Ken Solin

I’m disheartened by the number of twenty to thirty-year old men who are seemingly lost and not likely to get found, any time soon. Too many Boomer dads have been careless about preparing their sons for manhood. They have failed to create independent, emotionally conscious men with strong character. The result is a generation of coddled boys who haven’t a clue what it means to act like men. The effect that their immature, dysfunctional behavior is having on young women is equally devastating. This is an unequivocal lose/lose for Boomer fathers and their sons.

Perhaps it’s more expedient for fathers to infantilize their sons than to teach them how to become self-sufficient men. And I can’t begin to fathom what fathers are thinking when they invite their sons to come back home to live when they can’t find jobs in their chosen fields. What I do know is that fathers are cheating their sons out of the opportunity to face their problems, resolve them, and build strong character in the process. Instead, we have spawned a generation of young men who unwittingly wear the emotional diapers we put them in.

I can’t blame young men for the fix they’re in, because they’re the victims. It’s understandably difficult to reject being taken care of when faced with having to find any type of work to pay the rent. Fathers created this co-dependent relationship with their sons in the naive belief that they were sparing them the pain of struggling. In the process, they denied their sons their shot at self-esteem and the growth that comes from overcoming adversity.

Perhaps it was our own experiences as Boomer boys that suggested this flawed path. Our fathers weren’t particularly emotional men, and few knew how to relate to their sons on that level. What they did teach us though was the value of hard work, and that meant any work. No one looked down at a young man who did what he had to do in order to survive. Many of us, it appears, have decided to go to the other extreme, spoiling our sons to the point of keeping them juvenile and helpless.

Instead of sparing our sons the pain that is part and parcel of the rights of passage, we should have prepared them for the tough times we’re experiencing now that are worse in many ways than what Boomers ever faced. Why would they feel the pressure to become independent men when their boyhood bedroom is made up and ready to welcome them home again? Dinner is ready, son, go wash your hands. Inviting our grown sons to come back home to live, however briefly, is a sure-fire way to ensure they maintain the emotional development of high school students.

I don’t recall many Boomers who couldn’t survive, even in difficult times. We expected life to be hard, and when it was, we were neither surprised nor discouraged. Since we expected it, we were prepared to face it. We were tough enough to absorb the blows that came our way, and we were proud of our ability to stand on our own two feet and survive. We are, and always have always been, independent men.

We also failed to teach our sons the importance of voting. In the last Presidential election, as in previous elections, young men failed to vote in significant numbers. Since we didn’t explain the importance of voting, and young men consequently don’t vote, there aren’t any politicians who care a whit about the fate of young men who can’t find work or begin careers. Politicians aren’t afraid of losing young men’s non-existent votes. Young men have the voting numbers to better their opportunities, but first they’re going to have to find politicians that either give a damn about them or fear their voting power, or both.

It’s not too late to help our sons. Whether or not you’re a dad who ever envisioned his son sharing a cheesy, two bedroom apartment with five other guys while holding down a shitty job, is irrelevant, because that’s likely his fate if he’s able to find work that isn’t related to his college degree. You aren’t helping him by sparing him what he has been taught to believe is the indignity of low-paying jobs. His princely attitude about certain work being beneath him is your doing, and it’s your responsibility to apologize for putting that foolish notion into his head. Begin encouraging him to find any type of work so he can start living like a man.

If you love your son but still don’t understand that character is developed only through facing adversity, bite your tongue and tell your son to move out and find his way in the world, anyway. That would be doing him a favor by allowing him to struggle and grow into his manhood. If we don’t begin to push our sons to learn how to survive in tough times, they never will, and the consequences of that are too horrible to imagine.

Boomer fathers have to let go of the notion that they are better fathers than the fathers they grew up with, because, in many cases, that isn’t saying much anyway. The next time you think you have the right to shove advice down your live-at-home son’s throat because you’re still supporting him, think again. Just because he doesn’t tell you to go fuck yourself, doesn’t mean he wouldn’t like to. You’re playing a losing hand, and you’re playing it to an unnecessary, disastrous conclusion.

I’m concerned by how young men are faring socially. Relationships are being replaced by hooking up. No emotional skill is required. Just ask young women how difficult it is to find a young man to date who has any grasp on emotional intimacy. We can blame the porn industry for poisoning our sons about women, but the important lessons about women and intimacy, were ours to teach them, not theirs.

