The trouble with boys

I don't know what it's like to be a boy. I'm still trying to figure out what makes men tick. Yet I'm rearing one - a little boy who will one day, I hope, be a man of character. So, as the parent of a three-year-old son, I pounced on Eli H Newberger's Bringing up a Boy - How to Understand and Care for Boys (Bloomsbury £8.99).

Newberger, a household name in the US but less well-known here, is a paediatrician specialising in the treatment and prevention of family violence. He believes that boys are fundamentally different from girls and need "tenacious" and "patient" parenting that will enable them to negotiate the moral dilemmas of drink, drugs and violence that they will inevitably face as teenagers. Even in the worst of social circumstances, the boy who becomes a successful man is the one who had somebody in his life - be it a parent, grandparent, a teacher, a friend - who believed in him and refused to let go. In a male teenager's world, the parents' influence is the least important, says Newberger.

Most important is the media, then his peer group, then his parent or parents. Newberger's message: if you want to stand any chance of influencing your son's character, start the moment he is born.

Newberger writes: "Daily I see expressions of masculinity we all deplore - power-obsessed, controlling, self-indulgent, beligerent, insensitive, foolishly risk-taking. Yet I have not met a single man in whom I could not find some point of connection with his better self; I've always been able to find a side to him that loves his children, or that yearns for a better relationship with his mother, or that knows violence is wrong. No one is just a `bad' man."

Nor is anyone just a "good" man, he writes. Newberger argues that "character" is formed first by heredity, and secondly by environment. Boys come into the world with a personality in-built - they may be "easy", "difficult" or "slow to warm up". How parents feel about and react to their sons' innate personalities from infancy can have profound implications for how boys feel about themselves.

As parents, we are at the mercy of how we ourselves were reared. Intellectually, we may strive to overcome weaknesses in the way we were parented - for example, choosing not to smack our children even though we ourselves were smacked. However, under times of stress, most of us will have an unconscious "fall-back position" when we momentarily become our own parents.

Parents fall into four categories. At the first level are the "me first" parents who see their children "always through the lens of (their) own adult needs". This type of parent of a teenager brought home by the Garda drunk will be primarily concerned with his or her own reputation. At level two is the "follow the rules" parent, who sets standards and expects adherence - no questions asked. This parent follows the manual, be that a religious doctrine or a liberal parenting guide. Problem is, rules alone don't work. At level three is the parent whose philosophy is "we are individuals". This parent sees the son as a unique individual and tries to see the world from his point of view. He or she has rules and will understand the boy's need for a firm and calming hand, but will also see the underlying reasons for the boy's difficult behaviour. The pitfall of this overly child-centred view, however, is that the child does not hear about the parents' feelings and values.

The level four parent - the ideal - operates on a philosophy of "living and growing together". These parents have the same regard for the preciousness of individuality as those at level three, but the context is different. The adult sees that he or she and the child are in a mutual and reciprocal relationship that continually develops and changes. Adults at this level are more self-aware and tolerate conflict and ambivalence in their relationships. They don't fall into the trap of over-interpreting every moment of a boy's behaviour, yet they remain sensitive to the boy's needs. They also recognise their own needs and feelings and are willing to share them appropriately.

A level four parent can instill in a boy "emotional intelligence" and the ability to form a personal identity through making good choices. In their teenage years, level four has a chance of working - the "just say no to drugs and alcohol" approach of the level two parent hasn't a chance, Newberger says. "The power of the youth drinking and drug culture is such that every strategy needs to be employed to help boys from getting entangled: early and continuing family discussions; clearly articulated family norms of respect for rules and laws regarding mind-and mood-altering substances; honest accountability for breaking the rules; parental modelling with respect to abstinence and moderation in consumption of alcohol and abstinence from illegal drug use; professional counselling as suggested by known problems within the family; monitoring of teens' activities, particularly in concert with other parents from their groups," writes Newberger. Adolescents drink and use drugs to treat a wide variety of vicissitudes - boredom, loneliness, anger, resentment, anxiety, purposelessness, powerlessness and sexual frustration. Address these underlying issues in a "let's grow together way" and you remove a fair amount of the incentive to resort to alcohol and drugs at appallingly young ages.