Mutuality | Blog + Magazine | Autumn 2018
The print + digital magazine of CBE International
Mutuality offers articles from diverse writers who share egalitarian theology and explore its intersection with everyday life.
Blog + Magazine ArticlesThe opinions expressed in these articles are those of the authors. They do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of CBE International or its members.
Autumn 2018
Volume: 25 | Number: 3
Boys Don't Cry: A Crisis of Vulnerability
Authors respond to the “boy’s don’t cry” mentality in the Western world and church, proposing that we should instead encourage vulnerability and emotional intelligence in boys.
Contents
We need to raise men who find their identity in Christ, not in gendered stereotypes. So where do we start? Here's five ideas.
Countering prevalent views on masculinity requires intentional action. While there are many ways to foster connection and emotional health, there’s one tool that has worked especially for us: storytelling.
No one ever warned us that we might have a child whose response to every disappointment would be perpetually set to Defcon One. We had one laid-back, happy son, and we thought we understood what little boys needed and how they behaved. Boys, we were always told, are resilient. They don’t express themselves verbally. [...]
Words are my gift to my son, a gift many men do not grow up with. Instead, they are taught that emotions are silly or effeminate and should therefore be ignored (or at least restrained). These men now struggle with anger and health issues that don’t seem to have any clear causes.
We spent many years of our marriage and raised our sons in a church that sought to form men into manly Christian leaders and women into submissive followers. Thankfully, we realized that model didn’t make sense for our marriage or for our sons.
I've chosen not to shy away from telling my kids about my depression. I want them to know that when they face grief, anxiety, or disappointment, they don’t have to hide it.
I was a victim of one of the many contradictions of complementarian Christianity. Complementarians say that men teach and lead while women learn and submit. Yet, at my school, most of the teachers were women. In fact, in Christian churches and schools throughout the world, females teach and lead while male students learn and submit.
How easily we swallow the myth that “boys don’t cry,” forgetting that male saints, and Jesus himself, often failed to conform to the gender stereotypes of their (or our) day.
