PLEASE NOTE: This is a minimally-edited transcript that originates from a program that uses AI.
Anita Rao
In late 2017, journalist Ruth Whitman was nearly nine months pregnant, and every time she picked up her phone, she saw a similar headline.
News Clip
Oscar winning movie producer Harvey Weinstein says he is taking a leave of absence following a New York Times report alleging decades of sexual harassment.
Congressman John Conyers is increasingly isolated from his party and his biggest. Backers on Capitol Hill after multiple allegations of sexual misconduct. Another meteoric fall from Grace is tonight comedian Louis CK comes clean.
Anita Rao
Ruth was already the mother of two boys, but it was when she was pregnant with her third boy in the midst of this cultural reckoning with male power that she felt a shift.
Ruth Whippman
And I thought, hang on a second, this is really scary. I'm a feminist and I'd always advocated for the rights of women and girls. I thought a lot about the way that we socialize girls, but suddenly I was like, there is something seriously wrong about the way that we are socializing boys if this is happening on such a systemic level.
Anita Rao
While on the one hand, Ruth was cheering on the Me Too movement. She also felt defensive of her boys and deeply uncertain about their future.
Ruth Whippman
It almost became as though if you were progressive in that moment, you were on the side of women and girls, and if you were kind of conservative or on the right, you were on the side of boys and men, it felt like a zero sum game.
It had to be one or the other, and I just felt this can't be right. There has to be more to it.
Anita Rao
This zero sum game left her with a big open question. How could she raise her boys well with expansive possibilities without betraying her feminist principles? This is embodied our show tackling sex, relationships, and your health. I am Anita Rao. This moment in 2017 set Ruth on a journey to better understand the experiences of American boys and how she and other parents could change the tides.
Her research culminated in the book, boy Mom, re-Imagining Boyhood in the Age of Impossible Masculinity. Although Ruth and her husband Neil, grew up in the uk, they're raising their kids in California. So the first step in this journey was getting clarity about what was going wrong and further unpacking the cultural expectations around American boyhood.
Ruth Whippman
I think I grew up with this idea that everything works great for boys and men. You know, the system works great for them. They have all this male privilege, they have all this sort of access to power, and it's women and girls who at this terrible disadvantage systemically, but that doesn't quite match up with the data as we see it.
These statistics are almost becoming kind of a cliche at this point. Mm-hmm. But it's like boys are falling behind girls academically at school from kindergarten through to college. Around 60% of college entrants now are girls, you know, and only 40% are boys. There's this failure to launch phenomenon where more boys than ever are just kind of living at home with their parents and not either working or going to college or finding a partner.
There's a male loneliness epidemic. And when it comes to mental health, boys are really in crisis. They're nearly four times more likely to die by suicide than their same aged female peers. So there's obviously something very wrong going on at a systemic level. This system is obviously not actually working that well for boys and men either.
Anita Rao
You came to this term of impossible masculinity. How does that describe what boys are facing culturally in this moment?
Ruth Whippman
The idea of impossible masculinity and using that phrase as opposed to a phrase like toxic masculinity was a very deliberate choice. I think partly because the phrase toxic masculinity is just quite off-putting for many people at this point, especially for boys and men.
But also I think that the idea of masculinity has become impossible really from all sides. Mm. You know, boys are still held to these very sort of. Old school expectations and pressures of masculinity. So they're still expected to be tough, to be strong, to be invulnerable, not to talk about their emotions, not to show weakness, to have this like pumped body, you know, those are kind of these expectations that boys feel are very hard to meet.
You know, that there's this kind of constant feeling. From many boys and men of being kind of a little inadequate in the face of those. And you know, and I think boys are often silenced when talking about their emotions or their feelings. But then on the other side, you've got this newer, more progressive take on the whole thing, which is, you know, boys are toxic, boys are privileged, it's time to be quiet.
You know, it's time to shut up and let everybody else have a voice. So I think boys are being silenced a little bit. From the left as well. And I think a lot of boys and men feel really sort of scared about speaking to their own experience, speaking to their own pain, for fear of like taking up too much space somehow.
So I think it just feels impossible for them in all directions. It's like we don't know how to be, are we supposed to be aggressive and dominant and make the first move and be a real man, whatever that means. Or are we supposed to be cautious and to be quiet and to, to shut up and be sensitive and, you know.
These things feel irreconcilable, I think for many boys in this moment.
Anita Rao
So when you started talking to boys, you sought out boys and young men from all around the country of a variety of different races, ethnicities, demographics. What did you hear in those conversations about what they said that they need, that they're not getting.
Ruth Whippman
So it was really interesting 'cause you're right, I spoke to many, many boys from very different backgrounds, very different geographic locations, very different situations. And what actually really stood out was not really the differences in what they were saying, but more the similarities if there were any kind of headlines in it.
I think the main one was loneliness over and over again. Young men and boys told me that they felt really. Lonely in this moment really shut down and really lonely. And I think that came from a variety of different sources. Some of these boys were genuinely kind of isolated and weren't spending much time with other people.
And that's a trend that you see in the data that boys and men especially. Are spending far less time socializing in person with peers and far more time online. But a lot of these boys actually did have a lot of friends. You know, they had mates, they had sports teams, they had people to hang out with, but they often felt that their relationships were quite superficial.
