What Boys Need

By Amy Dickinson

As the mother of an adolescent girl and a former girl myself, I'm happy to report that it's a swell time to be female. Girls today get to be strong or soft--they play with Barbies and bulldozers. Years of concern over the self-esteem of girls have resulted in a tide of aspiring Mia Hamms and Madeleine Albrights. But what happened to the boys? Why does the phrase "girl power" bring Hillary Clinton to mind, while "boy power" reminds us of Columbine?

After years of seeing adolescent girls as vulnerable Ophelias silenced by dominating boys, now it is boys who are supposed Hamlets--out of touch with their identities and racked by feelings and fears they cannot express. Two new books make the case for boys in crisis but have completely different prescriptions.

In The War Against Boys, conservative ideologue Christina Hoff Sommers blames liberal women for the boy crisis. Movement feminists, she says, cornered the market on victimhood for girls--and thus victimized boys. Gender-equity programs in schools only benefit girls, while boys are seen as "protosexists" and potential harassers. Sommers claims that most of the women in boys' lives--their teachers and counselors (and presumably their mothers)--don't understand masculinity and are threatened by it. Boys, she says, suffer when they're taught by women who want them to be in touch with their feelings; boys express themselves best through play and competition.

Sommers' ideal class for boys has them wearing blazers and ties as a male teacher instructs them in Aristotelian ethics, morality and fair play, after which they repair to the ball fields for sports. She argues for a renewed appreciation of masculine virtues, and I applaud her for that. Schools and parents should accommodate boys' learning styles, which don't always fit neatly between the margins. Boys need more recess and less Ritalin; and if we set high expectations, they will rise to meet them.

But while Sommers thinks boys should be strong and silent, author William Pollack says that's just the problem. In Real Boys' Voices, Pollack points to the aggression, violence and despair among boys--who account for 75% of suicides at ages 10 to 14--as evidence that they have been silenced by society. Adults, he says, need to help boys express their confusion, hurt and anger in a "shame-free" way--whether through tears, talk, music or action.

Curiously, neither new book asks much specifically of the fathers and other men who are so often absent in the daily lives of today's boys. Sommers blames women for the boy crisis while never asking dads to step up to the plate. And Pollack's boys in crisis would surely be helped by strong examples of true manliness.

The fact is, boys need both feelings and action, self-esteem and high standards. At home, boys should be given jobs to do--preferably alongside Dad. Hours spent playing video games isolate them. Parents should spend as much time listening to their sons as talking at them. If we devote ourselves to meeting our boys' emotional and intellectual needs, as we have done with those of our girls, in time the boys will develop dreams as expansive as those of their sisters, and "boy power" will take on a new meaning.

See our website at time.com/personal for more about parenting boys. You can send Amy an e-mail at TimeFamily@aol.com