By the time a boy becomes a young man, he’s likely absorbed a pretty clear set of rules about what he’s allowed to feel—rules that often leave little room for the kind of connection and support young people need. Nobody hands him a manual, but he learns it from what gets rewarded, what gets mocked, what the adults around him model, which messages and influencers flood his phone. Too often, boys learn that toughness is currency and vulnerability is a liability. And so when things get hard, he pulls away. One in four young men in America reports feeling deeply lonely on any given day. Two-thirds of men under 30 believe no one cares whether they’re okay. And upwards of one in seven young men report having no close friends—nearly five times the rate in 1990.
As a result, many boys tend to express distress through aggression, withdrawal, and risk-taking. And our current support systems are poorly equipped to catch these cries for help. Rather, these behaviors are often read as defiance, labeled as conduct issues, and treated accordingly. As Dr. Megan Paxton, Vice President of Clinical Effectiveness at Home of the Innocents, describes it, we give girls more words to describe their emotions. Boys, instead, mostly learn about anger.
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