Raising Good Kids

Raise a Fine Young Man

At Home with our Faith interviewed Michael Gurian, author of a fine new book titled, A Fine Young Man (Bantam Books, 1998). Just as Mary Pipher took a clear-eyed look at the state of adolescent girls in Reviving Ophelia, Gurian has examined the state of teenage boys. He finds that despite their often surly exteriors and aggressive demeanors, teenage males are fragile.

"One of the reasons the male adolescent is so fragile," says Gurian, "is that the brain system and the hormones don’t work in tandem as well as they do in the female. Testosterone is a risk-taking hormone, and he has 20 times more testosterone in his body than his female peer. It’s making him physically more aggressive and risk-taking. The problem is his brain system is more fragile than the female brain. He is less able to process emotions than girls."

What helps? Boys need a lot of emotional nurturing, but maybe not in the way we’re used to thinking. "When you think of emotional nurturing, people tend to think ‘sit down and talk.’ A lot of boys won’t go for that. They’re just not really verbal about their feelings. Some are, but a lot aren’t." What to do instead? Says Gurian, "Maybe we’re going to need to spend time with him sitting in a fishing boat. Even though it’s silent and no one says anything, that’s emotional nurturing for him. Or we’d definitely want to be playing lots of ball with him, lots of games, activities; being with him is emotional nurturing. Even if I never have any deep conversation with him about anything for three hours, what he’s getting is my presence, my admiration, my love. He just doesn’t need as many words as some people think he needs.

"We need other strategies than just the talk model of emotional closeness. We need activity and time spent together. We also need discipline and structure. That’s actually very affectionate for male adolescents. Providing a guy with discipline and structure is actually like providing him with affection. He’ll resist of course, but it’s what he needs." Gurian says religious activity is another means of nurturing a young male. "Prayer is a very emotional activity, and when one is in prayer, one is really being emotional and one is also in a relationship–with God, that’s a relationship."

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