Hmm. Like they couldn't really show their kind of vulnerable, messy selves to their friends. They had to like perform this kind of masculinity and be competitive, be rigid, be funny, be a laugh. But they couldn't really share their deeper emotional selves. And I think a lot of them were. Crying out for that kind of connection.
You know, I scratch the surface with these people first. They get on the phone or you know, I meet them in person and they're all kind of posturing and I don't care. And by the end of the interview, they were just really revealing so much stuff about how isolated and lonely they felt and how they craved these deeper connections, but didn't.
Really know how to go about getting them and didn't feel like they had the social permission to act in that way.
Anita Rao
What you're saying there of not knowing how to go about getting that connection or go about building those relationships
Ruth Whippman
Yeah.
Anita Rao
Is kind of this thread that you really land on in your book, which is that.
Teaching boys emotional vulnerability and teaching them the skills to be able to nurture those parts of themselves could be a really core tool. In shifting the experiences of boyhood, is there a a moment or a story from your research that you think really illuminates that?
Ruth Whippman
Yeah, I mean, I think it's one of these things that once you see it, you see it everywhere.
I remember this one moment when I was actually in the bookstore with, uh, my three boys and we are looking at books and magazines, and I see this magazine that's on the shelf and it's. Very clearly aimed at preteen girls. You know, it's got a pink cover and it's sparkly and there's like a friendship bracelet, giveaway and all this.
And so it's like, boys stay away. Do not go anywhere near this. And I open it up and the first story in the magazine is this story of this girl and she's been invited to these two birthday parties that are happening at the same time. And she's really scared that she's gonna like disappoint one of the friends by not going to her party.
So she comes up with this whole scheme and she's like decides to like secretly run between the two parties and like go to the, do the games at one party, then sprint across around the block and go to the other party and do the games there, and then back to the other one for the cake and then sprint back.
And she just kind of exhausts herself with all this like emotional labor. And I was reading this and I was thinking, my boys will never see a story like this with a boy as the main character. You know, their stories are all about battles and combat and adventure, and there's always a good guy and a bad guy, and the good guy defeats the bad guy and he's a hero and a blaze of glory, and the other guy is like killed or defeated, you know?
So. Enemies rather than like complex social negotiation. And you know, all of these things are fine. It's not like any one of these is better than the other, but I realize that boys and girls are getting very different messages about how to show up in the world, what friendship means, what their responsibilities are, what they can hope to get from human interaction.
And I realize that we just are not. Teaching these complex relational skills to boys in the way that will lead to these very intimate, very involved relationships that girls and women tend to access more easily.
Anita Rao
I wanna point out that so far in this conversation, you know, we're using the term boys and girls and what's, what's particular interesting about the moment that your boys are growing up in is that it is an era of more.
Gender expansiveness. More and more kids are, are not identifying, yeah. In the boy girl binary. So why do you think it's still important to talk about the particular needs of cisgender boys in this context?
Ruth Whippman
I think that this is a great question. You are right that it seems like the idea of gender and the possibilities of gender have really just expanded for everybody in this moment, except for cis boys.
If a kid is identifies as a girl, if a kid identifies as non-binary, if a kid identifies as trans, we are really kind of re-imagining all the ways that they can be in the world. But somehow that. Category of cis boy, you know, somebody who was male assigned at birth and still identifies as a boy. That category has just remained very, very rigid in terms of like how you can behave, what you can be, what you can think, what you can do.
And we almost use this very. Inspirational language to talk about gender and empowerment. Say, you know, when it comes to girls it's like you can be anything you choose. Yeah. You can, you know, rule the world. The future is female, which is wonderful and I'm hugely in support of it. But then when we talk about boys, we use this very essentializing language.
So it's like boys will be boys. Boys can't sit still, boys don't like reading. You know, boys are destructive. Boys are like dogs. All they need is food and exercise, and. Throw a ball at them and they're fine. And so I feel like they're not getting the same sense of complexity about who they can be. That same sense of inspiration about different paths that they can follow in the world.
Anita Rao
Just ahead, Ruth's husband Neil will join us to talk about putting Ruth's research into practice with her three sons. You're listening to Embodied from North Carolina Public Radio, a broadcast service of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. You can also hear Embodied as a podcast. Follow and subscribe on your platform of choice. We'll be right back.
This is embodied. I am Anita Rao. Ruth Whitman was pregnant with her third son when she started to worry about American boyhood and began to rethink how she wanted to raise her sons.
Ruth is an essayist and cultural critic, so when she couldn't find the parenting guidebook she needed, she set out to write her own. Ruth started talking to boys and young men around the country about their lives, needs, and relationships, and recorded her findings. In the book, boy Mom Re-Imagining Boyhood in the Age of Impossible Masculinity.
One of her biggest takeaways was that to help boys thrive. We need to teach them complex emotional and relational skills and encourage them to be vulnerable. Ruth's book offers guidance for all parents raising boys, including her own husband, Neil Levine.
Neil Levine
Each time I read the chapter, it sort of woke me up a bit to, to some of the things which I, I probably had taken for granted or just wasn't even aware of.
Anita Rao
As Neil and Ruth incorporated new techniques into their parenting style, they also reflected on their own upbringings back in the uk.
