Boys Will Be Boys...

Recently, there has been a lot of talk about gun violence. The tragedy in Aurora, CO, and the most recent incident in Newtown, CT have left people reeling and have resulted in everything from a call for a stricter set of rules on gun ownership to more widespread access to public mental health care. All of these are legitimate points of view, and this issue must be handled with care in order to protect our children, our freedoms, and indeed, our country.

This post is not meant to address gun control or mental health. I am not calling for stricter or looser gun control, nor am I supporting either side of the gun issue. What I hope to point out is a disturbing trend that I think is being overlooked by many experts, and goes beyond the simple issue of who can or cannot buy a gun. I think that the violence that we are seeing is a symptom of a more fundamental issue that we in the western world are afraid to address.

The fact is that in every major incident of violence in the last ten years, at least every one that has been widely publicized, the perpetrators have been young males in their late teens to mid-twenties. This is a significant statistic given that, according to mentalhealth.org, when it comes to mental illness, even violent mental illness, women are diagnosed and treated almost twice as frequently as men (29% percent as opposed to 17%).

This would suggest that there is another factor that supersedes mental illness that pushes these men to violence. And lets be honest, there is no shortage of disadvantages presented to boys and young men in today's society.  Over 40% of American children have parents who are divorced, and 20-25% of those kids show signs of not dealing well with the change. Of single parents with kids under 18, 85% are single mothers with children who do not have regular contact with their fathers, and 45% of those women were never married in the first place. Considering these statistics as well as the fact that boys are more likely to be physically and/or sexually abused, we start to see a frightening picture of the context in which our boys are growing up.

But even all of these factors do not fully account for the fact that all the major school violence incidents have been perpetrated by young men. There remains one major detail that is overlooked more than any other. In our post-modern pharmacological society WE ARE NOT LETTING OUR BOYS BE BOYS.  In fact, we're trying to turn our boys into girls.

Now, before you get on my case about somehow being sexist, think about it.  All the behaviors that young boys exhibit that distinguish them from their female classmates are being forcibly suppressed. Whether it be rougher play, tactile exploration, louder volumes, higher levels of energy, or even playing with trucks and guns over dolls and princesses, we are taking healthy behavior and telling our young boys that its wrong.

Don't believe me? Let's look at the facts. As of 2010, 52 million children aged 3-17 were diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). 12% of all of boys in the United States were diagnosed similarly. Most if not all of these were prescribed Ritalin. We're also prescribing antidepressants to boys as early as preschool nearly 400% more frequently than just a few years ago. Not to mention the myriad of other drugs such as Aderol being used by adolescents to focus, as well as the increasing amounts of human growth hormone (HGH) in the water and our meat. This heavy drug influx has been connected to rising rates of suicide among teens and young adults as well as deepening depression throughout life.

So answer me this: Is there really a problem with all of these children, or are we simply finding a problem just because we have looked for one? I don't think these boys are disordered. I think they are just being boys.

We have also seen a trend among parents today who are trying to change the behavior of their children through negative reinforcement of what they call "gendered behavior". All of this is in the attempt to stop our children from being "forced" into gender roles in our society, but it runs the risk of doing away with any gender identity at all. This is not a good thing, and it does not work in the long run.

Take, for example, the story of David Reimer, who was raised as a girl after a botched circumcision. His parents followed the ideas of sociologist, Dr John Money, who thought that nurture was more powerful than nature, and that boys could be raised as girls if the parents so chose. He was wrong. David, raised Brenda, still thought, acted, played, and reasoned as a boy, despite the use of sex hormones and sex reassignment surgery.  He did eventually began to live as a man of his own volition, but tragically committed suicide at the age of 38. As it turned out, the majority of Dr Money's subjects who underwent the same process ended their lives as well.

Now, I admit, this is an extreme example, but there are still parents who encourage their little boys to dress as girls and to do more feminine things, and when the other children at school notice, they are taken aside and told that they need to be comfortable with this choice.

Only genderless person I've ever seen... Just sayin'

Now here is where I may make my sociology professors angry. I'm here to say that this way of living and raising your children is ill-conceived. Boys are boys. Period. Their masculinity, however juvenile, is not simply some external characteristic that can be changed willy-nilly. Nor is it some state of mind that can be adjusted with the right mix of drugs and negative reinforcement. Their gender is not socially constructed. In fact, the fact that they are genetically XY penetrates every aspect of their being, from their brain chemistry and how rough they play, to how they relate with others and what kinds of things they will eventually come to enjoy or despise.

So, instead of trying to intervene and stopping our children from identifying or acting out who they are as young boys, we actually make a concerted effort to invest in our children and actually show them what it means to be a real man. I would be willing to bet that those poor souls who took the live of others or their own lives in acts of gun violence in Connecticut or Colorado didn't have the kind of positive support from male role models that they needed. Maybe they were mentally unbalanced, but how were they helped? Were they encouraged and told that they were cared about, or were they simply given drugs with no other type of support? We can't simply blame teachers or cruel classmates. Nor can we look at young boys who are acting out as being diseased. We need positive male role models who will man up and teach their children what it is to be a man and deal with their problems.

Away with this pablum of a gender neutral society. Show what it is to be a man in service to others. Show what it is to develop virtue not only towards others, but in relation to oneself. Encourage other men to invest in people and help them to grow. It doesn't matter if they are your own age or if they are a child. Take the time to develop your own masculinity by helping someone else develop theirs. We can only speculate, but I bet those gunmen would have benefited from such a simple act of love. Hopefully we can take steps toward preventing such acts in the future.

St Joseph, model of manliness, pray for us
God in Heaven, bless us