I have found that mothers who have experienced violence, and particularly single mothers, often will allow and even encourage their boys to develop and demonstrate aggressive and violent behaviours. This is often due to a misunderstanding about what appropriate 'masculine' behaviour should be, about over-compensating for not having a male role-model, and a fear that boys may encounter difficulties in later life if they are not able to demonstrate such traditional masculine behaviour - that is, they might turn out to be wimps.
Chris Belcher rightly acknowledges that self esteem plays a large part in the development of boys into men. We need to work on our boys to ensure that they learn to express their feeleing and emotions in appropriate and non-violent forms, and to demonstrate that masculinity is not the same as aggression. However part of the process of teaching our boys to be non-violent men comes through working with men - the very ones who might be harming (and teaching) their boys as well as girls and women. If and when men can change (and they undoubtedly can) then they have a better chance of having a more positive influence on boys. Please see 'Mothers and Sons' by Jo Howard (Australia), and her accompanying resouce manual for the 'Bringing Up Boys' course. Cheers. ____________________________________________ Danny Blay Co-ordinator YWCA Palmerston Parenting Support Service Shop G6, Satepak Building 11 Palmerston Circuit Palmerston GPO Box 2586 Darwin NT 0801 Australia ph: 61 8 8932 6866 fx: 61 8 8941 3943 mobile: 043 88 55 357 [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***End-violence is sponsored by UNIFEM and receives generous support from ICAP*** To post a message, send it to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To subscribe or unsubscribe, send a message to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. In the 1st line of the message type: subscribe end-violence OR type: unsubscribe end-violence Archives of previous End-violence messages can be found at: http://www.edc.org/GLG/end-violence/hypermail/