Neil Levine
I went to an all boys school. I had, you know, a family which consisted of brothers and male cousins. It was a very, very male environment.
Anita Rao
Okay.
Neil Levine
And, you know, very little exposure to, you know, some of the female interpersonal and relationship dynamics.
And so. When, when we had boys, I sort of, I felt very equipped. I mean, I know what boys, like I was a boy. I know what they like to read. I know how they get fun. And so, you know, I was very much on autopilots and just wasn't even thinking about it particularly. So, you know, it wasn't any conscious decisions were made once I had boys.
It was just, I'm just gonna do what I did. And, you know, I, I know all of the, all of the variables in play here. So, yeah, very, very unthinking. I think as I went into this, up until the point that Ruth started writing this book,
Anita Rao
Do you remember when she first came to you with the idea and what your reaction was?
Neil Levine
I don't think I remember the exact moment. Sort of, you know, she was exploring the ideas. I think, you know, as, as she mentioned, you know, we had our third boy. Of course there was a moment where, okay, is, is a third child gonna be a girl? Then we discover it's not, and so really brought home sort of look, you know, how do we, what are the conscious decisions we're making with these boys now, I think also, you know, the pandemic.
Where we were in lockdown and we're the kids and we're sort of really engaging with them on a, as every other parent was, you know, 24 hours a day and it's rough and tumble. It's high energy, it's very intense. There's lots of sort of play fighting and so on and so forth. So I think, you know, there was certainly that the pandemic, which was a catalyzing experience for sort, realizing just how intensely male the, the upbringing was.
Anita Rao
Ruth, I wanna go to you and hear about your own upbringing. Pretty different from Neils. I know you were raised by a feminist mother. Is there a story that comes to mind that exemplifies her? Her philosophy in parenting?
Ruth Whippman
I mean, my mom was a classic second wave feminist. It was like, no pink. No Barbies? No.
There was this toy called a girl's world and it was like this disembodied head that, um, you could use to do like makeup and hairstyling. They look like something. Oh, yes, I've seen, I've seen those. Yes. But you know, I desperately wanted one and my mom would not. Allow it. And so I felt like a lot of things were kind of forbidden to me, but always we had this idea that like, whatever girls were doing was not quite as good as whatever boys were doing.
Mm-hmm. It was like what boys were doing was aspirational, you know? Be more like a boy, be anything a boy can be. And I see why that was. You know, my mom, who grew up with fewer opportunities, she was born in the late 1940s, you know, she. I think she wanted us to have exciting careers to be ambitious. And that was the focus.
And I think, you know, the idea was that, you know, what boys and men was do were doing was whatever we should be aspiring to do. And I pushed back on it as a child. I was like, oh God, just gimme the pink, gimme the barbies, please. You know, I craved this stuff now. I'm really grateful for it. I think it was kind of dogmatic 'cause it had to be for those times.
Now I'm like. Incredibly grateful that she gave me that grounding in, you know, believing in myself and, and thinking I could do more and being ambitious and all the rest of it. But it didn't have any room for discussion about maybe where boys are at a disadvantage, you know, where it comes to intimacy or emotionality or connection.
There was never a sense of like whatever we as girls wanted to do actually could be of any benefit to boys. You know, there was never an idea that they could learn from us. It was always. The other way around.
Anita Rao
I wanna point out that this tension that I'm hearing in the way that you all are talking, which is that we're talking about kind of nature and nurture here.
We're talking about, you know, the ways that your mom was intentional about socializing you to believe that you could. Be anything you wanted to be. You can be anything a boy can be. And then I'm hearing in Neil's experience of those pandemic days of this feeling of like, we're around these boys and they're acting wild, and like, what do we do about this?
So yes. I mean, and then I know that this is a question that you have really wrestled with as, as a mother and as a researcher, this nature nurture question. Can you tell me about what you found in, in the research and how it informed your thinking?
Ruth Whippman
Yeah, so the book is a combination of memoir and reporting and research, and I think those two things were always bumping up against each other.
So, you know, I'm writing about my own experience and living my own experience and then seeing this research at the same time. And I think I went into parenting with this really kind of like hubristic idea that, you know, I would just socialize them, right? And then they would be the exact kind of sensitive, you know, cautious whatever sons that.
Of my dreams. Mm-hmm. That I had all this control. And then of course, you know, I had these three boys, they are every stereotype of, you know, of boyness, you know, they are rambunctious, they're wild. They love play fighting. They love Nerf guns, they love, you know, and my socialization felt extremely inadequate.
In the face of that, I was like, oh God, you know? So I dug into the research and it's really interesting because there are differences at a group level, you know, and there will always be many, many, many exceptions. But at a group level, there are differences between boys and girls that are rooted in biology.
But in a way, they're slightly different ones than the ones we think of. So when we talk about, you know, innate differences, we're kinda like, boys are destructive, they're aggressive, they're naughty, they're rambunctious, they have energy, you know, all of these things. But actually what we don't talk about is that the data shows really clearly that by almost every measure.
Boys are more vulnerable, they're more emotionally sensitive. They're more fragile than girls, both emotionally and physically at young ages. And I think this can easily become a bit of a like double whammy. So it's like boys are more emotionally sensitive. They are more vulnerable, they need a little more, but because of our ideas about masculinity, we kind of give them a little less.
