Little boys, more emotionally expressive than little girls in the first year of life, take a radical turn by elementary school. Pollack suggests that it's the Boy Code that, by shaming boys into less expressive behavior, causes them to shut down. But just as problematic as shame, he writes, is how soon boys become autonomous from their mothers. Most mothers and their sons are capable of creating strong, healthy relationships based . . . Pollack slight the vital role of fathers.
Fathers tend to develop their own loving style of teaching, guiding, and playing with their boys.
Still, he urges fathers to support the mother's less active, more soothing parenting style, though he encourages the father to intervene when he might have more insight into what's happening with a son. One of this wise book's most valuable chapters, on boys, sadness, and depression, offers balanced advice about distinguishing a boy's typical silences, during which he is most likely working things out for himself, from a sadness that, unchecked, could lead to a more dangerous depression. While Real Boys is an excellent guide for parents and others who worry about the boys in their lives, it is perhaps more wisely used as part primer, part tune-up manual. Pollack has placed his 20-plus years of research in the service of the real mothers and fathers who love their real sons, and amid widespread hysteria about the violent potential of young men, has presented readers with real support. The culture's reaction to black male children as threatening, pathological, and possibly criminal is a burden few white parents have to shoulder.