What Is A Man? or, Your Input Needed
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Since posting about Abraham sacrificing Isaac, I’ve been thinking about how to help Boy 13 transition from boyhood to manhood. Tribal cultures do it with a great deal of ritual and fanfare, but we’ve lost something in modern society. Generally speaking, there’s no instruction, no training for boys on how to become men.
Oh, sure, you can find some training and even some ceremony if you go look for it, but it’s not an integral, organic part of modern western society. Boys simply age, and then one day they’re magically men. At 21 in the US, anyone can legally buy and drink alcohol, regardless of how childish he may still be and even if he knows nothing about alcohol or its effects. Because he’s magically a man. (Or she’s magically a woman.)
I think I was shortchanged by this lack of training. In fact, only in the embarrassingly recent past have I begun to wonder what the essential traits of manhood are and how to develop them. How to teach them.
I asked Boy 13, “How will you know when you’re a man?”
“When I get married, I guess.”
That’s kind of what I thought, but I don’t think it quite worked out that way.
I’d love to hear about what your kids think. When you ask them “What is a man?” or “How will you know when you’re a man,” or some other variation, what is their reply?
In a future post I’ll ask what YOU think it means to be a man.
July 1st, 2008 at 7:57 pm
Dg4 said, “I don’t know.” And then he thought about it and said, “When we have kids or when we get married.” I found his response interesting in that it was similar to boy 13s and Dg4 is very young. If our boys learn this very early on, can it be true that it doesn’t change much in 9 years?
July 2nd, 2008 at 11:45 am
Curious, indeed. Maybe Dg4 is a super smart 4 year old!
July 2nd, 2008 at 5:06 pm
My eldest son (12) said: “… when you’re thirteen.”
Youngest son (8) said, “I just look down.” “What do you mean? I asked (fearing the answer, but it was ok). “I look down and see how tall I am.”