And this shows up in the data as well. So it's like we handle baby boys and girls differently. You know, we throw boys around and give them all this roughhousing. Whereas we tend to give girls more like caretaking and nurturing touch. For example. We talk to boys less about their emotions and their feelings and we talk to girls about these things more, you know, and on and on and on.
So there's, and you know, we tell boys that they have to man up and be tough and be strong. So I think they. Get a little less of that kind of really nurturing emotionally led care than girls do. And so what starts off as a small difference becomes really quite a big difference by adolescents.
Anita Rao
So Neil, I wanna come to you and, and get into some of the practical aspects of this, how the two of you have taken.
These theories of wanting to cultivate more emotionality, stronger interior lives, more emotional vulnerability for your boys, and actually put it into practice. You have boys of that range currently be from seven to 14. So is there, is there a story that comes to mind or a specific example of a way that you have tried to do this for your boys?
Neil Levine
So yes, there's, there's definitely been things we've tried, um, deliberately. So, you know, the, the stories we read, you know, um, I still read to my 7-year-old at bedtime and being much more conscious of the sort of variety of content he reads and sort of not default to the sort of, the more simplistic sort of hero stories that certainly I read when I was a kid is, is definitely one of them.
And. Also just even with my eldest, you know, just trying to spend a bit of time with him in evenings, just chill out, there's no agenda, and just ask him how his day's gone, if there's anything he's worried about at school. So, yeah, it's just being much more deliberate about finding those moments to have an emotional conversation with him if they're available.
You can't force it, obviously, but just, you know, create the circumstances to allow it to come up if, if they're ready to discuss things.
Anita Rao
When you talk about reading different stories, can you give me an example of one you're reading with one of your boys that maybe you wouldn't have thought to read before?
Neil Levine
So the, the IVM bean series is a good example that, you know, I started reading it to my 7-year-old and, you know, it's very much about the relationship between these two girls and the things they get up to. And look, it's, it's designed for, you know, young elementary school kids. It's not a lot of sophisticated tales, but it's about friendship and.
How they upset their friends or the friends upset them. And it's not that I'm only reading that, but it's, you know, ensuring that there's a blend of that alongside, you know, the Harry Potter or you know, the other sort of traditional franchises, which you never inevitably get drawn into as well.
Anita Rao
What do you do when you are trying to create that space and your boys.
Don't want to engage, like how have you figured out how much to, to push or how much to, to be in silence is, are there any examples that come to mind of that? Because I feel like that can be really hard when you're trying to encourage a behavior, but you don't wanna overdo it. Mm.
Neil Levine
Yeah, I mean, look, there's, there's, I wouldn't claim to be an expert at any of this at all, and you can't force anything.
It's just, you know, sitting in a room with no agenda I think is like a really powerful thing. You know, there's so many times as a parent you're going in to ask 'em about their homework or to tell them about, you know, something that's happening over the weekend that we all have to go to, but it is just going in with no agenda.
And, you know, just shooting the breeze and, you know, just talking about some, something random to get the conversation going. And you can often then pick up if they're at ease, that they're feeling happy, or if you can tell there's something, you know, that's weighing them down, they're a little less responsive.
And then, then you can probe and say, Hey, you, you sound a little down. They, you seem a little. Quiet this evening. Is there something going on, something you wanna share? And, you know, you let them, you, you can't force it, but at least they know you are, you are there. And I think also the other thing is just for me to be a little transparent with them.
You know, if, if I'm felt a little snippy during the day and I know they would've picked up on it, then I'll say, Hey, I'm sorry I was like that earlier, but it's because of, you know, something that happened at work or, you know, some other reason I've been feeling ill or whatever it is. And so just, you know, to show them I can also be emotionally communicative with them as well.
Anita Rao
That's really interesting and that feels like a notable shift. I know when thinking about my own parents, like there was a lot about their interior, emotional lives that happened behind closed doors, and it took me until adulthood to understand what they were going through emotionally when I was a kid, and I think it's important to model that for kids.
Ruth, I'm curious like how you and Neil have talked about modeling your own emotional vulnerability and interior lives in front of your kids and how to navigate that.
Ruth Whippman
Yeah, I mean, it's a real balance, isn't it? 'cause you don't wanna burden them Right. With, you know, all of your like, terrible feelings or problem, you know, if, if those occur.
And I think it's, it's finding a way to be authentically human with them. I think there's something about modern parenting that can get a little bit robotic. Mm-hmm. You know, I think people are reading a lot of parenting books and it's like, here's your script for talking to your child about this, or here's your script for how to approach that.
And I think. Try to strip that away and just be like, show up as my authentic self with them within reason, you know, what's sort of appropriate for their age. We've gotta have a sense of humor about it as well. It's not like there's a way that this stuff can be so earnest. Yeah. And it's like, now is the time to talk about our emotions and our feelings.
And I think it's more like just seeding a little bit through the day, having them know that. We're available for that, that we're emotionally open. I don't want it to be too heavy. 'cause then I think that can be really off-putting for kids as well. I don't want it to feel like a burden for them.
Anita Rao
Neil, we did a show a couple of weeks ago about the challenges that men face with friendship in adulthood.
