Aaron Gouveia - Raising Boys to Be Good Men: A Parents Guide to Bringing up Happy Sons in a World Filled with Toxic Masculinity

Copyright 2020 by Aaron Gouveia

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2020932654

Cover design by Erin Seaward-Hiatt

Cover photo credit: iStockphoto

Print ISBN: 978-1-5107-4941-2

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-5107-4942-9

Printed in the United States of America

Dedicated to MJ, Will, Sam, and Tommy. Im a better father, husband, and person because of you. I love you with all my heart.

To my mom, who was always the voice of compassion and kindnesseven when I didnt want to hear it.

To my dad, who is my best friend and everything a great dad should be.

Table of Contents

RAISING BOYS TO BE GOOD MEN

Introduction

When Youre Part of the Problem

W HEN I BECAME A FATHER IN 2008, I HAD NEVER ENCOUN tered the term toxic masculinity . Although Google searches for the term increased after the 2017 social movement of #MeToo when women in Hollywood reported Harvey Weinsteins crimes, and public exposure to the phrase spiked to peak levels when Gillette released its now infamous commercial in January 2019 criticizing toxic masculinity, I first heard about it in 2011. I had just accepted a part-time editor position with the Good Men Project and was spending countless hours reading essays by feminist authors. I rolled my eyes initially and silently lamented the pussification of America, bristling at the thought that my strong, manly son would be feminized to the point of demonization. Which is ironic, since, you know, that reaction was an example of classic toxic masculinity.

But when I stopped and listened to the people in my life, who are far more intelligent and thoughtful than I am, I realized something fairly disconcertingnot only is toxic masculinity real, I was living it out on a daily basis and running the risk of passing that mindset on to my three sons.

Thats why, when my publisher suggested I write a book on raising boys in the age of toxic masculinity, the first thing out of my mouth was, I think youve got the wrong guy. I guarantee that if you tell anyone who knew me in college that I would be writing this book many years later, theyd laugh. Then theyd get really confused and angry, because I had been representative of the problem for years (and still am, at times).

Back in 2008, I remember getting upset when my wife put pink socks on my infant son because I was worried it might make other people think he was gay or effeminate. I didnt want any of my boys to be baptized, at least in part because I didnt like the idea of them in a christening dress (and also because of the Catholic Churchs rampant child abuse and decades of cover-ups; but thats a different book). I would only shop in the blue-colored boy toy aisle, I scolded my oldest for throwing a baseball like a girl, and I frequently used the phrase man up in a way that was unfortunately devoid of irony.

All to say that writing a book about a problem I had clearly contributed to for a long time felt like an instant no-go and massively hypocritical.

But the flip side of that argument is: who better to reach people potentially open to change than a convert? Just like I wouldnt want to read a book about getting sober from an author who has never had a drink in their lives, maybe all my (many, many, many ) past mistakes might be recognized by readers who are in the same boat. The hope is that my experience will resonate and help readers take stock of the situation so we can start to build critical mass and fix this problem.

And yes, make no mistake, whats happening with boys and men today is a problem. A massive one thats silently and insidiously at the heart of so many societal ills. When I first shared the title of this book, Raising Boys to Be Good Men , a few transgender people in my circle of friends correctly pointed out that not all kids who are born male grow up to become men. I understand the criticism. But, the other side of the story is that my goal of writing this book isnt just to teach boys to grow up to be good people; its about bringing them up in an environment of toxic masculinity where they must learn to survive a culture that makes dangerous assumptions and saddles them with superfluous baggage based solely on their genitals. In that way, I hope my transgender friends and I are in agreement, and I hope this book will capture the nuance that the book title cant.

Ever look at the totality of mass shootings and pinpoint the common denominator? Virtually all men. In an FBI list of active shooter incidents in the United States from 2000 to 2017, 241 out of 250 incidents identified involved male shooters. A majority of them white, many of them suffering from untreated or undertreated mental illness, and most of them just angry at women. In fact, while analyzing mass shootings from 2009 to 2018, the nonprofit Everytown for Gun Safety found that 54 percent of perpetrators had shot a current or former intimate partner or family member. These are angry men with no coping mechanisms other than violence to express that rage.

The #MeToo movement? Men are overwhelmingly the perpetrators, using their systemic privilege and power as license to manipulate, harass, and abuse women to serve their own ends. These men do so without even thinking about it because it has always been the practiced norm, safeguarded by other men in power in almost every industry.

The onslaught of heartbeat bills to weaken and even destroy Roe v. Wade? Legislation is perpetrated by mostly male legislators to criminalize the perfectly safe and legal medical procedure of abortion and strip women of bodily autonomy, usually without even knowing how the biological anatomy theyre restricting works.

The gender wage gap? (A 2019 PayScale study finds women making 79 cents to every dollar that a similarly qualified man makes.) Boys falling behind girls academically? Boys and men not seeking mental health treatment because of the idiotic notion that talking about your feelings is something only women do? According to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, men are committing suicide at a rate 3.54 times higher than women. All these problems and moreits all part and parcel of toxic masculinity, and it all has to stop because it is crippling our boys.

I learned this firsthand one day in October 2018 when my middle son, Sam, then a five-year-old who had just started kindergarten, came home from school in shambles. He had been teased and bullied by the children in his class because he had had the audacity to wear red nail polish to school. Despite having done this in preschool for eighteen months prior to that day, with zero problems at all, once kindergarten hit, Sam was now dealing with a larger pool of kids from all kinds of backgrounds who were clearly already well-versed in traditional gender roles and they did not take kindly to a boy stepping into the realm of feminine nail polish. He was told that nail polish is only for girls, to take it off immediately, and to never wear it again because boys dont do that. Up to that point, Sam had had no shame about painting his fingernails as it was something he had always done with his grandmother, my mom, a former manicurist. But after just one day of teasing and ridicule, he was ready to abandon it for fear of being seen as a girl.