“管理圈”不能给男孩们最需要的东西
Naomi schaefer Riley著
娜奥米·谢弗·莱利
Naomi Schaefer Riley is an American journalist and author who focuses on cultural, religious, and family issues. She has written for publications such as The Wall Street Journal and has published related books.
娜奥米·谢弗·莱利是一位美国记者和作家，专注于文化、宗教和家庭问题，曾为《华尔街日报》等媒体撰稿，并出版过相关书籍
男孩需要什么？根据“管理圈”（manosphere）的博主和播客——近年来吸引了数百万读者和听众的那些通常厌恶女性、有阴谋思想、有时偏执的男人——男孩需要更坚强。他们必须学会如何保持身体健康，对女性更加霸道，在情感上不那么脆弱。
《华尔街日报》（The Wall Street Journal）最近一篇由一名高中生撰写的文章称，男孩们被这些信息所吸引，因为它们有助于消除他和同学们收到的“混杂信息”。
“在历史课上，我们被教导平等和尊重女性的重要性，通常是通过过去争取民权和选举权的斗争。在英语课上，我们钻研文本，揭示我们作为白人的特权；我们被敦促为这个世界的不平等感到内疚，即使这些不平等不是我们自己造成的。但在更衣室里，一切都是关于强硬和‘男子气概’，从不退缩，”伊莱·汤普森写道。
网上的“manosphere”提供了类似于更衣室的信息，但这是男孩们在生活中快乐和成功所需要的吗？在《大西洋月刊》最近的一篇文章中，心理学家约书亚·科尔曼提出了一种不同的方法。他写道，男孩需要父母更多的关爱和培养。不幸的是，他们得到的比女性同龄人少。
科尔曼引用的研究表明，“从婴儿时期到学龄前，母亲和父亲花在给女儿讲故事、唱歌和读书上的时间比儿子多。”另一项研究表明，“有女儿的父母比有儿子的父母感觉更接近他们在幼儿园的孩子，而且父母更有可能因为太忙而没有时间陪儿子玩。”
科尔曼认为，正是这种培养的缺乏，助长了我们的男子气概危机。他指出：“父母的养育方式会削弱男孩的能力，这种观点在美国文化中仍然存在，并被男人和女人所延续。”
也许吧，但这取决于我们对培养的定义。与男女孩子一起阅读、玩耍和交谈是非常重要的，但这些事情对不同的孩子来说可能会有所不同。小男孩可能想听不同类型的故事或歌曲，他们可能没有耐心坐着不动。他们可能不倾向于放松，抱着书玩，他们的游戏可能更多的是身体上的。
科尔曼正确地观察到，一些情感和行为问题发生在单身母亲抚养的男孩身上。单身母亲不会像对待女孩那样照顾孩子，而是更有可能因为男孩的吵闹行为而感受到压力，从而变得不那么照顾孩子。也可能是单亲妈妈过度补偿，试图让儿子变得坚强，过早地让他们成为“家里的男人”。
虽然科尔曼建议在单亲家庭中通过社会支持来解决这些问题，但事实是，不同层次或不同风格的养育并不能解决这种男子气概危机的核心问题——父亲的缺席。
有些父亲给儿子更多的照顾，他们给儿子读更多的书或唱更多的歌。但这些并不是决定一个男孩如何成为一个男人的最重要因素，也不是决定他如何驾驭“混杂的信息”的最重要因素。
我一直在听演员罗伯·洛（Rob Lowe） 2011年出版的回忆录《我只告诉朋友的故事》（Stories I Only Tell My Friends），他对母亲先是离开父亲，然后又离开继父给自己的生活带来的影响的评估是毁灭性的。他和父亲的关系仍然很好，但由于搬到全国各地，他很少见到父亲。多年后抚养自己的儿子，他意识到自己错过了什么。
他写道“十几岁的男孩需要学习的课程”，这些课程“不能在午夜吃披萨或在网球场上教授”。他们不是通过演讲来学习的。“他们通过数小时的观察逐渐吸收。关于离婚的可悲事实是，除非你和孩子一起生活，否则很难教会他们生活。”不仅是吃饭、做作业、开车送他们去参加活动，而且，洛写道，“在你做生意的时候，在你和妻子日夜相处的爱情、挫折、复杂和回报中，让他们倾听。”
具体来说，洛指出，通过观察生活中的男人，男孩们“看到成年人是如何处理责任、诚实、承诺、嫉妒、愤怒、职业压力和社会互动的。”
如果我们想要理解为什么这么多的年轻人如此茫然，试图弄清楚他们在世界上的位置，以及他们应该如何与异性相处，那么就有必要理解他们在与父亲分离的过程中错过了什么。
What do boys need? According to the bloggers and podcasters in the “manosphere” — the often misogynistic, conspiracy minded, and sometimes bigoted men who have attracted millions of readers and listeners in recent years — boys need to be tougher. They must learn how to be physically fit, more domineering over women and less emotionally vulnerable.
