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Raising boys not to be boys Some families are bringing up their sons to be more sensitive and nurturing Thursday, August 05, 1999 By Monica L. Haynes, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
Never let them see you cry. That's one of the unwritten laws of boyhood. Whether a young man gets hit with a fast pitch or suffers a love TKO, he knows the advice is always the same -- shake it off, suck it up.
Females have come a long way, baby -- piloting space shuttles, winning world soccer titles, launching viable campaigns for the presidency. It's been more than a hundred years in the making with most of the changes coming within the last 30 years of the women's liberation movement.
In that time, women and girls have shown the world they can be physically strong and intellectually astute, characteristics traditionally seen as male. Oh yeah, they can still demonstrate traditional female characteristics like warmth and sensitivity.
However, society has been slow to recognize the need for men and boys to be nurturing, sensitive and to show their feelings, characteristics associated with females.
Some families are bucking tradition and are raising their sons to be more well-rounded. They're dispelling the generally accepted notions of what men and women should be.
Boston psychologist William Pollack, an assistant professor of clinical psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, also challenges the established ideas of masculinity and manhood in his book, "Real Boys, Rescuing Our Sons from the Myths of Boyhood."
"Men and boys are taught from the beginning not to say anything's wrong," Pollack says. In his book he states, "...Even boys who seem OK on the surface are suffering silently inside -- from confusion, a sense of isolation, and despair."
Pollack says society has placed both genders in a kind of straitjacket that limits each to behavior deemed strictly male or female. While we have loosened the jacket somewhat on females, most males are still tightly bound by convention.
"Part of the male code that we started to uncover is that one shouldn't talk about one's difficulty and one shouldn't reach out and one shouldn't complain," Pollack says. But that is a dangerous myth, he adds, because boys who can't cry tears, cry bullets.
Pete and Jack Decker won't be among those boys.
Not if their mother has her way. Christine Decker is trying to avoid the myths and traditional male roles in rearing her sons, who are 1 and 3, respectively.
"At this point it's about allowing them to cry," says the Beechview homemaker who has a degree in art. "I don't do the typical 'they're tough.' They're allowed to be softies."
Jack is extremely affectionate. He hugs and kisses his friends -- boys and girls -- and tells them he loves them, his mother says. Her attempt to give her sons a less conventional boy upbringing extends to their apparel. Pete and Jack don't wear clothing with sports motifs. Decker prefers clothing with children at play, not in competition.
"My boys wear pink, and we're not worried that they're going to be gay," Decker said.
She concedes her husband, Jeffrey, does not completely agree with this approach to male upbringing, but he is learning to understand it. "He comes from a very different background. His father is extremely macho and at one point was a professional boxer," Decker explains.
Why is it taking us so long to realize what Pollack says are the true psychological needs of males?
One reason is that it's still a patriarchal society, and the current set-up is beneficial to most men, Pollack says, even if it's not helping them psychologically.
"We assume that since men in society have power that all men have power and are doing well, and that's not true," says Pollack. "While to some extent it's still a man's world, it has never been a boy's world."
Among the myths Pollack attempts to dispel in his book is the one that states "boys should be boys."
"That they must fulfill the stereotype of the dominant and 'macho' male inhibits some parents and their sons from living in the way that comes most naturally for them."
This does not apply to the Kuremsky family, which includes attorney Larry Kuremsky, his wife, Jean Ahwesh, and sons, Connor, 6, and Andrew, 8.
"I don't think we're raising our boys as traditional boys," says Ahwesh as she sits in the conference room of her husband's Downtown law office. "We have a son [Connor] who shows a proclivity towards ballet, and we both encourage him," Ahwesh continues.
Kuremsky adds that Connor takes three different types of dance lessons. But he also points out that "Connor is a tremendous athlete, best player on his team."
The Franklin Park couple say they made no conscious decision to raise their sons in a specific manner. They are just parents who support their children's interests. Including Connor's interest in Barbie dolls.
"He wanted Barbies, we gave him Barbies," Ahwesh said.
For the family, it's no big deal. But Ahwesh knows others don't share that view.
