I intend to the purchase Christina Hoff Sommers book. You both deserve much praise for your brave and sensible stance on the issues surrounding the raising a boy into a man.

Missing from your discussion (but perhaps not from Christina’s schema) is the most important
maturation point that triggers the metamorphosis’s of boys into men. It functions like a latent tropism waiting for its trigger.

It is the puberty rite.

This is a practice that is universal in “primitive” societies and pre-modern societies. It is absolutely indispensable, and has been amputated from our culture with pathological results. The puberty rite is a trial, preferably scary and difficult, performed by older men who symbolically come and remove the boy from his mother’s arms and take him off to join a club of older men. Some tribes knock out a tooth, supplying a trial through a painful passage. But this is an initiation into the private club of manhood. After completing this the youth had been bonded to the man-group. He can be seen to stand more erect, to have become a “gentlemen” and warriors (an knightly archetype every normal boy aspires to emulate).

Until the draft was eliminated boot camp effectively substituted for this abandoned practice, although 13 or 14 is a much more normal and effective age for the passage. Boot Camp still performs this functions for the volunteers, although the intrusion of women into the same platoons as men has degraded the experience for men. Being thought a Neanderthal inhibits most men from admitting it. They will tell other men in secret conversations of the effects of this disaster.

It is too much to expect that most women will fully sense the necessity for this process with the deep certainty that many men do. Men communicate as richly as do women, but are minimalists with words and florid with actions. I am seventy and have two accomplished sons, two grandsons by my first marriage. Now in my dotage a third brilliant new son blesses my life who is almost three years old. He communicates like a 6th grader. His mother is his life’s center but it is already perceptible that I am his compass.

Since I believe we are dealing with an unalterable process for the most quick and effective transition to manhood I believe that Men Only Clubs (etc.) and the Puberty Rite of Initiation should be restored.

Just discovered your blog after listening to your pod cast. Don’t know how long you’ve been on, but look forward to listening again when I can.

I had purchased the Dangerous Book for Boys recently only to learn that I missed out on quite a bit while growing up. I plan to buy several more so I can give them out to some young men I know as gifts. I was suprised to find your pod cast talking about the book so soon after buying it. I can not quite find the words to express my thoughts on the subject. But I turn 45 this year and can only say that I grew up being taught things (in school, etc.) that never seemed quite right to me. Anyway, I will be looking for your book, It Takes a Parent. It should be a very good read. Thanks!

ben foster and ellen page…

Thanks for the nice read, keep up the interesting posts…..