by Niobe Way / Reviewed by Jack Harris
Niobe Way tells us that we are not listening. Our fingers are in our ears. We have not asked the right questions, and if we did, we do not really want to hear the answers. Having spent over 30 years researching boys, in this book Niobe Way shares compelling and convincing insights that it is our social system and its culture that is to blame for our troubled boys, not boys themselves, and not feminism either. It is our models of American masculinity that emphasizes detachment over connection, strength over sensitivity, toughness over tenderness, all regulated and enforced by the fear of the feminine. In her books, based on grounded interview research, Way has demonstrated that boys are desperate for close, emotionally intimate friendships, and freedom of expressions, but these are thwarted by a distorted cultural environment that has things upside-down. This crisis of connection is based on the twisted cultural framework that boys and men must navigate as they enact masculinity, resulting in startlingly high rates of stress, loneliness, depression, and violence across the spectrum of class and race.
If you do not believe this, look at the data. Men’s Studies’ scholars have documented much of this repeatedly, so Way’s book is not singular in its reporting of the symptoms. What distinguishes this book is its compelling analyses of the cultural context that has led to this grotesque. Way asks that we all look in the American cultural mirror. Through her research she concludes that the boys reveal that they yearn for connection but are trapped in a dysfunctional culture in which they must act out a caricature of masculinity, a mask of masculinity, leading to self-alienation, and harm to themselves and others. Our institutions, our families, our schools, our work, all enforce this caricature of male personhood that condemns boys and men from developing empathy for others and for their own selves, valuing a false independence that ironically fosters isolation, and an emotional hardness that conceals expressive vulnerability and prevents real connection. While girls are nurtured to embrace an ethic of care, boys separate and are hardened. Looking in this mirror is not pretty. It is not natural, it is not “boys will be boys.” Way shows that our society and its culture are fundamentally out of alignment with our own human nature.
Will Way’s book fall on deaf ears? Why should this book be any different? Way presents several compelling examples of alternative cultural paths in our and other societies, based on the science on human nature and a healthy social psychology of human needs and potential that do not prioritize dominance. Embracing those paths, and a more humane expression of our personhood, would result for boys, men, for all of us, in emotional richness, curiosity, creativity in self-expression, and intimacy. This path enables men to enjoy care and connection, to nurture and be nurtured, similar to what women have been traditionally encouraged to do.
The book aligns with The Sixth Level and our critique of the patriarchal social system. It shares the fundamental social psychology, expressed historically by women, and not out of reach of men, that empathy, and the ethic of care, demonstrated through mutuality, ingenuity, justness, and intrinsic motivation, provides a foundation for healthier human relationships in which all of us can thrive.