My son’s birthday is approaching, and one of my gifts will be to continually evaluate what kind of man I’m presenting to him. I fear being a poor example because I want him to grow up loving people, honoring his mother, respecting his elders and everyone after that. I want him to be a bold man, to be what he is. I want him to have a bright boyhood full of fun and laughter, a phase that leads to a young adulthood that exposes him to greatness, that calls him to greatness. I want him to be so much better than I am, than my mentors have been, than the exemplars before him–even though we’re aren’t “all that bad.”
I don’t think being a man is easy and I’m already finding that bringing one up has its challenges. Telling him how to respond when people speak to him. Walking with him by the hand so we can see new things approaching really slowly since once of us moves slower than the other. Encouraging him to explore but not so much that he jumps off a balcony. Watching him pull the oven door down upon his head. And then watching him go toward it again later, just brushing against it that second time as he remembers the knot on his head from just a few weeks ago. Yeah, I did it. It’s called Michael’s method of child-proofing.
I cannot imagine parenting without all my smart and generous family and friends around me and Dawn. I cannot imagine. With that said, I read something that has me turning over my role as a father and my role as a guy, as a man. The question, “What makes a man?” stands out from a piece I read over at the WSJ.
The article talks about pre-adulthood, that phase that’s certainly post-high school and often post-college when young adults are earning and spending money and making their own decisions. They are deciding what they want to do and what they don’t, including whether or not to clean the kitchen or take out the garbage. Young adults, males and females, are deciding how to pay bills, how to develop themselves, how to become. And, though the article is about men, women go through this as well. I have a niece who’s growing up, and at times it is painful to watch. But this post is about boys and men and something in between.
I’m wondering how you view manhood and what it takes to become a man. I’m wondering if you have a real clear approach to raising the boys in your life so that they become good men. I’m wondering why some guys are less motivated to get up and do things like take care of the people they love.
I grew up with good models, including my father who didn’t live with us. He taught me. My mother taught me. Other “fathers” taught me. It’s foreign to me not to wash and cook and take care of myself, almost to the point where I find myself saying “I don’t need you” because I’m so good at that self-care thing, if that makes sense. I’m not the guy who would just watch a woman do things for me. I never have been. My mother taught me to iron my shirts and she stopped because I started. I have other issues, ones we don’t need to discuss in this post. But this article reminds me that I can’t take for granted what becoming a man is and that’s done these days. Seeing my boy grow up tells me the same.
Questions for you: How do you think we can continue to encourage boys to become men? And let’s not get nasty. Let’s be constructive. Any thoughts? Is the project of bringing up a boy different from the one years ago?
Michael Washington 
Great topic, Michael, and one close to my heart! Growing up, i absorbed all the negative messages about Men and Masculinity. None of my background prepared me to raise a son into a man. Three books have started to educate me and definitely changed my perspective…The Wonder of Boys (Michael Gurian), Wild at Heart (John Eldredge) and Bringing Up Boys (James Dobson). First and foremost, maleness is not bad. It is not something that needs to be “feminized” to be positive and socially acceptable. God created male and female distinctively different and that’s good. I know that my attitude towards men will affect my son. So it started with my own attitude/heart change towards men. I want my son to be proud of his masculinity and what he can distinctly offer to God, to a woman, his children, his community and his country. As a mother, I delight in my little boy’s rambunctiousness, his physicality, his absolute need to run in wide open spaces. He’s not “bad” because he keeps breaking things…instead, he has some innate curiosity to see how things go together. I hope and pray that my attitude helps my son grow into a man who knows who he is and doesn’t feel like he has to apologize for being born male.
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These are questions I ask myself daily probably, many I still have not totally answered. Raising a 16 year old son with no father, the need for clear answers is more dire than in his younger years. I teach him what I know about being responsible and respectful. I surround him with a village who can impart and instruct (although i would really like to see more interaction). I do this realizing that I can’t teach him to be a man by claiming to know what that is, because I don’t. Although my father grew up in our home with my mother, 5 siblings and I; he did very little by way of being there for us. There was very little support, care, love, guidance, affection or instrucion demonstrated towards us- so thats not even a frame of reference I can use. There have been some deliberate steps I have taken in rearing, training and loving my children (I also have a 22 yr old daughter). However, oftentimes I wonder if I have given sufficiently to prepare them for adulthood.
