught me will be best for him. And I grew up in a very “tough it out” time and community, it can be hard to shake that voice in my head.
Today The Washington Post offers an excellent advice piece from clinical social worker Jennifer Kogan, who works with parents regarding their children. The piece, Why it’s Good to Let Boys Cry, explains recent studies indicating that boys who are emotionally more in touch with their feelings are better able to handle feelings of depression later on.
Kogan explains the research like this:
A 2010 study followed 426 boys through middle school to investigate the extent to which boys favor stereotypically male qualities, such as emotional stoicism and physical toughness, over stereotypically feminine qualities, such as emotional openness and communication, and whether they have any influence on their mental well-being.
Results showed that as boys progressed through adolescence they tended to further embrace hyper-masculine stereotypes. But boys who remained close to their mothers did not act as tough and were more emotionally available. The research, conducted by Arizona State University professor Carlos Santos, showed that closeness to fathers did not seem to have the same effect.
This detail is important data to have because male suicide rates reportedly start to rise by age 16. In addition to combating depression it seems evident that boys who stay connected to their feelings will be able to express their anger in healthier, more productive ways.
Did the same thing catch your eye as did mine? That sons who were close to mothers were more emotionally available? Our first reaction to the statement that closeness with fathers didn’t seem to have the same results is to say that this discounts the role of fathers.
However, I think we have to remember that Kogan is talking specifically about emotional availability, not other important skills and traits that boys get from closeness with fathers. Also, the role of fathers is rapidly changing, and this generation may not be caught up with those changes. These kids were born 20 years ago, most likely, and while there were are always many different types of fathers, the “man up” model of fatherhood has reigned supreme for a long time. It’s really only recently that parents have started to understand the importance of letting boys cry, or express other “non-manly” emotions.
In our family, my husband is much more likely to be the one to rush to my kids’ side when they’re sad or hurt. Not that I’m cold, but as I said at the beginning, I do feel this need to make them feel strong and independent. I try to learn from my husband about how to let them be sad, and then guide them to a swift recovery—because that swift recovery is important, too. We try to ask, “are you okay?” or say, “it’s going to be okay,” as opposed to saying, “you’re okay” or “you’re fine.”
I believe the results of a study like this will be different in the future when the changing role of men and fathers catches up to the research.
Kogan offers 4 great pieces of advice in the Washington Post article, but this one stands out most to me as something I can learn from, and perhaps many other parents will relate to:
3. Be ready and available to listen to your son without asking questions or offering a lot of advice.Kids will often open up when parents say less and listen more.
What do you think of this research? How about Kogan’s advice? Does one strike you as particularly resonant in raising boys?
Photo of Crying Boy Comforted by Father courtesy of Shutterstock
About Joanna Schroeder
I do appreciate the discussion around this topic, Joanna. Thank you for addressing it.
I’d be interested to understand whether the research you quote is contingent on the mother’s own emotional availability as well. There has to be some degree of causality to how “in touch” a boy’s mother is with her own feelings — which, unfortunately are often suppressed by their own societal imperfections (being viewed as the ‘weaker partner’, having parents with a keen ability to shame her, etc.)
I really do believe we’re a few generations away from truly understanding the horrifying effects of emotional unavailability on our relationships and our own self-esteem. It’s only recently that I’ve began to come to terms with my own EU, and the experience has been anything but a joyride; however, I’m certain the pains I experience today will eliminate the unspoken shame and hurt I would have caused others to experience through my negligence in the future.
Ultimately, a shitty mother isn’t going to be able to offer her son anything as far as benefits of emotional availability, if she’s not modeling that for him. These studies address general trends, and one problem we have sometimes as a society (not you in particular) is saying, “This study says all mothers being close to all sons is good, and fathers offer no benefit!” and that’s absolutely not what’s being said. There is SO much that goes into what helps boys (or anyone) thrive, that it can’t be simplified.
