In my senior year of high school, I took an amazing course called “Men’s Studies.” Some of the questions we tried to answer in this course included: what male stereotypes do we find on television and are they harmful? What is ‘machismo’? What does it mean to be masculine? Who in the class is least masculine? Most masculine? What does the emotional life of a man look like? What can you tell about a man from the way he hugs other men?
Years of studying philosophy have brought me closer to understanding what it means to be a good person, but this high school course has been my singular exploration of what it means to be a good, healthy, happy man in particular. The course made me acutely aware of nearly invisible cultural cues that I now understand to be tremendously damaging to men and women alike.
One cue that I see time and time again is found whenever people ask me how my parents feel about my independent, adult life. Before graduating, I lived with my mother and father continuously from the time I was born for about eighteen and a half years. See if you can spot the cue:
“David, I bet your mom was pretty sad to see you move away for college!”
“David, do you call your mom from college? I know she misses you!”
“Your mom must be so excited for you to come home on your college break!”
“David, how does your mom feel about your move to Los Angeles — you’ll be so far away!”
“Did you tell your mom you’re moving to London?! How does she feel about it?”
Did you spot it? I invariably retort “what about my dad?” when asked these questions.
Here’s one more cue. A good friend of mine was told by his father for the first time that he had made his father proud. My friend was very happy and a little choked up to hear this, but when he told me the good news, he said it was “a little gay” for his father to say this to him.
Something really stinks here. Frankly, I think that an unconscious homophobia undermines father-son relationships, and that this may be the primary cause of the emotional bastardization of men. Anyway, I haven’t thought it through too carefully, and I’m pretty sure Freud has something to say about all of this, but for some reason this was on my mind today.
3 comments
Hard to imagine that your friend’s dad had never told him he was proud up until that point. What a waste and a shame. The son’s striving to please a judgmental father (thinking of “W”
is a common and sad state of affairs, which can have a high cost. How is it that fathers can be so perfect and their sons never measure up? Seems like this is the opposite of natural selection. I think it is similar to how people root for and viciously criticize their local sports team when they come up short of total victory… the team is expected/needs to be the perfect extension of the imperfect self. Anyway, unconditional love is a lot easier to take and feel good about. Maybe that’s why the maternal bond is so fierce and undeniable.
So, what explains the difference between maternal and paternal love? Perhaps the cause and the effect are both the conditional nature of paternal love, and this is a self-perpetuating phenomenon. How would we go about breaking the vicious cycle?
Something deep rooted in animal behavior? The mother must protect and nurture her offspring to ensure their survival. The father must rule the roost to insure its survival. There is probably something to do with there being only one leader of the pack, and maybe even a competitive impulse to ward of potential sexual advances on the mate. It seems like human nature and values, societal goals, and our own typical family structures are at odds with these.