Not having many close friends, finding it really difficult to be open and emotional in existing. Relationships, and I'm curious about how you tried to help your boys nurture friendships, knowing what you know about the, the beauty of that emotional vulnerability.
Neil Levine
Yeah, so you know, it's actually a good example is when you hear on a grapevine through parents and it was, some kid was ill, they weren't feeling well or relative passed away or something that, you know, you hear that from other parents and I would ask them, oh, you know, how's, how's your friend doing?
I heard that today, you know, their grandmother died or they were ill. And sort of encourage them to sort of just become a little bit more emotionally curious about the state of their friends and not just assume everything's fine and they can go in and joke around with them and do the normal things at recess, but actually.
You know, you should go check in and check in on that person and see how they're doing. And sometimes, you know, it's, it's rebuffed. Oh, they're fine, they're fine. I don't need to do that and say, no, no. I'm sure you know, they'd probably really appreciate it if you asked and you would appreciate the same thing too.
So just, you know, prompting them to be a little bit more curious. Again, you, you can't force this, but, you know, just suggesting that these friends might have a, a, a reason or a need to sort of communicate about their emotional state, I think can often just wake the kids up a little bit to it.
Anita Rao
That's a really interesting take on this idea of, of emotional labor that I think is talked about a lot in adult relationships.
This idea that there is this kind of undue burden on women to carry the labor of riding the birthday card, checking in on the person who had a sick grandmother, you know, making a meal train and, and Ruth, I'm curious like, how do you think about. What do boys miss out on by not having that attunement and, and doing that emotional labor?
Yes, it's a burden for one person to carry it, but what's at stake if boys don't do it?
Ruth Whippman
Yeah, I mean it's interesting 'cause recently I feel like we talk about emotional labor as if it's like an entirely bad thing. Yeah. It's only a burden and it can be, you know, if you have to do too much of it and nobody else is doing it.
But actually that is the. Beating heart of human connection, you know, is checking in on your friends, those little daily tasks that, thinking about other people's emotions, tracking them, feeling some responsibility for another person's emotional state. Not, you know, in terms of it's your problem to solve, but just in terms of, you know, checking in, taking care of others, you know, thinking about others, being curious about other people's experience in the world.
Without those, you can't have intimacy and I. In the conversation recently, we've talked about male, you know, teaching boys to be more emotionally vulnerable, which is hugely important, but it's only kind of half of it. Mm. I think the other half is like what to do when somebody else is emotionally vulnerable with you, you know?
Right. Receiving it, taking an interest, you know, being the giver of. You know, sharing those kinds of things with other people, so not just, you know, dumping your emotions onto somebody else and expecting them to deal with them, but learning how to deal with other people's emotions. We need both in order to have connected friendships, and I think girls and women are taught those things in so many subtle ways.
You know, whether it's through stories, whether it's through books, whether it's. Through modeling, whether it's through just a kind of general cultural expectation, and I think we need to hold boys more accountable for those things as well. Neil did this wonderful thing. It's actually, you know, for my birthday, which a couple months ago he had the boys sit down and write birthday cards for me.
You know, I think with boys and with men generally, it's just like if they sign their name, that's a bonus. Great. Yeah. You know, just like the lowest possible bar. And he was so good, Neil, and he said, okay, no, I want you to really write something nice and generous and long and involved and like coached them through it.
And they, each one of them wrote a. Beautiful card. I was really surprised they really, with a bit of coaching about why this is important, why it's gonna mean so much to me. They wrote these girls, which I will treasure forever.
Anita Rao
Oh, is there a line that stands out? Or, one of the things they wrote.
Ruth Whippman
Oh God.
Well, my eldest wrote this beautiful line, which I just, I thought he'd written, you will always have a place in my heart, but he'd actually written, you Will always Have a palace All to yourself in my heart. Which I was like, oh God, this is just like, I just burst into tears when I read it and I was like, did you say place or palace?
And it was like, palace. I was like, ah, amazing. So, you know, it is just. Obviously not saying that kind of stuff all the time, day to day, but I think it's just like really calling them out on it and saying, you know, don't do a, a like rubbish job on this. Do like a real job. You know, really think about that person and what they need.
Anita Rao
Neil, what is it like for you to coach your boys through that? Like what do you say to them to help them understand the importance of conveying those emotions and, and being able to receive those emotions for other people?
Neil Levine
I think it's just, it's, you know, it's, it's nothing particularly complicated, it's just you're reminding them, you know, when we are going out.
Buying birthday presents. You know, let's really think about what your friend would like to have, not the thing you would like to get yourself. Mm-hmm. Or the thing you are, you, you know, you think is, is cool. It's like, let's really think about, you know, what are they into, what do they like to do? And, you know, it's, it's just these gentle nudges to sort of remind them that, look, these people are your friends.
They're your friends. You have the same sense of humor. You might be into the same things, but they, they. They have their own emotional interiority units. Let's think it through as we're doing, you know, something fairly mundane like buying a, you know, a birthday present. And look, a lot of the time, you know, there is pushback.
Oh dad, you know, you, it doesn't matter. Or you don't know them like I do. And it's like, no, you're right. I don't. But you know, try and see them as being a little bit more. Multifaceted and you know, perhaps, you know, certainly a lot of kids' relationships are, and again, it's, it's not that it even has to have a direct impact there and then, you know, whether it's writing a card or asking to talk to a kid who's, you know, having some issues, it's just reminding them that there is something in there.
