Interestingly, I first thought that I had fully completed the transition to manhood at around the same time Boyz II Men, that famous boy band best known for their emotional ballads and a cappella harmonies, came into prominence in the early 1990s. That was also when I moved out of my parents’ house to live on my own. I can still remember loading all of my stuff in my car and stoically driving away as my mother watched from a distance. On my very first day in my humble abode, I accidentally locked myself out. I had to climb over a neighbor’s fence and destroy my screen door so that I could break into my own home. So much for being the man of the house! Looking back, I may have had my own roof over my head, a car to drive around in, and still blessed with peak levels of testosterone, but I’m not sure if I can say that the person I was then was a already a real man.
Frankly speaking, I’ve never really given much thought to the question of when I thought I became a man or of the characteristics of a real man. My interest just got piqued when I recently viewed an on-line preview of an upcoming low-budget indie “Christian drama” in the US called Courageous. The film’s plot revolves around the lives of four tough and competent police officers who are all struggling with what fatherhood truly is. In one scene, one of the characters asks the others when they first thought of themselves as men. His friends are all flabbergasted at the question and someone even smirks that they’re not going to talk about such a silly topic. The character, however, persists with his question and one of them answers with some uncertainty that it was when he moved out on his own. Another replies that maybe it was when he got his driver’s license and first job. Everyone is floored, however, when a third man quietly says that it was when his father told him he was. He recalled that he was 17 and his father, who needed his help in caring for their family, told him that he already thought of him as a man.
The question of when do boys become men can indeed be a confusing question. One can try to answer it simplistically in biological terms. Society also offers some milestones or events in life that overtly confer manhood. Some of them are more meaningful than others and include things such as sexual conquests, sports achievements, graduation from college, attaining legal age, getting a job, getting married, having a child, and buying a house. Yet I think that one characteristic of all of these so-called rites of passage is that they are outwardly focused and are premised primarily on how you are seen by others in the world. There are few clearly articulated norms that pertain to self-discovery and to inward maturity or growth. Sociologists suggest that in these aspects, it seems that boys are left mostly on their own to figure things out on a “trial and error” basis. Some males may therefore still be psychologically, socially, and spiritually immature even though they are already in their middle ages or beyond. These deficiencies, however, are either suppressed or ignored amid the dominant cultural model of masculinity, which experts say emphasizes things like emotional stoicism, toughness, competitiveness, self-sufficiency, aggression, “the celebration of exemplars,” and the subordination of women.
There is perhaps no single point in time when boys become men. It is probably better to look at it as a complex long-term process. One clear realization for me, however, is that regardless of cultural norms, parents should not let society dictate things or let their sons try to figure this out totally on their own. Our kids need mentors and trustworthy adults who care about them and who can guide them in transitioning into real manhood. More than anyone else, this is the job of the father. More than anyone else, sons want their fathers to do the job. In the end, maybe it is a joint journey after all and fathers do not become real men until they have helped their sons do the same.
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