Let boys be boys

Researchers say the United States is dealing with an “epidemic” of male loneliness. Though, as Los Angeles Times columnist Jean Guerrero notes, shocking numbers of men feel that no one “knows” them. Worse, Guerrero says the data shows that men are “less skilled than women at making friends.” This is the case despite a long effort to socialize boys. In fact, according to Guerrero, “Young men, who tend to be more progressive and are presumably more comfortable with intimacy than their elders, are … the most isolated.” How can this be?

Ruth Whippman’s BoyMom: Reimagining Boyhood in the Age of Impossible Masculinity sheds some light on the trouble, though not, perhaps, in the way she intends. A self-proclaimed feminist with impeccable progressive credentials, Whippman analyzes her tortured feelings about being the mother of her three young boys. She is anxious for their well-being, anxious to survive their Nerf wars and aggressive wrestling, but especially anxious that they not end up as misogynist creeps who abuse women. And yet, confused as she may be, her thinking drives her toward some surprising insights.

Writing in The New York Times, Whippman explains: “We have spent the past half-decade wrestling with ideas of gender and privilege, attempting to challenge the old stereotypes and power structures. These conversations should have been an opportunity to throw out the old pressures and norms of manhood, and to help boys and men be more emotionally open and engaged. But in many ways this environment has apparently had the opposite effect—it has shut them down even further.”

According to Whippman, “Masculinity comes with built-in inadequacy,” adding that boys are “almost doomed to failure, forever trying to outrun the stony dread of emasculation.” Lots more work is necessary, but Whippman in her book says she believes boys will eventually be able to leave behind the “scripts of masculinity,” including those that expect the physical and emotional strength of “manning up.”

For me, what’s really impossible is escaping the filter by which the problem and its solution are determined: progressive—one might say, self-indulgent—feminism. Self-sorting under the “boymom” hashtag, young mothers face a curious crisis of identity. Figuring out who you are and what you believe about the nature of the infant—whether essentialist and immutable or malleable according to social conditions—is as crucial as “keeping the baby human alive.” Whatever happens, in this posture, the mother occupies the frame.

I can’t help but feel that this is the most boutique of all modern tribulations. For thousands of years, men and women have known how to raise boys so that they weren’t stricken with loneliness. This new problem—boys stuck on screens and unable to connect with others—surely emerges when people, parents especially, imagine that there is no real difference between boys and girls besides their body parts.

And yet, a denial of the fact that the relational needs of boys and girls cannot be met in exactly the same way is the natural conclusion of 200 years of divisive gender ideology. Wherever you want to lay the blame for the disintegration of male and female relationships—the industrial revolution, the sexual revolution, the tech revolution, the invention of the birth control pill, the legalization of abortion, any moment will do well enough—the point is that women have been trying to redress their grievances without facing the spiritual verities at the back of the problem, that God exists and that men are people, too. Until the whole patriarchy has been smashed—whatever is left of it—the “conversation” will persist. These agitated efforts, the background noise of modernity, reach a fever pitch when a feminist gives birth to a son.

The obvious and unquestioned solution to male loneliness for Whippman and many like her is to do the girl thing even harder. The “trouble” forming “intimate relationships” simply means they need more of the same care, nurture, and group therapy that apparently helps girls. They need even longer conversations with their mothers. They need more help in sharing their feelings. They need to be held more, loved more, coddled more, and when the worn-out mother can’t take it anymore, it’s OK to indulge in a little screen time.

I hate to break it to fragile feminist #boymoms, but boys and girls are different. You can treat them exactly the same way and they will still come at you—the mother—in specifically gendered ways that cannot be explained away by one more, spiritually obtuse expert. Except that the boys will be angry and lonely because their masculinity is always being questioned, because their fathers aren’t there, because when they are they mutely defer to their mothers. Instead, why not offer them a richly masculine spiritual world? Why not let their dads weigh in? Why not let them be boys?