Boys are attracted to these messages, according to a recent article in The Wall Street Journal by a high school student, because they help cut through the “mixed messages” he and his classmates receive.
“In history class, we’re taught about equality and the importance of respecting women as peers, often through lessons on past struggles for civil rights and suffrage. In English class, we dive into texts that unpack our privilege as white men; we are urged to feel some guilt for the inequities of the world, even if we didn’t create them ourselves. But in the locker room, it’s all about being tough and ‘manly’ and never backing down,” Eli Thompson wrote.
The online “manosphere” offers a message similar to the locker room, but is this what boys need to be happy and successful in life? In a recent article in The Atlantic, psychologist Joshua Coleman suggests a different approach. He writes that boys need more affection and more nurturing from their parents. Unfortunately, they get less of it than their female peers.
Coleman cites studies showing “that mothers and fathers spent more time telling stories, singing, and reading to young daughters compared with sons, from babyhood leading up to preschool.” Another study showed that “parents of daughters reported feeling closer to their kindergarten-age child than parents of sons, and that parents were more likely to report being too busy to play with sons.”
It is this lack of nurturing, Coleman suggests, that is fueling our crisis of masculinity. He notes that “the idea that boys are weakened by a more nurturing approach from parents still weaves its way through American culture, and is perpetuated by men and women.”
Maybe, but it depends on what we mean by nurturing. Reading and playing and talking to children of both sexes is very important, but those things can look different for different children. Young boys may want different kinds of stories or songs and they may have less patience to sit still for either. They may not be as inclined to relax and cuddle with a book and their play may be more physical.
Coleman rightly observes that some of the emotional and behavioral problems occur in boys raised by single mothers. Rather than offer the same kind of nurturing they give to girls, single mothers may be more likely to experience stress as a result of boys’ raucous behavior and become less nurturing. It also may be that single mothers are overcompensating, trying to toughen up their sons, make them “the man of the house” prematurely.
While Coleman recommends social supports to navigate these problems in single-parent households, the truth is that a different level or style of nurturing is not going to fix what may be at the heart of so much of this masculinity crisis — the absence of fathers.
There are fathers who offer boys more nurturing than others, fathers who read more or sing more to their sons. But these are not the most important factors in determining how a boy is going to become a man, how he is going to navigate the “mixed messages.”
I’ve been listening to the actor Rob Lowe’s 2011 memoir, “Stories I Only Tell My Friends,” and his assessment of what happened to his life as a result of his mother first leaving his father and then his stepfather is devastating. He still had a strong relationship with his father but, having moved across the country, saw him considerably less. Raising his own sons years later, he realizes what he missed.
He writes about the “lessons that teenage boys need to learn” which “can’t be taught over pizza at midnight or on the tennis court.” They don’t learn through speeches. “They absorb incrementally through hours and hours of observation. The sad truth about divorce is that it’s hard to teach your kids about life unless you are living life with them.” Not only eating and doing homework and driving them to activities, but also, Lowe writes, “letting them listen while you do business, while you negotiate love and the frustrations and complications and rewards of living day in and out with your wife.”
Specifically, Lowe notes that through watching the men in their lives, boys “see how adults handle responsibility, honesty, commitment, jealousy, anger, professional pressures and social interactions.”
If we want to understand why so many young men are so at sea trying to figure out their place in the world and how they should relate to the opposite sex, it is worth understanding what they miss when they grow up separated from their fathers.
