Let's hear if for the boys!

I was in 4th grade in 1984, when Deniece Williams released the single, “Let’s Hear it for The Boys.” That was the same year that the movie Footloose was released, making Kevin Bacon my Hollywood crush for the rest of my elementary, middle, and high school career. I can still remember the feeling I got listening to that song during the movie and then on repeat from the car radio, or in my bedroom, my house, or anywhere it would play for the next several summers. I felt excited about what it would be like to grow up and fall in love with a boy whom I could just love because he simply loved me. Just like the song said, he didn’t need to be anything more than someone who loved me first! It’s worth sharing some of the lyrics here:

Lyrics

My baby, he don’t talk sweet
He ain’t got much to say
But he loves me, loves me, loves me
I know that he loves me anyway
And maybe he don’t dress fine
But I don’t really mind

‘Cause every time he pulls me near
I just wanna cheer

Let’s hear it for the boy
Let’s give the boy a hand
Let’s hear it for my baby
You know you gotta understand
Oh, maybe he’s no Romeo
But he’s my lovin’ one-man show
Oh, whoa-oa-oa
Let’s hear it for the boy

My baby may not be rich
He’s watchin’ every dime
But he loves me, loves me, loves me
We always have a real good time
And maybe he sings off key
But that’s alright by me, yeah

‘Cause what he does, he does so well
Makes me wanna yell

Source: Musixmatch

As I grew into an adolescent and began to have experiences dating boys and young men, I became acutely aware that I my criteria for a good guy exceeded those set out by Deniece William’s tune. I did want someone who was bright, thoughtful, ambitious, and good with money. But I must say, it was difficult to feel confident that I deserved this, and that I was entitled to get what I believed I deserved. Afterall, I grew up in a society that preached that girls could and should “have it all,” but also that girls could and should “be it all.” Girls were told that in order to be successful they needed to be both feminine and masculine - to be nurturing, inclusive, collaborative, but also competitive, athletic and in-charge (“just like the boys”) in order to be successful in life. And so we did, or at least us Gen-X girls did just that, we made sure to engage in sports, get better grades than the boys, compete with them in the corporate world and make sure to maintain our femininity and look attractive along the way. We embraced both the feminine and masculine traits that we all arrive with when we are born. But, what about the boys? They, I’m afraid, got left behind. And, I’m afraid to say, still haven’t caught up.

We do have a problem. Our boys and young men haven’t gotten the same message that the girls have been getting over the past 40 years: that we expect more out of them. We should expect boys to be well-rounded the way we’ve expected girls to be. Boys, just like girls are thoughtful, sensitive, loving, and nurturing. They feel deeply, love passionately, cry when their feelings are hurt, and want social connections. But from the moment that a boy is born, we instinctively push him to “man up” and shove those “girly” feelings down or “fight it out” with sports or his bigger muscles and physical strength instead of using his innate gifts of language to express what girls are encouraged to do with their words. While we are busy pushing girls to be “just as strong as boys”, boys aren’t encouraged to be anything more than just, uh, “boys will be boys”? They deserve more.

As a mom of a 20-year-old son, I have thought a lot about raising a boy into a man who can access both the masculine and feminine qualities within himself. And I hope

that his father and I have done a good job. We have at least tried our best, despite the messages from society that discourage our efforts. He was born with a sensitive temperament that we cherished and nurtured, surrounded him with role-models of men and women who valued all feelings, and openly discouraged “bro culture”. It hasn’t been easy. He fell in love with basketball in second grade, and continued to play competitively through high school and in college. Being a straight, “anti-bro”, sensitive athlete seemed like a string of oxymorons strung together. In many ways, our son felt like an unicorn on several of his basketball teams. How he has managed to survive those basketball years still a sensitive soul is worth another Substack post on a later date.

But I digress. The motivation to write about this issue began after some some feedback on an instagram post I made in which I spoke about how fortunate I feel about having a son who still enjoys cuddling and expressing affection to me at the age of 20. The feedback, which I must admit surprised me, was that my post could make some parents feel badly if their own boys were not still affectionate or stopped showing their moms love during the dreaded middle and high school years. My intention, of course, is never to post anything on social media that makes any parent feel badly about how they are raising their kids. Parenting is difficult. And, as a mom and child psychologist, I know that we are all just doing the best we can with what we the kids we have with what we know at any given time. I also know that we all make mistakes, and that it is incredibly painful to watch our kids behave in ways that make us think we might have messed up. I am not a fan of mom blame. But I am also not going to defer any and all of my own kiddo’s successes (and for this post it was that my son has maintained his sensitivity and affection), to just the luck of the draw. His dad and I put in effort to maintain our emotional connection throughout his middle school and adolescent years. And yes, I will take credit for when things that I put effort into go well with my kids just like I will own when I f**ck-up and my kids suffer the consequences. In fact, I probably err on the side of blaming myself for perceived mistakes more than I do for taking any credit for how they are turning out.

The point of all of this is that I believe all of us, parents, teachers, and our society at large should feel like bad parents if our boys stop wanting to hug, cuddle, or continue to show affection to their moms through middle, high school, and beyond. Why? Because it is buying into western society’s insistance that our boys not be “mama’s boys,” or that they toughen-up, be a man, and squash any expression of the stereotypically feminine traits that we still accept our girls to exhibit. Now I do know that boys, and girls for that matter, go through years where they get embarrassed by their parents, stop holding their hands, etc. I am not talking about healthy independence. What I am preaching is the celebration of whatever natural state of emotional expression that each parent sees in their little boy before he is told by society that showing that side means he is a “wuss” or “weak.” It is that early expression of love, affection and nurturing that we need to encourage, just as we encourage girls’ assertiveness and aggression.

So, let’s hear it for our boys! Let’s give our boys a hand. Let’s hear it for our babies. You know we’ve got to understand. They need us to step-up and nurture every part of themselves because they are born with all of it, we’ve just been busy stomping half of it out of them for far too long. And, I for one am ready to see a generation of young men who are confident for themselves and their partners. I don’t want my daughter to dream about dating some guy who is just a vacuous cutie. I want her to expect to date a guy who is strong, bright, assertive, nurturing, affectionate, a caretaker and sensitive. I want our boys to be the complete package. They deserve the same expectations that we set for our girls. So let’s help them get there.