However, I think what this social worker is saying in the Washington Post article is mostly all true, and I find it rings very true for me.
Good luck in diving into your EU, and huge huge props on doing the work. We all have our mountains we have to trudge over in order to get to a better life… The trudge itself adds to what makes us strong, but it sucks when you’re in it. But so worth it in the end, I have to believe.
Children benefit from mothers and fathers in overlapping but also distinct ways. Assuming they’re all good and devoted parents, that is why having at least one of each is more advanageous than having only one parent or two of one gender and none of the other.
I suspect the process that same sex couples go through about gender is similar to a conversation my boyfriend and I had, discussing what we would do if we had a very girly child – male or female. Neither of us is girly, so we were saying that we would make sure they saw a lot of our friend, who is.
Gender doesn’t align that well with sex, and you don’t raise children in a vacuum, although hopefully you do raise them in an environment were they can express their emotions when they need to, but also can cope with those same emotions when they are not suitable for the situation. That’s true of anger as well as sadness and pain.
A few years ago, my wife and I took a woman (whome we barely knew) who was fleeing an abusive boyfriend to the police station. The three of us ended up in a high speed car chase through the streets of NYC, as the abusive boyfriend ended up chasing us, with a car that was loaded with various weapons (or so the girlfriend said).
As I was driving, being chased by an angry, gun and knife wielding man, the two women were on the floor of the car, hysterically crying and screaming. I decided that it was best for me to stay calm and get to the precinct as quickly and safely as possible. I ended up forcing the other car to crash, disabling his car.
Sure, let boys cry. But, the point of my story is that there is a time and place for everything. There are times when you need to take care of business and cry later if you want/need to. If all three of us were on the floor crying, things may have gone very badly.
Yeah, for sure, you gotta pull it together and not be hysterical sometimes. That’s where I try to not just let them cry, but try to guide them through to a resolution so it’s not wallowing. It’s a challenge to do it just right, and who knows if I am?
When my son fell and hit his head and needed stitches—he was 2, I think—all four of us packed up and went to Urgent Care. They wouldn’t let me into the room with him, because I had Izz (who was 4 at the time) with me, so I had to stay outside and wait for my friend to come get Izz. About mid way through, a nurse waved me in and said I had to go in with Bo because my husband was too upset to let the doctors do the stitches. Bo had been put in a papoose thing to restrain him (baby straight jacket) and was SCREAMING crying. My husband was interrogating the doctors and nurses, being super aggressive and hostile in his tone, and he’s totally not that guy. This was his form of panicking and overreacting. Maybe more “typical”… But in this case, I “manned up” and was calm for the baby and he had to leave the room.
I think we all tend toward the hysterical and the heroic, but we do tend to do it in our own “gendered” ways. There are exceptions, of course, all the time, but hopefully we can move toward something a bit more neutral in the future, because it simply isn’t productive to panic.
Bravo! Nicely done. And of course there is always some luck or God in those situations when it comes out right.
Yeah, it scares me to death whenever I think about it. If he caught us I would’ve kicked his cowardly arse. Unless he really did have a gun. In which case, after I kicked his cowardly arse, he may have shot me dead, claiming self-defense via “stand your ground.”
Seriously, car chases are through NYC are extraordinarily dangerous. Never do it unless it’s truly life or death since you can kill or badly hurt innocent people. In retrospect, i can’t believe I did it. It scared the mess out of my poor wife. I knew those streets really well but I could have very, very easily killed multiple pedestrians. Shiver!!!
I would be a terrible dad. I can’t stand to hear little kids cry. I give in too easily, punish too lightly, and pick them up in a heartbeat, boy or girl.
Crying seems like another easy one. If you hurt enough you cry. Kids, adults, boys, girls, it’s all the same. If it’s critical to be doing something else at the time you are crying then you need to learn to be able to suppress crying for that moment. Otherwise everyone should be supported through the crying phase. Now some small children learn to cry as a form of communication. They’re not hurt they just want something. John, you just have to tell them you’re ignoring them until they communicate properly. It won’t be long until they only cry when it’s for real and not just to get your attention.
