Marriage and Relationships

Masculinity and Relationships with Women

Many volumes have been written on the age-old conflicts between women and men, and this issue can only be briefly touched upon here. Despite the fact that some persons view the “battle of the sexes” as an inevitable outgrowth of biology and evolutionary imperatives (Buss, 1994), many others indict gender politics and socialization as playing a more critical (and more alterable) role in this longstanding state of affairs. Women’s studies writers have commonly identified misogyny as a pervasive aspect of patriarchal cultures. For example, Williams (1977) catalogued the dominant historical views of women as falling into four categories—“earth-mother, temptress-seductress, mystery, and necessary evil” (p.8). The advent of the contemporary women’s movement has done a great deal to confront the various permutations of mysogeny embedded with the culture, but such confrontation has also inspired reactivity and backlash toward women among some men (Clatterbaugh, 1990; Faludi, 1992). Read More...

Boys and Adolescents

In the past several years there has been a major surge in books calling for attention to the mounting problems of America’s young women and men. Following the phenomenal impact of Mary Pipher’s Reviving Ophelia, (Pipher, 1994), a work that articulated the plight of contemporary young women, many other writers have echoed similar concerns about the lives of young men. More recently, William Pollack’s Real Boys (Pollack, 1999) raised alarms about the cultural climate for young men, and he has been joined by several authors with similar concerns (Garbarino, 1999; Gurian & Stevens, 2005; Katz, 2003; Kindlon & Thompson, 2000). Although there are many differences among these publications, all share the common thesis that socialization pressures and demands of modern life can be toxic to the development of young boys. Read More...

Sexuality

One of the greatest obstacles to better relations between heterosexual women and men is the problem resulting from gender differences regarding sexuality. In their meta-analysis of gender differences in sexual attitudes and behavior, Hyde & Oliver (2000) found that women and men differed significantly in their incidence of masturbation (males having the higher incidence) and their attitudes toward casual sex (with males more likely to endorse this behavior). These findings are highly supportive of the vast body of literature identifying women’s and men’s sexual attitudes as discrepant and, thus, also harmful to male-female relationships. In describing men’s “non-relational” sexuality, Levant (1997) cited research findings that men, in comparison to women, think about sex more frequently, report more sex partners, purchase more autoerotic materials, and have more permissive attitudes toward casual sex. Read More...

Health

Masculinity and Health

Of all the toxic aspects of the male gender role, the health-diminishing and life-threatening components are the most dramatic. In brief, men live shorter lives than women (by six to eight years) and have higher morbidity from certain illnesses (Arias, 2005). Although some theorists have speculated that these differences are related to inherent biological factors, most researchers (Phillips, 2005; Verbrugge, 1985) explain the life expectancy data as a function of gender-related behavior. Courtenay (2005) reviewed the extensive body of research on sex differences in physical health and observed, “Men who adopt traditional beliefs about manhood and dominant norms of masculinity have greater health risks than their peers with less traditional beliefs and engage in riskier behaviors.” (p. 30). Read More...

Therapy

To some extent most all men resist the idea of asking for help, whether this is through a needed visit to a medical doctor or to a mental health practitioner.  In fact, I have previously written that most men hate the idea of entering psychotherapy, even when it is badly needed.  To overcome this substantial conundrum, a fundamentally new paradigm is required for psychotherapy with boys and men. Traditional approaches have been colossally uninformed by an in-depth appreciation of the unique challenges in the lives of boys and men. These approaches have largely failed to appreciate male attribution styles and the implications of indirect solutions to psychic pain. They have insufficiently recognized the inherent problems of the male code’s interference with acknowledging distress and admitting the need for help. There has been neither a countering of the distorted public image of psychotherapy processes, nor adequate development and presentation of a model of mental health intervention that would be palatable to boys and men. This untenable situation needs to change. Read More...