When Connor wanted to take his Barbies to school for show and tell, his mother was honest with him about the reaction he might get from his classmates. "Will the kids laugh?," she recalls him asking. "I said, 'There's a chance they will, Connor.'"
He decided to leave the Barbies at home.
Older son Andrew is more into computers and hardware. "He gets money and he goes into a hardware store," his father says. "Not because it's the manly thing to do," his mother adds, "but because that's what he's into."
Kuremsky is teaching his sons that it is all right for men to express their feelings.
"One of the things we do is when I talk to the boys during the day I tell them I love them and I won't let them hang up until they say it back to me," Kuremsky explains. "Now, this is a young age so I think it's more natural. But hopefully they'll be able to express those kinds of thoughts as they get older."
The couple also do their part to battle sexism by changing gender references in story books. Mailman becomes mail carrier, fireman is changed to firefighter.
As progressive as they are in some aspects, the Kuremskys are imparting some old-fashioned values as well. When attending the theater, Connor and Andrew wear shirts and ties. They must address adults as Mr., Miss or Mrs.
In one instance the traditional and the progressive meet when it comes to family friend, Melissa Moon, a doctor. During a conversation between Moon and Ahwesh, Moon said the boys did not have to address her as Dr. Moon.
But Ahwesh and her husband want them to. "First it shows respect," she says. "Secondly, it's that little reminder that men and women can do anything they want [regardless of gender]."
Free-lance writer Solveig Peters and her husband, Steve, also try to bring that lesson home to their sons, Kevin, 11, and Brian, 10. They introduce them to female accountants, electricians, doctors, etc.
Peters had assumed she would have daughters because there are a lot of females in her extended family. After her sons were born, however, she decided her mission was to make them "strong, independent, caring people who really know how to get along with women and respect them highly."
Peters is a fan of Pollack's book and has recommended it to everyone she knows who deals with boys. An added bonus, she says, is that it helps the reader understand men, too. "He talks about the boy code, the gender strait jacket and that our society has spent so much time forcing this almost one-dimensional view of how boys and men are to behave ... I've found in my life that I don't see men as being less caring or supporting or having some predatory nature. I see men, once you get past the veneer, as being just as caring as women can be," Peters says.
Pollack's book, she says, confirms that she's on the right track with her sons. "The fact that he's saying, 'yes, you should be close to your sons,' that was such a relief for me. I would have women say to me, 'I don't hug my boys now that they're 8.'"
Pollack says society emphasizes emotional separation between mothers and sons at an unnecessarily early age, usually by the time they're 6. If boys aren't pushed away emotionally by their mothers or pulled away by their fathers, society shames them into breaking the close bond, he says.
"We start to tell them that they need to stand on their own two feet, not to be too close to mommy and try to solve their problems on their own, often through aggressive behavior."
Gayle Comer has not let society dictate the relationship between her and her sons, Darnell, 13, and Brandon, 16. They are close, despite the chasm that can often develop between parents and children during adolescence.
She speaks with pride about the sensitive and caring young men that she is rearing. But she gives the credit to her late husband, Douglass.
"Douglass was very affectionate with his children," says Comer, who lives in Rankin. "He had no qualms about kissing them in public or giving them a hug. I think that's why they have that sensitivity about them now."
Douglass Comer's heart condition made it impossible for him to continue working so he took care of the children while his wife went off to her job at the Vocational Rehabilitation Center, Uptown. The couple didn't treat Brandon and Darnell like male children, Gayle Comer says; they treated them like children.
"To me it all boils down to having respect for other people," said Dorothy Michalski of Nottingham, Washington County. Michalski and her husband, Michael, have a 14-year-old son, Josh, and a daughter, Laura, 16.
The Michalskis' philosophy about child rearing is a combination of what their parents did and their own take on life. Their household jobs are not designated by gender. Josh, says Dorothy Michalski, "is probably more helpful around the house than his sister." This summer he's been involved in theater, an opportunity to meet other guys his age as well as girls, his mother says.
In talking about her sensitive young man, she relays a story about Josh as a third-grader. The school bus broke down and a young kindergarten boy became distressed. Josh sat down next to him, calming him down until the bus got rolling again.
She has no problem communicating with her son, she says. "We still talk and we can say things to each other and we know we mean it."
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