What Makes A Man A Man

Yesterday I took Little Man to the playground down the street from our house. Little Man loves the playground, and since its on about a block away from our home I try and fit it into our schedule as often as possible just to keep him active. While we were their I watched him and his interactions with the other children, particularly one little boy, about the same age, who was completely infatuated with one of those tractor things that sit on a huge metal spring so the kid riding it can bounce back and forth and achieve a mild form of whiplash while screaming like a banchie with joy (ahh, to be young). Little Man watched this boy for about 5 minutes before tragedy struck. The boy lost his hand on the tractors handle and fell forward over the handle bars onto his head and onto his back. He wasn't really hurt, just shocked. He ran to his mother for comfort, but she stopped before he could run into her arms and hug her. "are you hurt?" she asked, the boy replied that his head hurt a little but not too bad, and the mother told him to stop crying and go back to playing. The boy did so, with his head hung low. My son saw this, and decided to ask me about it when we had dinner later that night during dinner. "why did that mommy do that daddy? he was just scared and wanted a hug" he asked. I was at a loss for words, how do I explain this to my son without making him self-conscious? I told him that some parents think they need to toughen their sons up to make them into "real men" and that I strongly disagreed. I told him that he can always come to me when he cries, and that he should never be afraid to admit when he's feeling scared, vulnerable, angry, sad, lonely, etc. He was glad to hear this, and went back to wolfing down his sloppy-joe with ravenous gusto. This got me to begin thinking about the message that we send our sons about what it means to be a man. The typical stereotype of a "man's man" is a john wayne-like character with muscles and an emotional lobotomy davoid of nurturing instinct or a sense of empathy. I made a conscious decision to send a different message to my son that night. I decided that I would let him know that their is more than one way to be a man. A man is someone who is willing to do anything, and I mean ANYTHING for his wife, his children, and his family. A man can be a rough-edged truck driver driving around the country, away from his family for extended periods, just so he kids will be able to get and education and live a better life than he had, as well as a stay-at-home dad who spends his days doing "womans work" so that his children will have someone waiting for them when they come home from school. I have already begun to do this by bringing my son to the youth center that I work at, so he can see that men can make a career out of listening, caring, and understanding just like a woman. My advice is that if you have a son to try and expose him to unconventional models of masculinity as often as you can. Boys pick up messages about what makes a man a man through numerous mediums, such as TV, movies, family, friends, etc. Now, you cant choose their family or their friends for them, but you can monitor what they watch on TV and movies to a certain extent. Thats not to say that you shouldn't let little johnny see the new Die Hard movie, just that you should try and balance it out with something like The Pursuit of Happyness (granted, he will have to be older than my little guy to get the message, but its a fantastic example of what I'm talking about). Remember, we are raising the future, we decide what its gonna look like, and I'm gonna do my part to try and make it look better than our present :)