Boys will be boys

             ARE boys in trouble today? Their situation is desperate, according to a coalition of clinical and academic psychologists. The alarming news has been trumpeted in scholarly journals as well as in several bestselling books, most notably William Pollack's Real Boys and Michael Gurian's The Wonder of Boys and A Fine Young Man. Both Pollack, codirector of the Center for Men at McClean Hospital of Harvard Medical School, and Gurian, a Washington-based family therapist, want to persuade us that we are in the midst of a boy crisis of epidemic proportion.
             According to Pollack and Gurian, boys today are plagued by depression, isolation, despair, and fragile self-esteem. Boys are performing poorly in school compared with their sisters, who are now thriving. Diagnoses of attention-deficit disorder in male children are escalating, as are disciplinary problems, school drop-out rates, psychiatric disorders, and suicide. In the words of Pollack, "Many feel a sadness and disconnection they cannot even name." "Millions of our adolescent boys have experienced a trauma of some kind," asserts Gurian, and they haven't got the emotional resources, or support from others, to cope with the pain. Our boys are "like soldiers traumatized in wartime," and they are showing symptoms of "posttraumatic stress." Boys have also become dangerously aggressive, committing more and more crimes. The number of violent criminals among our adolescent boys is "incredible." And these males, in turn, pose a danger to the rest of us. Warns Gurian: "Trauma-causing a!
             Pollack, Gurian, and other psychologists raising the "boy problem" are not concerned about a small group of disadvantaged youngsters who might truly be in danger. They are talking about all boys, even those who seem to be "normal." We should not be fooled, says Gurian, by the "I'm fine" mask. When a boy says, "I'm fine," he actually means "things are not really fine." Boys who seem to have high self- esteem are, in ...

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Boys will be boys . (1969, December 31). In MegaEssays.com. Retrieved 01:51, March 29, 2024, from https://www.megaessays.com/viewpaper/58614.html