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There is so much confusion about what it means to be a man these days, and so little attention paid to this in any formal way by men. My dad did the best he could, and what I got from him was that gentleness and thoughtfulness are as important as strength or masculinity, and that respect for elders should come from love rather than fear. He had clear expectations of me to become a contributing member of society, to get an education, and to do everything I do to the best of my abilities.
Even though I had many outward signs of adulthood (education, professional career, marriage, mortgage), I chose to remain an emotional adolescent through my 20’s, 30’s and part of my 40’s – I was unstoppable in that regard. At the the age of 48 I find I am still working on becoming a man.
If I had a son, I would do my best to instill in him a quiet confidence and a love of God, and show him how to be gentle, thoughtful and caring, yet strong and direct, respectful of women and his elders, responsible and playful. But I would be unable to control the outcome, and I would pray that he has more sense than I had.
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As a man firmly in that 20’s confusion and maturation, I have been more and more asking this question of myself “what does it mean to be a man?”. It is no small question, and our society, culture, and families tend to do a poor job overall of answering that question for boys and young men. I have also read “Wild at Heart” and it helped me a good deal. I think one affirming thing is just to know that it is okay to be a man. That it is okay to be who God made me. Sometimes that can be hard, especially as a tall, white male trying to live in a multicultural environment (and not having white-guilt for who I am) and a culture where men are often portrayed as crass, irresponsible sex-crazed greedy boy-men. The upshot is that being any kind of real man can really stand out. It is sad that our culture has reached that point.
I suppose that last point reaches into the need for self-confidence, a trait I am trying to build in myself, or rather let God build. This is not unique to men, but in order to be an effective man, I believe we need to have confidence in ourselves, in our abilities, in our resilience and resolve, and especially in our Savior. I would think raising a young man would include the task of instilling this in him, through encouragement and allowing him to take risks and handle the consequences, to take on challenges and test himself against them. And very importantly: to have a solid, unshakable knowledge of his identity as a man, which flows from both his earthly father and his Heavenly Father. I think a turning point for me was realizing that in Christ, I am not just “becoming” a man: I already AM a man. Just as we are being saved and yet are already fully saved.
Build a desire to be a godly man in him. I am not a father yet, and I imagine that no matter how much you do, you cannot change the weaving God has wrought in another’s soul. That said, I have always head that true leaders lead by example (I mean, look at Jesus!). So to do our best to be men of God, to be TRUE to that and not compromise will be the most helpful.
A more recent lesson for me on what men need is courage. A man need’s courage to face this broken world, and even more importantly in my mind: to face the demons, sins, shortcomings, and other tar in himself. We who have Christ need bow to fear of these remnants of sin in ourselves, but fear indeed there will be. We need courage to face those things. For ourselves, for the sake of those we love, and for our Father. How do you build courage in a young man? I am not certain. Perhaps by keeping a careful eye on what he is afraid of, and encouraging him to tackle it head on, to wrestle his fear to the ground and emerge the victor.
A couple of last thoughts: In the end a man must learn many lessons first hand for himself. These will come as often in his 20’s and 30’s and beyond as in his first two decades of life. As much as guiding can help, in the end the goal needs to be to set this man up to take on unknown challenges by himself (well, with God as well of course). To watch a son turn into a man who has confidence and wisdom and endurance, who then can turn around and greet you as a brother in manhood and in Christ, in addition to being your son, that would be a grand thing indeed.
Finally, (actually, firstly) I would pray for humility and wisdom. Humility serves us well to keep us relying on God and to treat others with respect and grace, and prevents us from thinking too highly of ourselves when God grants us other gifts and does His work to turn us into really awesome men. Wisdom (it’s source in God) will enable us to make good decisions regarding choices we must make that effect our loved ones.
Anyway, those are my two cents!
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You all have given some really insightful, if humble, points. I appreciate reading pieces of your experiences as you’ve written them. I think both Lynetta and Andrew bring out this tentativeness to the matter, that we can’t quite know for sure what to expect. Bryon, to hear you talk about control is quite penetrating. Dana, I’m going to print a t-shirt to change into when my boy breaks things, one that says, “He’s not bad because he breaks things”!
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