Real Men Don't Hit, Son

“Be a man!” goes the saying, but that doesn’t mean your son has to grow up believing in violence. DR RICHARD C. WOOLFSON shows you how to teach him to be assertive rather than aggressive.

- Dr Richard C. Woolfson

A recent survey of over 800 teenage boys in Singapore by Aware (Association of Women for Action Research found that 90 per cent had experienced “gender policing” (in other words, they had been chastised for not being “manly”).

The most common form of this pressure was being told to “man up” or to “take i like a man”.

In addition, the survey found that boys who had been pressured to be more gender-conforming were four times more likely to commit violence against, and six times more likely to experience violence from, other boys. They also had lower self-esteem.

Like many of these boys, some parents think manliness must always involves aggression – they reason that it’s a tough world and a growing boy has to be able to stand up for himself, to defend himself, and to be violent when necessary.

Other parents think manliness involves assertiveness – they reason that a child can stand up for himself by being assertive, and that violence is never justified.

Assertive VS violent