Boomer fathers have failed to make men of their sons. It’s time to change that paradigm, and that means cutting the umbilical cord that prevents them from being independent, strong men. Disabuse yourselves of the notion that you did your best, because you didn’t. If you had, your sons would be able to fend for themselves. Stop writing checks. Stop subsidizing them. Stop inviting them to come back home to live.

Start letting them grow into the men you hoped you were creating, but weren’t. Let them struggle, and let them grow from that struggle. Let them build the depth of character that will serve them as men. It’s the fatherly thing for a man to do.

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Anyone who rejects that women are smarter than men need only look at the recent statistics for students enrolled in the graduate schools of business, law, medicine, and dentistry. Women now outnumber men in those graduate schools and will soon hold the majority in those lofty careers. Does this make women smarter? I don’t see how anyone can deny this. They came from way behind fifty years ago, and are currently leaving men in their dust, proving that all they ever needed was an equal opportunity.

Women endure physical pain in a manner men could never consider. Think childbirth. And single mothers are raising half of the children in America by themselves, while holding down full-time careers. Are women tougher than men? Clearly they are. There are few jobs any longer that require brute strength alone, and even physically challenging careers in firefighting and police work are being handled capably by women.

But women’s greatest power is in their enormous emotional strength that they call upon when necessary. They can capably provide the love and emotional care their children need, and support their husbands’ needs simultaneously. They aren’t afraid of their emotions, and, unlike men, don’t hide from them out of fear or ignorance. They know how to deal with their feelings as they arise. Men who think women are weak because they cry more easily than they do are delusional. Women cry to release their pent-up emotions, instead of holding them in and blowing up. Men have yet to learn this simple lesson.

What does all of this mean to men? It means that its way past late for men to respond to the deafening wake-up call and become fully embodied men. That means becoming men who are confident in their manhood and can express, feel, and control their emotions. It means men who don’t feel threatened by women, and mistreat them because of their own inadequacies. It means that men are now the ones behind the eight-ball, and sadly, many still haven’t figured that out. Men are being left behind in so many arenas that they are becoming angry instead of resourceful, which makes no sense whatsoever.

Men used to wield all of the power in relationships and were responsible for the day-to-day, general well-being of the women they were in relationships with. That was a burden that men didn’t handle very well, and that women decided to assume. Women have beaten a path towards success and independence that is faster than any social change I can recall. They accomplished all of this with a minimal amount of fuss and noise.

How could women have achieved this if they weren’t smarter, tougher, and more emotionally centered, and what are the lessons men can learn from women? Men who fail to answer the wake-up will be left holding the bag of discontent and loneliness. Women are clever enough to realize that waiting for men to come around is going to take too long. Many now view men in the same way men used to see them, as necessary sexual partners with little else to offer.

Men should feel threatened, at least enough to change their dysfunctional behavior. Fathers who don’t spend time with their children damage them because they deny their children the most important aspect of fatherhood, emotional support. Fathers who cheat their children by withholding child-support because they don’t like the notion of supporting their ex-wives too, have to be plenty stupid, or in serious denial, to believe that baloney. Men can’t choose whether or not to be fathers. If you have a child, you’re a father, end of story.

Men are portrayed as jokes on television, and while it’s grating for me to watch, it’s not entirely out of the realm of reality. Most of the male dysfunctional behavior that causes so much pain to everyone, including men, is related to their inability to respond appropriately to their own feelings. Angry men aren’t angry at women; they just take their anger out on women because women are convenient and physically smaller. Imagine a man trying to rage against a male friend. How long would that friend be willing to tolerate that dysfunctional behavior before he said good-bye and good luck?

While women have been working hard together in small groups to find their places in the world, men have been sitting on the sidelines, watching helplessly as they’re being left in the dust. Men should be angry, but not with women. Men should be angry at their own emotional laziness, which causes them so much unnecessary pain and suffering. Men who continue on a path of emotional laziness will wake up one day to find that not only are women in charge, but that their services are no longer required.