Kids are easy. Teenagers? Now that’s rocket science.
The fact that we even need to discuss this ruins my morning. I battle stereotype assignment every day, and it seldom ends in anything less than heart-wrenching pain. The stereotyping I battle is a component to an even greater taboo issue (for another day).
As a small child, I had to eventually learn to not cry, and the lessons were self-taught, self-enforced and self-inflicted.
No boy or man ought to ever be like me; too calcified to bleed-out emotions, too stoic to feel. I hate that I ever thought I had to achieve that level of emotion-killing. Its not right and its inhumane.
Mommas don’t let yer babies grow up to be ice cubes.
Was this study conducted to “FIND” an answer OR to see what the results were when given a set of conditions. Plus how does one measure “emotional availability” , sounds extremely subjective to me, if they study author was seeking to find an answer then of course he/she went in with a huge bias.
I remember reading some years ago about a study conducted by the National Council on the Status of women in Canada regarding shared parenting. The ‘results’ were that it was ‘bad’ (I am paraphrasing of course) but opponents of the study pointed out that the NCSW had conducted 4 studies and only published one and the other 3 when investigated that the results were either neutral or ‘good’. The problem with social science (and I use the term science loosely) is that most imho are conducted to find an answer and are therefore biased especially when conducted by an advocacy group.
If you read the Time article Kogan linked to, the study is essentially about the verbal expression of emotion, literally whether boys talk about their emotions. According to the study, boys preferred to solve their problems on their own. So it is not so much that boys are “emotionally unavailable” as much as it is our culture teaches boys that they must solve their problems by themselves and that they are weak and unmanly if they ask for help.
Giving boys emotion flash cards really is not going to help that. It does not matter how much you tell boys to talk about their feelings. They will ultimately want to do something about how they feel, and it is that lack of guidance that is the real problem.
Likewise, some expressions of emotions are just useless at the time. Kogan recounts a time she saw a 13-year-old boy burst into tears at a baseball game and the boy’s mother shouted “No” at him, and so the boy stopped crying. Kogan thought that was a bad thing, but in context it is perfectly rational. You are playing a game. Sometimes you are going to lose. Sometimes things are not going to go your way. You do not start crying because of it. You suck it up and try again. Breaking down in the middle of the game does not solve anything. After the game you can cry, but not in the middle of it.
Its a huge leap in your interpretation from the study’s level of “closeness” in fathers to “… discounts the role of fathers…” when you state, “Our first reaction to the statement that closeness with fathers didn’t seem to have the same results is to say that this discounts the role of fathers.” Who is “Our” anyway and who are you speaking for?!?!?! Really? Are fathers roles only judged by “closeness”?
Its ok to cry no matter what gender or even age, but when, where and with who is critical. As adults we’ll be selective on who we cry in front of, not with standing witnessing some spur of the moment tragedy. Depending on the situation or scenario, there may not be time to cry, instead action may be required. Crying in front of family and loved ones should be viewed as acceptable no matter what your age or gender. Crying in front of emotional events in public sure, when likely others will be crying too. Being the only one crying in front of your peers, not so cool. Not Crying is not a sole gauge for emotional availability or responsiveness, sometimes its just not a good idea and its deferment in front of those who love us is wiser.
In our family, my husband is much more likely to be the one to rush to my kids’ side when they’re sad or hurt. Not that I’m cold, but as I said at the beginning, I do feel this need to make them feel strong and independent.
I wonder if this is the reault of him wanting to show them an emotional care that he was not shown when he was a boy?
I jokingly tell myself that I no longer have the capacity to cry, although honestly there is truth to this. Its an empty way to be. Don’t let your boys grow up that way. They’ll pay dearly for it later.