And they may not be curious about it this moment in time, but just making 'em realize that there is a depth to people that they can explore and they should be aware of such that when they get older, hopefully there's. It's just a bit more there in the background because as, as Ruth said, I think a lot of the way, you know, girls' stories and, you know, whether it's that, that, that birthday anecdote that, um, the birthday story anecdote, uh, Ruth gave, you know, being aware that, listen, my kids aren't getting a lot of that constantly from the media, from their conversations at schools are just.
Trying to put a little bit of it in from me as I'm parenting them. So as they get older, it's hopefully, you know, it's a bit more, it's diffusely impacting their understanding of their relationships later on in their life.
Anita Rao
Just ahead, we're gonna talk more with Neil and Ruth about navigating the many influences on their boys that come from outside the home, and we'll hear about the transformations they've seen in their children as a result of parenting differently.
As always, you can hear the podcast version of the show by following embodied on your platform of choice. We'll be right back.
This is embodied. I am Anita Rao. Today we're talking with journalist Ruth Whitman and her husband Neil Levine, about how their parenting their three boys to encourage deeper relationships and more emotional vulnerability. Inspired by the research Ruth did for her book, boy Mom, Re-Imagining Boyhood in the.
Age of impossible masculinity. Ruth and Neil now expose their kids to diverse stories about gender, point out limiting beliefs about boyhood. They see or hear and model emotional vulnerability as often as they can. But there's still the challenge that their influence only goes so far. There is the world that the two of them are building inside their home, and then there is the bigger world out there with conflicting messages about who boys should be.
I asked Neil how he thinks about that tension.
Neil Levine
This is true of everything in parenting. It's, you know, what you do at home and what happens out in the world once they go to school or they're hanging out with their friends and. I mean, the tension is just, it's inevitable. You can't get away from it. And so I tend to think of it as, it's like it's not programming, it's not sort of, you know, expecting immediate results around everything you're doing.
It's sort of just trying to counter what I suspect is the dominant narrative they get, which is a very still I. A very traditional, um, narrative around what masculinity is and how they should be of their friends. And so it's just this general sense of, look, I'll, I'll do the best I can at home to sort of model some sort of slightly different or more progressive understandings about themselves as boys recognizing that it's, you know, they're still gonna.
Be swamped with, you know, the media messages and marketing messages and the, and the standard conversations. But yeah, it's just you hope that the, the message they get from the parents is, is hopefully the still the most dominant or maybe pervasive message that sort of sits in there.
Anita Rao
Yeah. Ruth, tell me about your thoughts on this and, and, and maybe the thread of, you know, what you write about in the book of trying to think about what you can add into the picture versus, you know, take out.
Ruth Whippman
Yeah. I mean, it, it's such a difficult question and I think it's one that applies, as Neil said, to every parent in every situation, you know, how can what I do at home carry them through all these difficult things that they're gonna come up against? And I think he's right. You can only do the best you can.
In terms of your question, I think. At least for me, I've tried to make it more about adding things in rather than forbidding things. Partly, I think that's probably a reaction to my own upbringing where there's a lot of like, there are a lot of forbidden fruits and those things then often tend to take on this like added glamor.
So, you know, I don't want these things to take on this added attractiveness, so. They can have the nerve guns, they can have the like screen time, they can have all these things. I don't want them to feel deprived, but it's just like adding in these other things as well. Similarly with like screen time, it's like it's not about forbidding screen time, it's about prioritizing real world connection as well.
I think it's just, you know, and you don't wanna be in a battle with your kid or to make them feel like they're your sort of big social project or something. And I think it's also. At the heart of it, about just building the best possible relationship that we can with the kids that we have. Mm-hmm. You know, as ourselves.
And I think that is the buffer. That is the thing that will carry them. Hopefully, you know, we hope and pray through life and the best defense against what is gonna come at them from the world.
Anita Rao
You spent a lot of time in your book, as we said, you know, interviewing boys and men, hearing what their needs are, and you were really in search of.
Where the spaces were, where they could be deeply open and vulnerable with one another. And one of the, the more shocking parts of your book and, and Revelations that you had was in these online groups of involuntary celibate men or incel. Yeah. Ironically, in these spaces, boys were actually able to be.
Really opened with each other. You actually saw and heard a lot of emotional vulnerability in those spaces. Yeah. What was happening in these spaces that allowed for that kind of connection?
Ruth Whippman
If anything, this was the biggest shock of the whole process of writing this book. So I have a chapter about incel and if your listeners dunno what incel are, they're these like involuntary celibates it stands for and it's these boys who are, or young men often who are lonely, they don't have sex and they.
They're on these online forums, which are often extremely misogynistic, extremely racist, extremely toxic in all kinds of different ways. It's kind of part of the manosphere that people talk about, you know, the online manosphere. And these guys, you know, often have a lot of trauma. They have a lot of pain.
They feel rejected. They feel like they cannot meet these expectations of masculinity, and they're on these forums like, which are some of the most toxic places on earth? You know, I spent time in these forums and I was just like. I wanted to have a shower literally every time I, you know, went on to one of these places.
