“Be a man.”  “Boys don’t cry.”  “Don’t be a sissy.”

Boys hear these things all the time – from parents, from teachers, from friends and peers.  What does it do to their emotional lives when they crave close relationships but society tells them to keep emotional distance from others?

Join my guest Alan Turkus and me as we quiz Dr. Judy Chu, who lectures on this topic at Stanford and was featured in the (awesome!) documentary https://www.amazon.com/Mask-You-Live-Ashanti-Branch/dp/B01AEOM74S (The Mask You Live In).

This episode is a must-listen if you’re the parent of a boy, and may even help those of you with girls to understand more about why boys and men treat girls and women the way they do.

Don’t have a boy?  Check out https://yourparentingmojo.com/beauty/ (How To Raise A Girl With A Healthy Body Image).



References

Bronfenbrenner, U. (1979). The ecology of human development: Experiments by nature and design. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Chu, J. http://amzn.to/2CYtFB6 (When boys become boys: Development, relationships, and masculinity).  New York, NY: NYU Press. (Affiliate link)

Maccoby, E.E. (1990). Gender and relationships: A developmental account. American Psychologist 45(4), 513-520.

Miedzian, M. (1991). Boys will be boys: Breaking the link between masculinity and violence. New York, NY: Doubleday.

Pollack, W. (1998). Real boys: Rescuing our sons from the myths of boyhood. New York, NY: Random House.

 



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Transcript

Jen:                                      https://www.temi.com/editor/t/L0IO1Ve9Zv4-k5_LiJzekQmMxFZkZaAABIFCLcEfovHKmfoZyR9PzH9gxoKah9JCXj9fzF0pOKK4by5hJsSeX9V0Z7c?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&ts=40.15 ([00:40])                   Hello and welcome to the Your Parenting Mojo podcast. Regular listeners may remember that a few weeks ago, I interviewed Dr Renee Engeln who wrote the book Beauty Sick on the topic of raising girls with a healthy body image. Even though I don’t have a son, I know a lot of you do, so in today’s episode we’re going to talk about some of the challenges associated with raising sons and how we can be better parents to sons, and specifically how fathers can be better parents to sons. So since I am not a father and don’t have a son, I figured I’d better find someone who is both of those things. So today I welcome a co-interviewer, Alan. Alan grew up in New Jersey with a comfortable middle class family whose father was physically present and not physically abusive, but who had what Alan calls embarrassing spasms of anger that came with yelling and throwing things and when he wasn’t angry, he was pretty emotionally absent, so Alan feels as though he didn’t really have a great model for this whole fathering thing, but he wants to parent his own son differently and it started to take some steps in that direction, but he isn’t really sure if it’s enough or what else he should be doing. Welcome Alan.

Alan:                                   https://www.temi.com/editor/t/L0IO1Ve9Zv4-k5_LiJzekQmMxFZkZaAABIFCLcEfovHKmfoZyR9PzH9gxoKah9JCXj9fzF0pOKK4by5hJsSeX9V0Z7c?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&ts=102.611 ([01:42])                   Thank you.

Jen:                                      https://www.temi.com/editor/t/L0IO1Ve9Zv4-k5_LiJzekQmMxFZkZaAABIFCLcEfovHKmfoZyR9PzH9gxoKah9JCXj9fzF0pOKK4by5hJsSeX9V0Z7c?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&ts=104.44 ([01:44])                   And to help Alan and I figure all this out. I’m so excited that we’re joined today by Dr Judy Chu. I first learned of her work on the documentary called The Mask You Live In, which you can rent on Amazon or on Netflix and I would highly encourage you to do that even if you’re the parent of a girl because it really helped me to understand some of the reasons why boys and men treat girls and women the way they