The solution is for men to begin a dialogue with each other that’s entirely directed at their lack of an emotional center. I’ve worked with men for over twenty years, and I’ve seen how easy it is for men to engage each other in this dialogue. The results are men who aren’t afraid of their feelings, and who know how to use them appropriately to work through their issues. I hope I don’t see a time when men are permanently left behind, but all indications are that I might.

For a woman who has done even a minimal amount of emotional growth work, i.e. reading books, going to workshops, listening to talks, being in a relationship with a man who hasn’t, is exhausting and frustrating. I frequently hear from women around the country who are fed up with their men because of the lack of emotional dialogue in their relationships.

I suppose that the hundredth time a woman asks a man how he feels about her and has him tell her what he thinks about her, is about all any human being should ever have to endure. Women have been carrying the emotional dialogue football for so long that men have been relegated to tackling dummies. Have men fallen that far, or was their sense of importance simply inflated in the first place? I suggest both are correct.

I tell guys that the silent, tough guy thing isn’t working for them, and in truth, it never did. It’s past time for men to wake-up to their emotional shortcomings. There’s nothing macho or manly about a guy who’s behavior is that of an emotionally brain dead tackling dummy. Worse, men aren’t even getting their needs met because they’re too lazy to learn a minimal amount of emotional vocabulary. Saying I feel, is different from saying I think, and its inexplicable why men still don’t get that, because it’s an apples/oranges difference.

Statements beginning with I feel, aren’t debatable, which should be a welcome change for men weary from being second-guessed and criticized by women. If a man describes how he’s feeling to a woman, she can’t offer up any judgment, opinion, or advice about what he shares with her. It’s likely the only scenario in a man’s entire life with a woman that doesn’t allow for any snappy comebacks, criticism, or opinions.

If a man tells a woman what he thinks about her, that’s his opinion, and therefore debatable. Telling a woman what he thinks about her isn’t going to help their relationship grow, and like it or not, a relationship that’s stagnant eventually dies from a lack of oxygen, or in this case, dialogue,

“I don’t think we screw often enough,” isn’t likely to get most women into bed. “I miss the warm feeling I get when we make love”, is a more successful way for a man to ask for and get what he needs from a woman. The first statement says what he thinks. Maybe his partner disagrees. Maybe she thinks they make love often enough already, so there’s a difference of opinion that isn’t likely to get settled amicably. The second statement says how a man is feeling. There’s no argument associated with that statement. .

If a woman tells her husband, “I don’t think that you don’t spend enough time with the kids”, he would probably see that as an attack on his character as a father. If instead she said, “I love to watch you play with the kids and see how much they adore you,” he would be hard-pressed to find anything angry or judgmental in that.

Women are now a larger percentage than men in the graduate schools of business, medicine, dentistry, and law, which is ample proof that they have enormous abilities, are driven to succeed, and aren’t waiting around for men to save them. If men hope to ever exert any influence in relationships, they’re going to have to wake up to the fact that their dysfunctional behavior is making them expendable.

The pre-women’s movement attitudes about women are beginning to apply to men who are increasingly being seen as only valuable as sex objects. Women need men for sex, but they no longer need men to have children. Men don’t seem to be getting any of this, perhaps because they are choosing to ignore it. That’s a mistake, because the problem isn’t going away.

Women haven’t yet equaled men in terms of pay and advancement in the workplace, but they’re closing in. I’ve worked with women, and what I’ve noticed is that they’re less ego-driven and are more driven just to get the job done right. Men can learn how to behave in the workplace from women who seem to want to get the job done with a minimum amount of nonsense or bravado.

The age of the muscle aspect of work is over. With few exceptions, women are more than strong enough to compete with men in any arena. In terms of emotional awareness, they are giants compared with men. I have been working with men for two decades, just to get them to understand what it is they need to focus on, and why. For the most part, the men I’ve worked with, all got it. The problem isn’t whether or not men are capable of emotional growth. It’s whether or not they are willing to work to catch up to women who are emotionally superior and in desperate need of men willing to meet them on a level relationship playing field.

I’m hopeful and optimistic, but I also realize that men are going to have to leave the starting gate if they hope to compete in the race. Women have been carrying the heavy load in relationships for as long as I can remember. If men are in fact stronger, they can demonstrate their strength by showing up emotionally. It’s time.