CULTURE DICTATED MASCULINITY
Terrence Real offers,
Our interconnectedness to nature, and to one another, can no longer be denied. We live in a global economy. We share global resources. We face global threats. The paradigm of dominance must yield to an ethic of caretaking, or we simply will not survive…The dynamic of dominance and submission, which has been at the heart of traditional masculinity, can play itself out inside the psyche of a man as depression, in his interpersonal relationships as irresponsibility and abuse, in one race’s contempt for another people, or in humanity’s relationship to the earth itself. We have abused the environment we live in as if it were an all-giving and all-forgiving mother, an endless resource…the addictive defenses must be confronted and stopped, then the pain beneath them must be allowed to surface. Finally, the skills and responsibilities of the true intimacy— “stewardship” as (Al) Gore, among others, calls it—must be reestablished. The boy must become steward, husbandman. The earth is not our mother; she is our wife. We are married to her and, if we do not take care, we may soon be divorced. (I Don’t Want to Talk About It: Overcoming the Secret Legacy of Male Depression, 374-76)
With the recent bombing of Iran’s nuclear sites, the “mind chatter” and “heart flutter” have been alive with thoughts about nurturing kids by supporting 1) potential parents, marital partners and partners who are planning to have children, and 2) parents who have children. Let’s take a look:
- As Thich Nhat Hanh, a Vietnamese Buddhist monk, recommended several years ago, potential parents, i.e., young folks who are thinking about marriage, and/or becoming partners, and having children, need to learn, understand, and experience the challenges and opportunities associated with having children and raising children in today’s world. The country needs literature and programs to facilitate this learning process for potential parents before they get married, or become partners, and before they opt to get pregnant and have children.
- Folks who opt to get pregnant and have children need to learn about and understand how to quiet the mind—meditation is a must—and engage empathy and compassion before the kids arrive. For happiness and authenticity, peace-of-mind is essential, and one’s purpose and connections need to be created on a foundation of empathy and compassion.
- Potential parents and soon to be parents need to learn, understand, reflect upon, experience, and practice how to coach kids through processing positive and negative emotional/feeling-experiences at the time of the experiences. Simply learn to become a first-class, on-the-spot therapist for their kids. This emotions/feelings processing will help the kids be authentically male or female and not grow up like the culture dictates, i.e., as a masculine or feminine presented self.
We are witnessing in today’s headlines folks who have grown up and are behaving and making decisions based on culture dictated masculinity and femininity norms. For us to evolve absent overwhelming hate, chaos, division, and confusion, these norms need to change; and the beginning of this changes needs to be with our children as they are growing up and experiencing emotions and feelings. These experiences of feelings need to change from culturally dictated norms to what is being experienced and processed by children as they are felt. This is a huge coaching job for parents and much needed for the country to evolve past reading headlines as we are noting daily, simply culturally dictated masculinity via unhealthy ego and position power. Three nice resources are The Gazebo Learning Project: A Legacy of Experiential & Experimental Early Childhood Education at Esalen (Jasmine Star Horan, 2020, Silver Peak Press: Big Sur, CA); Create an Emotion-Rich Classroom: Helping Young Children Build Their Social Emotional Skills (Lindsay N. Giroux, 2022, Free Spirit Publishing: Minneapolis, MN); and Creating True Peace: Ending Violence in Yourself, Your Family, Your Community, and the World (Thich Nhat Hanh, 2003, Free Press: NY, NY).
