The Silent Cry Of The Boy Child
As with most of my posts,this post has been stashed on the drafts for a while now because i just couldn't find a way to go dissecting about it. It was today after coming across this Chris Evans aka Captain America's tweet that i finally had a eureka!! moment of how to go about it.
Men are mostly considered the emotionally stable and non-erratic sex and not only is that far from the truth,it is also contributing to their continuing deterioration in relations with other people. Men grow up not being taught or even not allowed to explore their emotions and this nescience to expressing themselves is incorrectly interpreted as emotional prowess.
Right from a young age,they have not been taught how to express themselves emotionally as mentioned,be it good or bad emotions. Because of the aforementioned stereotype of them being considered the stable and always logical sex,boys grow up putting the conformation to that stereotype first before their need to emotionally express themselves out of fear of being considered unmanly and emasculated.
The only time a boy child cries, most of the time is when he is physically hurt. When he is emotionally hurt,he would rather resort to either physically expressing his hurt or sulking,but never crying or talking about his hurt. From this young age,this detrimental way of expression is normalized in society as "boys being boys" and nothing is done to remedy the situation and he goes into adolescence and eventually adulthood with the toxic mentality.
The boy child then grows up thinking that the only way for him to express his dissatisfaction either physically or bottling themselves in. When he gets to adulthood and has to relate with other people who are sometimes going to hurt his emotions like in romantic relationships,he still does not know how to express himself in a non violent and communicative way because right from childhood,he has never been taught how to.
I often come across social media posts of women talking about how previous romantic relationships ended because a partner was refusing to express himself. Sometimes it is not an issue of a man "refusing" to express himself but rather him not knowing how to express himself without going against what society deems to be the way a man should express himself when he is hurt. Because he chooses to not be violent,which is one of two ways society expects a man to behave when he is hurt,he chooses the second option which is to not express his discontent at all,leading to the crumbling of the relationship because of the supposed "refusal to open up".
It is not necessarily a problem brought about by bad parenting but by society as a general. It would be unfair to blame parents for not teaching their boy children how to feel and express these feelings because even if a model good parent would instill those values in their children,when they get into the world like at school and other social settings,group thinking would prevail and they will choose to behave like how other boy children around them behave.
Individual good parenting will therefore not make boy children know that feeling and expressing emotions is not a sign of lacking masculinity as long as society upholds that latter opinion. Like the old saying goes,"it takes a whole village to raise a child". To create uniformity and hence avert confusion in their young minds,society as a whole should normalize emotional expression by men.
Children at a young age and adolescence,learn by seeing and socialization. As long as they see adult males around them not expressing themselves or doing so in spurts of violence,they will continue to copy what they see. How can a boy cry when he is emotionally hurt when he has never seen males around him cry when they are also emotionally hurt?
The responsibility therefore falls on the current generation of parents and society, to set an example for the young ones so as to break the generational chain of this mindset. It may be hard to teach an old dog new tricks but it it has to be done,for the good of the upcoming generation.Otherwise the cycle of males choosing to always either violently express their dissatisfaction or not doing so at all hence creating unhealthy relations with other people will keep going on for generations to come.
Men are mostly considered the emotionally stable and non-erratic sex and not only is that far from the truth,it is also contributing to their continuing deterioration in relations with other people. Men grow up not being taught or even not allowed to explore their emotions and this nescience to expressing themselves is incorrectly interpreted as emotional prowess.
Right from a young age,they have not been taught how to express themselves emotionally as mentioned,be it good or bad emotions. Because of the aforementioned stereotype of them being considered the stable and always logical sex,boys grow up putting the conformation to that stereotype first before their need to emotionally express themselves out of fear of being considered unmanly and emasculated.
The only time a boy child cries, most of the time is when he is physically hurt. When he is emotionally hurt,he would rather resort to either physically expressing his hurt or sulking,but never crying or talking about his hurt. From this young age,this detrimental way of expression is normalized in society as "boys being boys" and nothing is done to remedy the situation and he goes into adolescence and eventually adulthood with the toxic mentality.
The boy child then grows up thinking that the only way for him to express his dissatisfaction either physically or bottling themselves in. When he gets to adulthood and has to relate with other people who are sometimes going to hurt his emotions like in romantic relationships,he still does not know how to express himself in a non violent and communicative way because right from childhood,he has never been taught how to.
I often come across social media posts of women talking about how previous romantic relationships ended because a partner was refusing to express himself. Sometimes it is not an issue of a man "refusing" to express himself but rather him not knowing how to express himself without going against what society deems to be the way a man should express himself when he is hurt. Because he chooses to not be violent,which is one of two ways society expects a man to behave when he is hurt,he chooses the second option which is to not express his discontent at all,leading to the crumbling of the relationship because of the supposed "refusal to open up".
It is not necessarily a problem brought about by bad parenting but by society as a general. It would be unfair to blame parents for not teaching their boy children how to feel and express these feelings because even if a model good parent would instill those values in their children,when they get into the world like at school and other social settings,group thinking would prevail and they will choose to behave like how other boy children around them behave.
Individual good parenting will therefore not make boy children know that feeling and expressing emotions is not a sign of lacking masculinity as long as society upholds that latter opinion. Like the old saying goes,"it takes a whole village to raise a child". To create uniformity and hence avert confusion in their young minds,society as a whole should normalize emotional expression by men.
Children at a young age and adolescence,learn by seeing and socialization. As long as they see adult males around them not expressing themselves or doing so in spurts of violence,they will continue to copy what they see. How can a boy cry when he is emotionally hurt when he has never seen males around him cry when they are also emotionally hurt?
The responsibility therefore falls on the current generation of parents and society, to set an example for the young ones so as to break the generational chain of this mindset. It may be hard to teach an old dog new tricks but it it has to be done,for the good of the upcoming generation.Otherwise the cycle of males choosing to always either violently express their dissatisfaction or not doing so at all hence creating unhealthy relations with other people will keep going on for generations to come.
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