To say that boys need advocacy tends to generate controversy. Popular opinion holds that boys have been overly advantaged in society for generations. While this has largely been true, we should remember that boys themselves are not responsible for these politics. They are born into a world where an ever-changing set of rules already exists. Next to their immediate families, schools decisively structure how a boy's masculinity is developed, rewarded, practiced and punished.
Schools have a curriculum which aims to teach boys how to become men.
We have recently come to challenge the unfair and limiting assumptions and practices for girls. Close Cultural pressures operate in families to let boys go on their own very early, resulting at times in a virtual abandonment of male children. Both parents and boys themselves receive powerful messages from everywhere in the culture that intimacy and affection between sons and parents could undermine a boy's masculinity. Role expectations for parents and sons can cause boys to push away from their parents prematurely and unnecessarily, at the same time as parents surrender to subtle pressures to let go of their sons. Helping boys to stay close means thinking clearly ourselves about their needs for affection, guidance and limits as well as helping them to resist enormous pressures and anxieties which define manhood as not needing anyone.