Supporting boys and men all year round

Some­times I won­der how the world would be if we nor­malised vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty for, and sus­pend­ed judge­ment of men. What if we be­came more com­mit­ted to the idea of rais­ing more com­pas­sion­ate men, mov­ing away from the stereo­types in­to which men have been pi­geon­holed, be­cause too of­ten we em­pha­sise de­viance rather than de­vel­op­ment?

In­ter­na­tion­al Men’s Day high­lights the glob­al sup­port that men re­quire. The day is a wor­thy ob­ser­va­tion of ad­vo­ca­cy and cel­e­bra­tion be­cause it pro­vides a plat­form for men to be seen for the pos­i­tive con­tri­bu­tions they make.

This year, the fo­cus was on cel­e­brat­ing men and boys, mak­ing the con­nec­tion that it is in boy­hood val­ues are learned, learn­ing is trans­ferred, and per­son­al­i­ties are shaped. It high­light­ed the stereo­typ­ing as well, which im­pacts cer­tain neg­a­tive be­hav­iours and traits in men, be­gin­ning from the ex­pec­ta­tions we place on boys.

“Men are gen­er­al­ly ex­pect­ed to be strong, ag­gres­sive, and bold,” says planned­par­ent­hood.org. In that ar­ti­cle, they ex­pand­ed the is­sue of male stereo­typ­ing and the ef­fect of the ex­ag­ger­a­tion of that type­cast­ing in­to hy­per­mas­culin­ty.

“Hy­per­mas­cu­line folks ex­ag­ger­ate the qual­i­ties they be­lieve to be mas­cu­line. They be­lieve they’re sup­posed to com­pete with oth­er men and dom­i­nate fem­i­nine folks by be­ing ag­gres­sive, world­ly, sex­u­al­ly ex­pe­ri­enced, in­sen­si­tive, phys­i­cal­ly im­pos­ing, am­bi­tious, and de­mand­ing.”

This, they say, makes re­la­tion­ships be­tween peo­ple dif­fi­cult.

The Eu­ro­pean In­sti­tute for Gen­der Equal­i­ty (EIGE, 2021) says tra­di­tion­al gen­der roles are harm­ful. “Tra­di­tion­al norms ex­pect men to be sole bread­win­ners, self-re­liant, emo­tion­al­ly con­trolled, an­ti-fem­i­nine, tough, and re­luc­tant to seek help.”

This evolves as men hav­ing “low­er lev­els of health-seek­ing be­hav­iour” cor­re­lat­ing with “so­cial con­struc­tion and cul­tur­al rep­re­sen­ta­tions of mas­culin­i­ties.”

“Men’s con­for­mi­ty to tra­di­tion­al mas­culin­i­ty norms can af­fect their health be­hav­iour in mul­ti­ple ways,” says EIGE. “These in­clude an in­abil­i­ty to recog­nise de­pres­sive symp­toms and dis­play­ing atyp­i­cal symp­toms such as vi­o­lence, anger, and sub­stance abuse, as well as re­luc­tance to seek pro­fes­sion­al help.”

Men seek pro­fes­sion­al help “as a last re­sort”, con­sid­er ther­a­pies un­ac­cept­able, and re­sist med­ica­tion and in­ter­ven­tions (eige.eu­ropa.eu/pub­li­ca­tions-re­sources/).

This past week, I had the op­por­tu­ni­ty to lis­ten to men and boys speak to each oth­er in a fam­i­ly en­vi­ron­ment. Women spoke too, of the ways they sup­port men and, in some in­stances, took the op­por­tu­ni­ty to ac­knowl­edge the men who made them feel safe, seen, and pro­tect­ed.

I came away won­der­ing what the re­sult could be if men were the re­cip­i­ents of these sen­ti­ments dai­ly. And as I be­gan writ­ing this in­stal­ment, I did a search us­ing the head­line and came across a beau­ti­ful cel­e­bra­tion that gives so many ex­am­ples of what sup­port for boys looks like if we ex­pect to pro­duce bet­ter men.

I am high­light­ing a post from the In­sta­gram.com ac­count and Face­book ac­count of coach_ben_uk pub­lished on No­vem­ber 19 (In­ter­na­tion­al Men’s Day).

In keep­ing with my idea for to­day, the post be­gan, “Men and boys should be sup­port­ed all year round and not just on one par­tic­u­lar day.”

It quick­ly struck a nerve with the fol­low-up lines: “It’s not easy even be­ing a hu­man in 2025. We all have our dif­fi­cul­ties. Boys and men just in gen­er­al speak about it less, try and cope with it them­selves, and get them­selves in­to even more dif­fi­cul­ties.”

In­deed, life is dif­fi­cult for each of us every day. Some­times when I find my­self be­ing hard, judge­men­tal or crit­i­cal about peo­ple, I must do a hard re­treat to re­mem­ber that my life is not with­out dif­fi­cul­ties, and nei­ther can I be ex­on­er­at­ed from hav­ing cre­at­ed prob­lems in the lives of oth­ers.

The em­pow­er­ment in this post con­tin­ued to dri­ve me to deep re­flec­tions about my cul­pa­bil­i­ty in per­pet­u­at­ing stereo­types.

“I was very lucky enough to be told (by dad) to speak about how I feel, that it is okay to cry, and it’s okay to ask for help,” he wrote. “To not dwell on things, to be proac­tive and take care of my­self. To make my­self a pri­or­i­ty. If it does get tough, then grab a hug, talk about it and fig­ure it out to­geth­er.”

The coach ex­horts fam­i­lies, friends, teach­ers and all teams to im­i­tate this teach­ing, say­ing, “Too many boys and men think it’s weak to speak, think it’s weak to cry and think it’s weak to ask for help. They are all in­cred­i­ble skills we all need to live and be hap­py.”

This af­firm­ing post cel­e­brates a dad teach­ing his son “the pow­er of a smile, of mak­ing a fool of (him)self and em­brac­ing it” and be­ing okay with “mak­ing mis­takes as long as you tried your best.”

I smiled when I read “If you like the colour pink, then wear the colour pink” re­mem­ber­ing that about two decades ago, there was this hype about men wear­ing pink, al­most as though to do so was to step in­to a do­main from which they were ex­clud­ed.

I keep think­ing, why can we not all live our dif­fi­cult lives with­out all this stereo­typ­ing and nor­malise cel­e­brat­ing and sup­port­ing men and boys to ac­cess their emo­tions in bet­ter ways? Maybe if men cried more, some­thing would change. Maybe if we con­tin­ued dai­ly to let them know they are val­ued and loved, the world would ben­e­fit. Who knows?

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