Raising Real Men

George Will’s column in the current issue of Newsweek asks, “What are today’s ‘basement boys’ doing down there? Perhaps watching Friends and Seinfeld reruns about a culture of extended youth utterly unlike the world of young adults in previous generations.”  He looks at a new book by Penn State historian Gary Cross:

Permissive parenting, Cross says, made children less submissive, and the decline of deference coincided with the rise of consumer and media cultures celebrating the indefinite retention of the tastes and habits of childhood. The opening of careers to talented women has coincided with the attenuation of male role models in popular culture: In 1959, there were 27 Westerns on prime-time television glamorizing male responsibility.

Cross says the large-scale entry of women into the workforce made many men feel marginalized, especially when men were simultaneously bombarded by new parenting theories, which cast fathers as their children’s pals, or worse: In 1945, Parents magazine said a father should “keep yourself huggable” but show a son the “respect” owed a “business associate.”

All this led to “ambiguity and confusion about what fathers were to do in the postwar home and, even more, about what it meant to grow up male.” …

I see this as two sides of a single issue – respect.  Young men are allowed if not encouraged to view authorities without respect, at home, in the classroom, around town.  Police are not The Long Arm of The Law, they’re “community helpers.”  Teachers are cast as “facilitators.”  Parents are–well, you know how parents and especially fathers are portrayed in the media.

And in a world without defined pathways of respect and place, some young men lose their vision and ambition.  If you reach a position of responsibility (parent, teacher, leader of any sort) and all you have to expect is the same kind of trouble and backtalk you were allowed to toss around when you were a pimply kid, then why bother?  Why not just sponge, veg, live the adolescent dream until it can’t be sustained any longer?

We can fix this.  Boys want someone to look up to, and they respond well to situations where they know their role in the scheme of things.  It will take parents willing to be the parents, though, who both expect respect from their children and demonstrate it themselves in their relationships.  We’re caught in the same trap, you know, and if we want our sons to grow up differently, we may have to change our own attitudes about God-given, properly constituted authority.

Which reminds me – April 15 is coming, isn’t it?

Especially if you’re a mouse.

Okay, take this for whatever it’s worth. Researchers working with mice at the University of Missouri (Columbia) have found differences in the way the placenta responds to maternal diet depending on the gender of the unborn baby. It appears that a placenta for a female baby adapts to changes in the mother’s diet better than the placenta for a male baby, allowing more potentially harmful substances to pass through to the male. On the other hand, another researcher suggests that the male fetuses’ early exposure to harmful nutrients may help them them adapt to a high-fat diet later in life.

The bottom line may be simply that we don’t know everything yet concerning life in the womb, and whether you’re the mother of a man or a mouse, pay attention to what you’re eating while pregnant.  Not such a revolutionary idea, is it?

Introduction

Hal and Melanie Young have six sons and two daughters—the six boys came first. Their children range from 2 years old to out of high school. They speak on parenting, educating your children and family policy issues among other subjects. You can read more about their ministry at RaisingRealMen.com.

Summary

Divided into two parts, the Young’s first offer biblical foundations for how they parent their boys (and, yes, sometimes even their girls). The introduction to part one looks at the virtues of being a man and how God intended for men to be, well, men. Chapter one is an apologetic for our boys having the right set of heroes to look up to. First and foremost must always be Jesus Christ, then dad. After that, you, as the parent must help your son to be discerning as to who they look up to.

Chapter two looks at the biblical foundations for a boys sense of adventure and boldness while chapter three offers tips on how to teach your sons to stand for something while learning how to be responsible. A helpful chapter is the chapter on boys and guns and what the Bible says about the subject.

This section concludes with chapters on what it means to be a servant leader and how to train your boys to be citizens with a proper understanding of their role as a citizen both here and in Heaven.

After having laid the biblical foundation for their parenting, Hal and Melanie offer practical tips on how to actually parent your sons. The first chapter in this section looks at how you should teach your boys diligently and without ceasing. The second chapter in this section looks to how to teach the boys to use money.

An extremely helpful chapter is the one entitled “Your Own School for Boys.” In this chapter, the authors detail major key differences in the development of boys when it comes to education. Basically, this chapter helps to keep parents from sounding the “freak out” alarm when little Johnny doesn’t learn as well as little Timmy.

In two practical chapters, they look at the misconception that chivalry is a thing of the past and that working in the kitchen is for women. No, you will not scar your boys for life if you make them work in the kitchen! They conclude the book with how to guard your son’s mind from the spiritual battles that will take place in their lives. The last chapter is the guide on how to set your boy free to become a man. Mom’s will definitely want to read this.

