Boys... How to Bring Them Up?

Why boys are different and how they may grow to happy and balanced men

Plea for an intensive fatherhood 

Bas Levering 
Translated from O-25, July 1999

About Raising Boys, Steve Biddulph

'Nowadays, girls often have the best self-confidence. They are more motivated and work harder than boys. Boys do not know how to set about their life, achieve bad at school, are clumsy in relationships, and have risk to violence and alcohol and drug abuse."

This says Steve Biddulph in his much discussed book Raising Boys.

Is it really true that, now girls have made up their arrears, boys have got problems? Yes, but it is worse: boys are a problem, but not an irresolvable problem. 

Concerning the role of the educator, Biddulph's book gives another message than Judith Harris' book some months ago [who wrote that parents are not so important amidst many other influences on the child]. According to Biddulph, parents are surely important. In his book, he points to their responsibilities, especially those of the fathers.

'Create time. That's the crucial point. For fathers, here is the most important sentence of this book:

If you work 55 to 60 hours each week, including the time to travel, you cannot succeed as a father. Your son will got problems, and that is to blame to you.'

Biddulph does not mince his words. Outspokenly, he says that early day care (under the age of three) is not good for boys. Until the age of six, the mother is the central figure. She has to give especially love and safety. 

Between the ages six and fourteen, the boy naturally feels the inner desire to be a man, and then the presence of the father is indispensable. His presence is so important that, if the father is absent, one must carefully search a substituting role model. 

Between the age of fourteen and adulthood, the parents take a step backwards, but they must provide some good mentors in their son's life. In this context, Biddulph worries about the decrease of male teachers at primary schools. In his opinion, the support of peers is insufficient to build self-respect.

The reactions to the message in the book were heated. To give a balanced opinion, one might not forget to place the general statements in the context in which they are said. The translator has not only transformed the English text in right-away Dutch, but also translated into the Dutch context. That does not alter the fact that Biddulph is and Australian. Australia has unmistakably the most explicit macho culture of the whole 'western' world. The choice of the theme, the threatened raising of boys, might be partly explained from that background.

Nevertheless, we should not by that reason ignore the message of the book. The testosterone cycle, the influence of the male hormone on a boy's development, makes no difference by cultures. It causes important changes such as more active and boyish behavior at the age of four, a quick grow and absent-mindedness at the age of thirtee, and testing the limits at the age of fourteen. 

'We must accept nature, but at the same time lead it along the correct ways", says Biddulph. "We also should realize that the correct ways ultimately are defined by culture."

Competition

In the Netherlands, Biddulph's statements will raise less controversy than in his own Australia. In contrast to other countries, in the Netherlands it has become a general accepted ideal that fathers give a lot of time to raise their children. However, ideal and reality are not the same. Nevertheless, here it is permitted to boys to show much less of the traditional masculinity. For example, concerning the acceptation of homosexuality, there's a world of difference. Of course, there are differences between the several ethnic groups, but the tendency is unmistakable.

Because the book is full of concrete hints about how to raise boys, it is quite pretty readable.

Biddulph has another set of far-reaching proposals. In some cases, he wants to give the young boy an extra year to be a toddler. If they enter primary school, they will be one year older then the girls and they will be at the same intellectual level.

Boys have problems with language and to express themselves. In connection with the so-called Cotswold-experiment, got separate classes for those lessons. In the Netherlands, the tradition of co-education is too strong for that, and here it is maybe not needed. Most schools, at all levels, succeed to realize an open and respectful attitude in communication with others.

[...] It seems that Biddulph has to fight much harder [in the Australian culture, in comparison with the Dutch culture]. Raising Boys is more or less a sequel to Manhood from 1994. In Manhood, Biddulph, who joined the Australian men's movement, describes how adult male cope with the effects of their too masculine education. The photo's of the book show the dominant position competition has in Australia's sunny country-side life. In an Australian review of Raising Boys, I read sentences like 'If the threatened femi-nazis doe not attack him, the rugby bulls will do.'

We may place Biddulph's bold statements in a broader perspective, because we are living in another context. Part-time jobs for men, to create time to raise their children, are here a tendency.

The pretty style of the book makes it possible to think about his, sometimes far-reaching, proposals. In its positiveness, the book is not compelling. This might make it a bestseller.