Boys cry. Boys feel fear of the dark. Boys may want to be ‘fire engines’ and pilots, but they may also want to be dancers, hair dressers or poets. Though most boys are taught to fight and be macho, using expletives is seen as a new form of macho behaviour, there are boys who have never heard any at home and do not know what the words mean.
Must boys be boys? It’s a question we need to ask ourselves in a world where the lines between the genders are as likely to get lighter as not.
Let’s see what society has always expected of boys.
Standard expectations
That they will be tough, give as good as they get, be somewhat aggressive, at least more than their sisters, be aggressively protective and thus be physically strong enough to play the protector of a younger sibling.
Boys are supposedly genetically brighter in maths and deductions, make better engineers and statisticians, and boys of course are supposed to grow up to be men.
Stronger, brighter, able to provide for the family and take the blows destiny throws at them squarely on the chin, without a whimper. Nay, boys shouldn’t cry.
At least this is what many mothers, and all fathers of sons have believed down the ages.
Which is why I was surprised by what a mother of two daughters and a son said to me. Her children are heirs of no mean empire, and though the daughter is the oldest of the siblings, it is the son, the middle child, on whom the hopes of the empire rest.
Not surprisingly, since all three children were exposed to the best education money could buy and were also blessed with a fair share of working brains, the daughters did exceedingly well in school and even before the eldest stepped into college she showed that she had the qualities of leadership that would make her a worthy heir.
The son fared well in school too, but was not a front runner; and though they tried to hone his mind towards economics and number crunching, he leant decidedly towards the arts.
Where his elder sister had solved maths puzzles and played video games, the boy preferred to wield a brush and paint the trees that stood outside the windows.
Not unexpectedly, it threw a terrible strain on the father, who had hoped his son would show every sign of wanting to take over the reins of the empire, and would start early in his life to mould himself to inherit his father’s role. Whether he will realise his daughter was more cut out for the role and train her for it, remains to be seen.
It was in this context that the mother, who must have realised the pressures that were awaiting the boy when he was ready to step out of school, announced in a decidedly protective tone of voice, that boys must be allowed to choose their paths in life too.
She said it at a small gathering of friends, and the announcement was met with a sudden silence. Which is what made me think that it was time that we started letting boys grow into the sort of men they want to be.
After all, the double income household, or even homes that are headed by single mothers are quite as common now as homes with a single male provider were a few decades ago, and if women must bear the burden of helping place food on the table, then men must learn empathy and understanding.
And that is where the fathers come in.
So even while you are teaching your son to play cricket or swim and ‘be a man’, teach him too to be more a man, by showing him how to care, by telling him fear and cowardice are different things, by letting him find his own path and create his own adventure, but being there to guide and support, should he need it.
The writer is Consulting Editor with Penguin India