But what was really fascinating was that alongside all this toxic, horrible content that they were churning out was this real emotional vulnerability. And I went deep and interviewed a few in cells themselves, you know, over a long period of time. What these guys were telling me was that these spaces actually provided them a sense of belonging and connection and this ability to be emotionally vulnerable in a way that they felt they could not be anywhere else in real life.
So they talked about their mental health, they talked about feelings of depression, of loneliness, of, uh, suicidal thoughts, you know, and I think they. They were seeking belonging and connection in these spaces, and this was what was so chilling, which is like if we want our sons not to go looking for belonging and connection in the toxic manosphere, we need to provide it for them elsewhere.
We need to provide that kind of listening, that kind of empathy, that kind of community. Other spaces.
Anita Rao
There's such a push pull with talking about, you know, internet culture and online culture because there are ways in which you can find people that, you know, you feel seen by if you are isolated in a particular place.
But then there are also ways that you can feel people that you're seen by who reinforce certain right ideas. Absolutely. So, so how do you think about kind of. Yeah, I guess the role of online spaces versus in-person interaction for cultivating belonging in boys.
Ruth Whippman
Yeah, it's complicated 'cause there's all these trends that we're seeing that boys are replacing real world socializing with online socializing in a much to a much greater extent than girls same age girls are doing.
You know, there's a decline in real world socializing for everyone, but this is a much steeper kind of decline. For boys and male spaces have often kind of migrated online and it's complicated because it is a balance. I think for people who are really lonely, the internet does provide a lifeline, it does provide connection.
I don't think the, the best thing is to just take that away from boys and, you know, just cut them off and because then often they'll have nothing. But at the same time, I think we need to work towards providing. More forgiving, more generous spaces in real life. So I think in the, this sort of microgeneration of boys that have grown up in the shadow of their Me Too movement, you know, negotiating sex and relationships is so complicated and fraught.
So I think for them we need to extend boys some empathy. We need to, to help coach them through this difficulty rather than to kind of painting them as these villains who, you know. Or these sort of potential predators. I think we need to, to look at the complexity of this moment for boys. It's
Anita Rao
Iinteresting. Neil, I wanna put this question to you, building off of what Ruth is talking about, about how, you know, if we don't want boys to go to these spaces online to find belonging, we need to provide them alternate spaces. We need to provide them a a, a compelling. Narrative that that pulls them away. Are there examples of kind of spaces for belonging that you all have been trying to cultivate for your own boys outside of your family?
Neil Levine
Yes. I mean, you know, like all parents, we, the kids do want to do activities and we are encouraging 'em to do activities. I think, you know, in line with what we've been saying here, a lot of it is like ensuring their social, there's a social element to it. So, you know, even simple things like, you know, Dungeons and Dragons, which are eldest.
Does. And you know, it's really encouraging to go to that, you know, and supporting his interest. 'cause it's a really social environment actually. Mm-hmm You know, even at camps, you know, encourage him to go to sleepaway camps, you know, they might be a bit reticence and a bit nervous, especially when they're younger.
But realize this is a great place to build actually those relationships which aren't just about being at school or, you know, doing a hobby with a friend. It's actually, you know, you're gonna spend a few days and it does build a different relationship dynamic. So I think it's just being conscious of, look, they do have hobbies.
They want to do hobbies, but ensuring there's a good mix of the social in there as well as, look this, they wanna play video games. They wanna, you know, just go and run around on a skateboard by themselves. Ensuring that there are, there are places where they're gonna get that opportunity for social interaction.
Anita Rao
Ruth, you have been on a journey throughout the process of writing this book and since publishing it, kind of talking through your feminism and your feminist politics and in the book, you're really open and vulnerable about times when things felt like they were at conflict with one another. There were, there were points of tension for you.
Where have you landed with. Your relationship with feminism today after going through this experience meeting so many young boys and thinking through some of the kind of tough points in where your philosophy met the real world.
Ruth Whippman
Yeah, it's, it's a really good question and it's a complex question. You know, the book opens, there I am like nine months pregnant, me toos happening.
I felt like feminism was in conflict with. The, the sort of raising good boys. You know, I felt like maybe, you know, that my feminist principles were like harming my boys, and I think the, the journey of writing the book really took me to a different place, which is just like, absolutely we need feminism.
And feminism helps boys and men, you know, this same system of patriarchy, which is oppressing girls and women and holding them back and stealing their rights and all the rest of it is. Also so harmful for boys and men. And you know, I wrote this line in the book, which was like. Under patriarchy, boys and men get everything except the thing that's most worth having, which is human connection, human intimacy.
And so I think, you know, we are all victims of this thing together. These things are not in conflict with each other. I think feminism can help boys. And actually, I believe, you know, we all rise together and we all fall together. You know, the system is not helping any of us. So I do not believe those two things are in conflict at all.
Anita Rao
I would love to close with both of you on some more stories of your boys and examples of, of some of the, the change or transformation that you've seen in them. And maybe we can start with your youngest son, uh, seven-year-old Abe, who I don't feel like we've heard as much about. Curious for either of you.
If there's a story that comes to mind.
Ruth Whippman
I can, uh, talk about something that happened yesterday. Yeah. In fact, which was, um, yeah, so Abe's a real sweetheart and we were walking to school and he runs into this girl who's in third grade. He's in first grade, and they start talking and I'm like, secretly like ear wigging on their conversation.
