As boys without bonds to their fathers grow older and more desperate about their masculinity, they are in danger of forming gangs in which they strut their masculinity for one another, often overdo it, and sometimes turn to displays of fierce, macho bravado and even violence.
Frank Pittman
The guys who fear becoming fathers don't understand that fathering is not something perfect men do, but something that perfects the man. The end product of child raising is not the child, but the parent.
parenting
A man doesn't have to have all the answers; children will teach him how to parent them, and in the process will teach him everything he needs to know about life.
life man
We know how powerful our mother was when we were little, but is our wife that powerful to us now? Must we relive our great deed of escape from Mama with every other woman in our life?
life deeds
Each generation's job is to question what parents accept on faith, to explore possibilities, and adapt the last generation's system of values for a new age.
age faith system
Fathering makes a man, whatever his standing in the eyes of the world, feel strong and good and important, just as he makes his child feel loved and valued.
man
Parents can make us distrust ourselves. To them, we seem always to be works-in-progress.
progress work
Men who have been raised violently have every reason to believe it is appropriate for them to control others through violence; they feel no compunction over being violent to women, children, and one another.
women men
Why do otherwise sane, competent, strong men, men who can wrestle bears or raid corporations, shrink away in horror at the thought of washing a dish or changing a diaper?
men
But after the intimacy-inducing rituals of puberty, boys who would be men are told we must go it alone, we must achieve our heroism as the Lone Ranger, we must see the other men as threats to our masculine mastery, as objects of competition.
competition men
danger masculinity
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