International Men’s Day: How to raise the next generation of men
of putting the responsibility of fixing the world on your son’s shoulders.
The Eighth Amendment has been repealed and the women’s rights movement is making great strides across many aspects of Irish society. But what’s it like for boys to grow up in this new, modern Ireland?
Suicide remains far higher among men than women, and the HSE reports that, in the most recent year of data, the highest rate was among men aged 25-35. According to Mental Health Forum in Ireland, unhealthy behaviours and an aversion to asking for help are often linked to an endorsement of traditional, dominant definitions of masculinity, including a macho, risk-taking ideal. So how can parents raise the next generation of Irish men to be happy, healthy, confident and kind?
“There’s an inherited script of being hard and strong, of not showing weakness. A lot of it is socialised, but it’s no longer fit for purpose, and that’s left a lot of young men really confused,” says Mark McDonnell, CEO of Soar, an organisation that delivers workshops to young people with the aim of helping them to thrive.
“The amazing women’s movement has stopped and considered what it is to be a modern woman, and it has found that no sex or gender has a monopoly on any characteristic, be it to be brave or sensitive. Men haven’t done that yet. I don’t think we’ve reimagined our new place yet.”
Inspired by The Reach Foundation in Australia, Soar has worked with more than 47,000 teenagers at this point, mostly through Transition Year workshops delivered in schools. While Ireland’s schools are “incredible”, thinks McDonnell, they’re very limited, developing teens to do exams and get jobs. “There’s a gaping hole. We’re not preparing them for life, especially in a world that’s more volatile, uncertain and complex than ever,” he says.
What’s emerged as a result of the pandemic, says McDonnell, is three things: a general sense of isolation and loneliness; an increase in day-to-day worry; and a picture of young people’s confidence being “absolutely on the floor”. But while girls tend to be comfortable discussing their experiences and being vulnerable with their peers, that’s not so much the case for boys. “It just doesn’t happen as naturally, and as a result, many young men feel very alone, like they’re the only ones going through what they’re going through. And when young men feel that alone and in that much pain, that’s a very dangerous place – because that’s when they decide to check out,” says McDonnell.
“The defensive walls are high at the moment,” he adds. “When it gets to a certain stage in the workshops when things get real, some lads tend to start to crack jokes and disengage, because I think there’s a tsunami of emotions ready to rush forward and smash the dam. They feel if they crack, they don’t know what would come out.” But why is airing our experiences and talking about emotions so important?
Sarah Sproule, an occupational therapist, sexual health educator and parenting coach, sees in her work that a lot of parents avoid naming hard emotions because they fear that it will implant that feeling into their child. “But research shows that when we name negative emotions, like fear or sadness or depression, the sensation of the feeling reduces,” she says.
“That’s why it’s so therapeutic to talk to other people, and it’s why therapy is so good. We’re being seen for who we are and how we feel.” That’s not to say that encouraging boys to speak up isn’t hard. The solution, according to Sproule, is radical honesty. “We can tell our children that the world we live in is a bit broken, and this means that if a man or boy wants to talk about his intense feelings of sadness or fear or anxiety, there might be judgement about that, and he might feel like he’s bad or not good enough. And those feelings are exactly right – of course he’ll feel that,” she asserts.
“We need to wade right into it and courageously say it the way it is to our kid.” Sproule uses an analogy about teaching a child to cross the road. “We don’t wait for them to ask us to show them or to have a go without us. We intentionally take their hand and talk about traffic, and it’s the same with this emotional intelligence piece,” she explains. If we want to encourage our children to talk about emotional things, in other words, we need to acknowledge why it’s hard.
Studies have shown that parents tend to subconsciously pick up gendered patterns in how they talk to their kids. “When we’re talking about sex and safety, there’ll be different expectations. If you’re raising a boy, as a general rule you’ll talk about making sure not to take advantage of someone and paying attention to someone’s needs – but there’s a lack of understanding of their own needs and how to keep themselves safe,” Sproule explains.
“So keeping boys safe and cared for tends to be overshadowed by the way we approach boys and growing men as a danger to others.” Keeping boys and men safe, McDonnell agrees, can be a tricky thing to navigate. “Sometimes when I say the word ‘masculinity’, I feel like it’s a bad word, like it has negative connotations now,” he says.
“Let me be clear: men need a lot of work because we cause a lot of distress for ourselves and women and other people in the world. But if you don’t have the intricacies of that understanding, as a young man you might think men are bad and we don’t do anything good, and I’m certain that seeps in. At best, young men might feel confused about what it is to be a man, but at worst, there’s a feeling of being bad and useless. It’s a confusing time for young men, and it can leave them feeling spun out. And hurt people hurt people.”
It’s not all bad, though. “It does feel like a bit of a brotherhood has emerged among boys since the pandemic, like it was a unifying experience for different types of men,” says McDonnell, explaining that there used to be a clear divide in the workshops between different archetypes – the sporty guys, the jokers, the introverts, the Alpha males, the creatives.
“Since we’re back, that’s dissipated a bit. It’s like they’re coming back together with new versions of themselves, with a bit more maturity, like an evolution has occurred.” Perhaps trusting in that evolution is a good place to start. The idea of what she describes as top-down parenting, with the parent at the top and information flowing down into the child, is common but needs to be challenged, says Sproule – especially as the child gets a little older, from around 7 or 8 or so. “Then the relationship changes and is much more about the facilitation of goals and discovery, so it can’t be top-down,” she explains. “In terms of discovering their true sense of self, it’s about seeing the children as the expert of who they are, and we must create the space for them to do that.”
acknowledge that talking about feelings is hard. When learning to talk about emotions, some hand-holding is key – sometimes especially for boys. “Explain that it’s hard to talk about these things because the world tells us we shouldn’t, but that the world is wrong, and all emotions are welcome here,” Sproule suggests. “If a female parent shows their feelings, they can highlight that if they were a man, it would be harder to do so, because the world is not fair.”
of putting the responsibility of fixing the world on your son’s shoulders. In Sproule’s experience, parents can tend to put the responsibility of fixing a broken world onto their children. “Knowing that there’s male privilege out there, we might try really hard to raise a perfect boy to make the world a better place, when in fact that’s not our job as a parent, and it’s not their job as a child,” she explains. Our job, she says, is to stay connected to our child to support them to do what they want to do when they grow up, and to become a confident, caring young person who respects themselves and the people around them. “Often with boys, we focus on the respect only – but how can someone respect others if they have no understanding of what respect feels like?”
Peer pressure, Sproule argues, will always be there. We all fall for it. “Rather than shield your child from the world and peer pressure, acknowledge it. Tell them they’re not bad or wrong for feeling it, because it’s a super-secret system that happens to everyone,” she says. “The magic comes from being able to be in a relationship with a child in the knowledge that messiness is a fact of life, but that they’ll be able to come to us and talk about it.”
that your child is the expert on who they are. “It’s easy sometimes to dismiss strong, loud characteristics as somehow being something we need to tame or reduce,” says Sproule. “But whatever the most challenging characteristics for us parents to love are, we need to walk alongside our children respecting those characteristics in order to nurture who they are and work out how that can sit in the world in a respectful way. In my view, that’s the only way to parent – with respect and joy.”
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