Review/Recommendation

The only real issue I had with anything in this book was their section on stewardship and how to teach your sons to use a credit card. They act as though a credit card is inevitable and therefore every child must be taught how to use one. I have not used a credit card in six years. I don’t plan on using a credit card ever again. Anything you can do with a credit card can now be done with a debit card.

Outside of that one issue (and it is really a non-issue), I highly recommend this book to any parent who has a son (or three). I cannot tell you how many times my wife and I, the parents of three boys so far, would say, “Man, I wish we knew someone with similar convictions as us that would allow us to pick their brain on raising our boys.” Well, we now have that brain to be picked.

Hal and Melanie write as though they are sitting at your kitchen table discussing what they have experienced in their 20 years of raising boys and offer their experience to you. They make it a point to declare that “this is what we do” and not that it is the only way to do it. They maintain a humility (boys will do that to you) throughout the whole book.

To read this book once is to plant many seeds in the mind of the parent. To own it and have it at your disposal is to have a watering can with an infinite amount of water to water that seed. This will be a book my wife and I reference again and again.

Terry Delaney

Christian Book Notes

Buy Raising Real Men Now

Monday March 8 - Hillsborough (Portland), Oregon

KUIK 1360 AM  – “The Jeff Kropf Show” – 7:05 a.m. Pacific

Listen live online or find it in your local area

Wednesday March 10 – Cheyenne, Wyoming

KGAB 650 AM - “The Morning Zone” with Dave Chaffin – 7:37 a.m. Mountain

Listen live online or find it in your local area (you may be able to hear it in Denver, too!)

Wednesday March 10 – Long Island, New York

WLIX-FM - “Afternoon Drive” with Allen Cuffey – 5:30 p.m. Eastern

Listen live online or find it in your local area

Michael Thompson, author of Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys, was a featured speaker at the National Association of Independent Schools convention last week. I haven’t read any of his books so I can’t comment or recommend one way or another (I admit I’m put off by the “clever” title of this one). However, blogger Jamie Baker reported on his list of “12 tips for teaching boys” and it makes some interesting reading.

One thing that comes up clearly is that boys, even little guys who still play with Matchbox cars, have some surprisingly consistent and man-like attitudes about the school experience. “Why is this relevant? Don’t waste my time telling me what I already know. Go ahead, impress me — earn my respect. ” How many times have I thought the same thing in school or business situations? We’ve found you can still treat your sons with respect, as young men, while adapting your language and content to an age-appropriate level.

One distinction Thompson draws between boys and men is that boys just aren’t very future-oriented. He says that it’s not that effective to emphasize future cost of failure with younger boys; it’s better to focus on goals and dreams they do comprehend (“You’ll need to understand math if you want to design airplanes”) rather than abstractions like, “You’ll never be a success if life if you don’t shape up.” He says it’s counterproductive to try and shame or embarrass boys into better classroom performance; they are likely to become defensive or dismissive to protect their pride.

I’m not sure about that last point. I’ve taken my share of chiding in “public” on a football field or in a band rehearsal, and it sure encouraged me to get my act together. On the other hand, those were activities that I valued at the time and volunteered for; I might have felt differently if it was public humiliation in a place I didn’t want to be, anyway – like fourth-grade – so maybe the point is true for the classroom situation. He was talking to an audience of schoolteachers and principals, after all.

My husband and I have 3 daughters and one son. When I was still pregnant with our son, I wondered what a baby boy will look like. I imagined that a baby is a baby is a baby. I mistakenly thought that a baby boy and a baby girl won’t have that much of a difference in their bodies except for their genitals.

When I carried my baby son, Flash Boy, for the first time, the very first thing that I noticed about him were his hands. His hands were much larger than the hands of his baby sisters. Next I noticed that his arms were larger, so were his legs and feet. Oh! Even as babies, girls and boys are very different. The weeks after giving birth and on proved more differences. He was very, very active, turning around much earlier than his sisters. It’s as if he couldn’t wait to get moving around and exploring the world around him.

Having raised three girls, I thought my experience with them would be a big help with him. Most of it were but some of my mothering styles were not working with Flash Boy. I had so many questions because he was very different from his three sisters. Second daughter Artsy Princess is a very excitable child, but hubby and I always say, that Flash Boy is 100 times more excitable and active than Artsy Princess.