And it was so. Sweet. And she said to him, you know, how are you feeling? Because his older brother's going off to middle school next year. And she's like, how are you feeling about being the only person at the, at the school in in your family? And he's like, well, I'm excited, but at the same time I'm nervous and I'm a little sad and you know, a lot of different things all together and they're all coming together.
And she's like, yeah, it's really complicated. And he's like, I often feel that way. And it was like this real kind, emotionally involved conversation. I, wow, you know, this. Stuff that often you feel like you're just banging your head against a brick wall and nothing's going in. And then suddenly I heard the way he was talking to her and I was like, oh, you are getting something from this.
You are able to articulate these complicated conflicted emotions. You do feel comfortable talking about it. And it was a really heartening moment. And I think this speaks to the thing we were saying earlier, which is. Often, isn't this like one for one direct thing? You say, you know, let's talk about your emotions.
And they're like, thank you mother. You know how great that you're, you brought this to my attention. I'll be different right from now. You know, it's these little things that then come back much later, you know? So that was one example anyway of Abe.
Anita Rao
I love that. Neil, are there any stories that come to mind?
Neil Levine
Yeah, I, it's, it's not directly about ave actually, you know, especially when he was like five, six, you know, he's having tantrums that's, it's not uncommon with, with small kids, but especially when you're the youngest of three. And life can seem very challenging a lot when your brothers are getting things that you can't, and you know, his tantrums are.
Pretty, you know, completely epic. As, as, as most parents know with five and six year olds. And I remember, you know, both actually, you know, the two eldest boys going, why is he like that? God, he's so spoiled and he's always having these rages. And I, you know, I said, look, it's because he's the youngest and he sees you going off, you traveled by yourself for the first time internationally, or you know, your other brother went off on the bus to go buy some things.
And, you know, he, he sees us and he gets really frustrated and upset and. Maybe you can just, you know, be supportive and, and, and try and give him a bit of time and patience because he's, you know, he feels. In a very different place to you do. And that's why he's angry. And I think, you know, you could see this immediate change in the next few days of being a lot more sympathetic, not being quite so dismissive as of his tantrums, but sort of trying to engage with him a bit more.
So I think Ava's certainly helped the other two sort of become just a little bit more aware of the emotional state of, of uh, certainly their sibling and hopefully others too.
Anita Rao
I love that. I'd love to end on any kind of advice or it doesn't have to be advice, but it could just be kind of reflections about other parents.
You mentioned earlier, Ruth, like this is a moment of kind of intense parenting culture. There's a lot of pressure to. Get things right to do it the right way, to not, you know, harm your kid or to prevent harm in always possible. And it's, it's intense and it's a lot. I, I'm curious about kind of advice that you all have from your own experience of navigating that pressure to get it right while also just, you know, kind of doing, doing your best, doing the best that you can.
Ruth Whippman
I mean, I can speak to the question about other parents. I think that, you know, we've got this idea maybe, and maybe there's something slightly misogynistic in, in it, which is like, moms are always judging, other moms and moms are in conflict with each other. That is, has not been my experience at all.
Actually. I, I feel like. All of the parents I know, which generally tends to be moms, but also dads, you know, we all want the same things for our kids. Ultimately. We might have slightly different views on how to get there or slightly different approaches or the rest of it. But I think ultimately we all want the the same things.
And I think, you know, I have found so much support and connection from other. Other parents and we're all trying to figure it out. We're all navigating the same stuff. I don't think anyone feels particularly sure in what they're doing in this moment, or if they do, great, good luck to them. Tell me what to do.
But you know, yeah. I've found that other parents can be a great resource and usually like that's a great way to form connections yourself as well.
Anita Rao
Neil, any closing thoughts? And, and maybe you could even frame it as like advice for your past self. You've now done 14 years. 14 years of parenthood. Any, any coaching to, to Neil from 14 years ago?
Neil Levine
Oh, um, I, I, I, I could write a whole book about it, but I, I leave the book writing to, to Ruth here. The great thing about reading this book, although it's called Boy Mum, it was an amazing thing to read it and just see my own. Childhood and my own upbringing reflected in it. And I think 14 years ago I would tell myself to, you know, just to be conscious of my, my kids' social relationships I think is a big thing.
You know, I think going into parenting as a dad, I was so excited about sitting down and watching, you know, star Wars for the first time with them, or taking him to the first, you know, football game or whatever, you know, the kind of things which are very. Cliche parts of the, sort of the father son bonding rituals here.
But I think, you know, just be really concerned about, you know, the, all the, the friendships are developing and the sort of the time they're getting outside of the home and their, their understanding of their relationships. I think that's, that's the thing I would say to myself. Think about that as much as about the fun sitting down and watching, uh, the same geek movies.
I enjoyed watching.
Anita Rao
You can find out more about Ruth and Neil at our website, embodiedwunc.org. You can find all episodes of Embodied the Radio Show there and subscribe to our weekly podcast. Today's episode was produced by Kaia Findlay and edited by Amanda Magnus and Wilson Sayre. Nina Scott is our intern. Jenni Lawson, our technical director, and Quilla wrote our theme music. This program is recorded at the American Tobacco Historic District. North Carolina Public Radio is a broadcast service of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. I'm Anita Rao.