Are we raising mama's boys?

Australian author Nick Adams once told Fox News that the very fabric of our society is in danger because women are no longer allowing men to be men.

“From the left, from the politically correct, we have all these attacks on men. It’s a very hard time to be a man in today’s society,” he argues.

Asked whether this was a reflection that feminism was on the rise, he responds that it was feminism, and basically what feminism has delivered is angry women and feminine men.

Adams explains this feminisation trend in greater detail in another interview.

“All aspects of male culture have been called into question,” Adams says. “Whether it’s gathering around on a Sunday afternoon to watch football with a few friends, whether it is going to the range and shooting some guns, whether it is just being a male,” he says.

Fred Reed, an author and blogger argues in one of his writings that it is time to get women out of the schooling of boys since they are consigning generations of our sons to years of misery and diminished futures.

Recently, a new report was launched in Kenya that paints a grim picture of the boy child enrollment into school.

School Report Card 2013 by the National Taxpayers Association, reveals that more than one million pupils are out of school, with a majority being boys, and warns over the rising neglect of the boy child.

It highlights the increasing marginalisation of the boy child even as the girl child continues to get rising support.

Pastor Simon Mbevi, a father of three, says parents need to understand the difference between a boy and a girl when raising them up.

“There is ignorance when it comes to bringing up the boy. We are seeing more feminisation of the boy child. We are seeing more passive boys. We have over-confident girls and weaker boys, and this is evident when the girl wants to be prefect in school and the boy doesn’t. And this tends to generally affect relationships in society,” says Mbevi, a pastor at Mavuno Church.

He says boys from single-parent families are the most affected as they have no one to help them transit from boyhood to manhood.

“Such boys lack role models hence, they cannot learn a lot of things as they grow up. The male energy is sometimes threatening to a woman hence, she might find it hard to curb some behaviour in her son to make him more sociable in society and this is where a father figure is important,” he says.

He opines: “I was once called to my son’s school when he was about five years old. He had become too aggressive and hyperactive, and the two teachers who were female felt he had a problem and couldn’t handle him. I suggested that they bring in a male teacher just to monitor him through the breaks and after some time, I noticed a difference in him. He had become calm and collected.”

Leonard Sax, author of Boys Adrift, believes parents should raise girls and boys differently because the two sexes are different from birth and their brains re wired differently.

It’s also true that each gender’s brain, and growth unfolds at a different rate, influencing behaviour.

Doreen Mbaya, a mother of a five-year-old daughter says she encountered an experience that left her with a lot of unanswered questions.

“Here was a young boy, aged around four and a half years, who was always kept under close watch and had little time to play with friends. The father had to be the one to pick him up from school and take him home, almost every day,” says Doreen.

“The child was not even allowed to go out and play with his friends and considering that boys tend to be more playful and aggressive than girls, I felt that the father was depriving him of his freedom. As parents, we need to teach boys to stand up for themselves,” she says.

She says the situation is worse when the boy is being raised by a single mother.

“The boy lacks a father figure as his role model. He will, therefore, tend to copy some specific details and things done by his mother. If it’s dreadlocks, then he will also want to have them. If it’s piercing the ears and putting on studs, he will want to do it, just like his mother. He has no father figure to show him what is right and what is wrong,” she says.

Joy Nzilani is a single mother of two, a boy aged eight and a girl aged five, and according to her, she does not discount the importance of having a good father around.

“There are some things my son does that I find difficult to comprehend. I have to find a man to hang out with him. It could be one of his uncles or just his teacher at school. As they were growing up, I also noticed that my son developed much slower in his speaking and reasoning compared to his sister. Once I consulted his teacher about it, I was relieved to find out it is normal for boys to be behind girls emotionally and academically and catch up somewhere in middle school,” she says.

Esther Macharia, a mother of three boys, says raising boys into men is not a mean feat and requires the help of a father figure.

“In general, boys are aggressive and difficult to control. They require a father figure to guide them through some stages in of life,” says Joy.

According to Pastor Mbevi, without responsible fathers in the society, our generation is doomed. Mbevi is so concerned about this trend that he started Transform Kenya, a mothers-to-sons programme that seeks to educate single women.

“We are bringing up a society full of pink men or mama’s boy. We need to realise that a father’s connection to his son is the greatest link between them,” he says.

Tina Masai, a counselling psychologist says a lot of maleness and femaleness is biologically wired and the extent to which men become effeminate depends on a number of factors. They include personality, socialisation and the degree to which the social environment condones or tolerates it.

“The primary centre for socialisation is the family and a mother is usually the one at home. When a child enters school, and considering most nursery school and lower primary school teachers are female, they still see most of the mother figure other than the father figure,” says Masai.

“Hence, part of the issue is the absence of male figures in these critical stages of development or at least the role they play in creating that ‘manliness’ in boys,” she adds.

Initiatives that groom boys into men

To shape boys to become responsible men, various churches have come up with progressive initiatives.

Deliverance Church Umoja has a programme dubbed ‘Man Enough’ for young men. It is an eight-week experience where men are taken through a process of transformative masculinity. The men are drawn in close spaces where they engage in weekly discussions and activities that seek to build the man in them.

So far, ‘Man Enough’ has had seven seasons and has graduated more than 1,000 men.

House of Grace Church in Lang’ata runs a men’s ministry, ‘Men of Valour Empowered’ (Move), to encourage men back into real manhood.

Rev Paul Korir, the Assistant Provost at All Saints Cathedral says they run a programme dubbed ‘Ropes of Passages’, which is a rite of passage experience. It is a template of transition for both genders.

“Here, we shape, inform and mentor boys to become responsible men,” says Korir.

The Men’s Ministry of Parklands Baptist Church dubbed ‘Men of Purpose’ seeks to proclaim the gospel to every man, raising and developing men into godly leaders.

Newlife Seventh Day Adventist Church has a programme dubbed ‘Adventist Men Organisation’ whose vision is ‘Galvanised for God, Family, Church and Community’ and the main goal is to involve all men in evangelism at the church.

Ahmed Set, administrator of the Al-Falah Mosque in Isiolo town says they also run programmes that target both boys and girls.

“Islam is a complete way of life hence, there is a complete guidance on how people should live and this is cited in the Quran. Right from the time they are young, they are exposed to these programmes till they reach adulthood. We teach them on good morals, how to socialise and even how to be responsible husbands and fathers once they get married,” says Ahmed.

Photo: madamenoire.com