A lot of my questions about raising up boys have been answered in Raising Real Men – Surviving, Teaching and Appreciating Boys, a very handy book written by parents of six boys and two girls, Hal and Melanie Young. I cannot help but appreciate the way that Hal and Melanie shared their experiences in raising up their boys. Their methods are biblical, practical and full of love. As I read through the book, their love for God, for each other and for their children are fully evident. Some of the topics they spoke of are boys’ need for heroes, handling guns and violent weapons, work, leadership, sports and competition, teaching responsibility, teaching them at home, handling money and bullying.

When the writers first contacted me, they asked me to review and see if their book is applicable to Filipino families. I can say that this book is not only applicable to Filipinos, but it is applicable to each and every family who are raising up boys to become Godly men. Kudos to Hal and Melanie Young for writing this very delightful and insightful book!

Here’s a short anecdote about Flash Boy, now 2 years old. I learned from the Youngs that boys must be allowed to help around the house, that they should be trained early on to help their moms and sisters. One day, I came home from the market with a few bags of goods and a boxful of eggs. When Flash Boy saw me, he immediately came and wanted to help with the box of eggs. I didn’t want to give it to him but he was so insistent that I finally let him have it. He was so proud of himself carrying the box of eggs into the house. I was following closely behind him trying to make sure that he doesn’t drop it. When he saw our helper, he called her and said, “Catch!” and promptly threw the box at her. Both the helper and I screamed that the eggs would break. Seeing that the helper was not able to ‘catch’ the box, he picked it up again and said “Catch!” , once again throwing the box at her. Well, we ended up with half the eggs I bought all cracked open. But to see the value of Flash Boy being allowed to help, I’d gladly buy more boxes of eggs for him to help me carry!

Thanks to the authors, Hal and Melanie Young, for sending me an autographed and free copy of Raising Real Men – Surviving, Teaching and Appreciating Boys.

You can buy this book here.

Watch out for my blog interview with Hal and Melanie Young!

Michelle Padrelanan

Beyond the Silver and the Gold-

A Filipino Family’s Homeschool Journey

Forget the generic “Presidents Day” – this is the real birthday of George Washington, the indispensible man whose presence on the battlefield, in conference, and in the presidency truly made the difference between freedom and failure in the earliest days of the Republic.

One of the best biographies I’ve read on any subject is Joseph Ellis’ His Excellency, George Washington. I reviewed it for Carolina Journal in 2005, and it’s still one of my favorites. You can read it below.

“The Foundingest Father”

George Washington is the original American icon, as close as our pocket change and enigmatic as his monument. Joseph Ellis recalls his own childhood in Alexandria, Va.; the great man, he says, was “ubiquitous … like one of those Jeffersonian truths, self-evident and simply there. And the beauty of all self-evident truths was that no one needed to talk about them. They were so familiar that no one felt obliged to explain why they merited an annual parade.”

Washington has long suffered from biographers “oscillating in a swoonish swing between idolization and evisceration.” Ellis aims for the middle course and hits it squarely. The cold and formidable Washington, so imposing that even close associates drew back from familiarity, emerges as a man of like passions with ourselves.

Why is it, Ellis asks, that Washington was surrounded by men much more brilliant, better-educated, and more politically astute than himself, but was still regarded by contemporaries as the greatest of his generation? Continue reading »

We’ll be on La Crosse Talk with Mike Hayes tomorrow. Listen in on WIZM 1410 AM starting at 8:20 (CST) – you can listen online here.

We’ve done over 20 radio interviews in the past couple of weeks and the number one question we’ve been asked is “What do you mean by real men?” We tell them that it’s not about wrestling alligators or growing chest hair, but it’s about doing your duty and living out the calling of God for your life. It’s about exhibiting the manly virtues. You remember, those out-of-fashion for boys, but still respected things for men: courage, fortitude, boldness, adventurousness – things like that.

Did you read about the young man in California who saw a car run off the road and get stuck on a railroad track? Todd McHugh, 17,  dashed out of his own vehicle and ran to help. He found two girls and a stunned mother who’d fallen asleep at the wheel.  He was helping them out of their car when another passerby started yelling that a train was coming and ran to flag it down. McHugh, the young Good Samaritan, helped the family to shelter behind his truck just seconds before the train totaled their vehicle.

Todd said that he didn’t do more than anyone else would have done, and I wish that were so. That’s the kind of thing a real man does. He sees a need, he shows initiative and courage, he does what needs to be done.

We’ll be on the air with WSBA 910-AM in York, Pennsylvania, tomorrow at 7:08 a.m. And if you’re not getting up that early tomorrow, we’ll be speaking at the CHAP convention in Harrisburg in May!