Don and Jeanne Elium’s 1994 treatise, Raising a Son, addresses the task of raising healthy, sensitive boys in modern American culture. Almost two decades, three editions, and 500,000 copies later, it has just been published as an ebook. Author Don Elium talks with Family section editor Misty McLaughlin about what has changed, and what remains the same, about raising sons; why biolo
gy matters; and how new American family structures are changing the parenting game.
Misty: What do you think has changed about raising sons in the almost two decades since you originally conceived this book?
Don: Not much. The issues remain the same for parenting boys: kind and firm leadership.
However, parents have shown evidence of change. More fathers now take a much more active role in their sons’ young lives. When Jeanne and I started, only a few fathers attended parenting classes. A few years after Raising a Son was published, audiences became more equal, half mothers, and half fathers. Many mothers are more understanding of the need for an active father’s role and both support and demand it. Mothers are also more knowledgeable about the importance of firmness, and there is more awareness about being assertive with sons in guiding behavioral issues.
Possibly the biggest effect on raising boys comes from the incredible growth, expansion, and co-opting power of technology with screens for almost every aspect of our daily living, that extend to almost anyone you want to communicate with on the planet! What is allowed or not allowed within the family environment is harder to control than ever before. Parents are as lost as their children in the preoccupation with the virtual world. So many of us are drawn to the Internet, where digital transactions provide an artificial sense of control, peace, and understanding that allow us to avoid actual conflicts and the more difficult everyday interactions of family life.
The solution: the same as we said 20 years ago: turn it off, turn your real interactions with real people in real time ON! Use the Internet as a tool to improve your actual life and not a substitute for it. It is hard enough to face the real issues of life. It is even harder when technology makes it easier and more pleasurable to escape from the real struggles in your home.
Lastly, the increase in divorce and different family configurations gives fathers an opportunity to step up more actively into their sons’ lives. Combined families have broadened the parenting net that, though challenging, offers boys more parenting support.
Misty: Have we in the United States grown any smarter about what it takes to raise, as you so aptly state the goal, “curious, creative, sensitive little boys?”
Don: YES! We see lots of evidence of kind, compassionate, and involved boys right here in our neighborhood. Several boys we know have been “mother’s helpers” after school and on Saturdays, earning a few extra bucks and providing interactive play with enamored tots. The play is not always quiet—things can get rowdy, but it seems that our culture has integrated the image of males to include a softer side, one where a teenage boy can admit to liking young children! We are learning to channel that testosterone into positive outlets.
Misty: You have a son, so I’ll assume a little about your motivation in writing this book and the other books in your series. What were your professional, political, or other personal motivations in writing about raising sons?
Don: Selfish. I was working to become a better man, had a young son, and saw absolutely no parenting books with “boy” or “girl” in the title, and there were very few books at that time on being a man. Raising a Son was the first book at that time to openly address the differences between girls and boys. Before that was the struggle to see everyone as equal, mistakenly translated as “the same.” We wanted to open this important parenting conversation about the effects and needs of maleness to the parenting and family world. Now there are many books joining in that ever-changing conversation about helping boys to become men.
Jeanne was working in the mytho-poetic men’s movement as a ritualist at that time, and had the privilege of hearing the personal stories of men and their childhoods. The anger and grief that were expressed led her to delve more deeply into the negative cultural beliefs about maleness, hoping to help raise our son with a more positive and empowered feeling of what it means to be male.
Misty: We know that many more dads than ever before are either single fathers or the primary caregivers to their children. What advice would you have for them, and for households including two moms or two dads? Parents who identify as queer or trans (neither strictly male nor female)?
Don: Boys are boys: they need strong, kind, and humane leaders. Period. It doesn’t change with two moms, two dads, or transgendered parents. There are unique needs where any two people partner, but the same parenting tasks apply. I work with heterosexual, homosexual, and lesbian marriages: same problems when two people partner. Where two or more gather, there will be inevitable conflicts. How you learn or don’t learn to face and work with conflict determines what happens in your family. Don’t let the culture or media confuse you in this single focus: kind, strong, loving leadership while being open to honest feedback and course corrections EVERY day.
Misty: One really intriguing approach you take is to talk about raising adult sons, well past our commonly-accepted notion of independent adulthood. What inspired you to cover parenting of sons during “the graduate years,” as you call them—ages 18-29?
Don: Jeanne often joked that men didn’t really grow up until they were in their 40s, so we took a look at young adult men and realized that the boy-flower tends to bloom into male maturity in the late 20s. Who could have predicted that so many young men would go to college and then come home again because of the current economic downturn? This return home has made understanding the needs of all family members so important—how to come to mutually-beneficial agreements, where to draw the lines of substantial contribution, chores, and other necessary household tasks.
Misty: You talk about the ways in which our culture has emotionally crippled men for the task of partnership and fatherhood. How can men overcome the strictures of the “boy code” that bound them in order to be effective, available fathers for their sons?
Don: Expand your male strength into your emotional vulnerability. Stop trying to be perfect and pleasing and be real. Be aware of how your presence in the family affects others and take responsibility for that. LEAD in owning your part in all regrettable interactions while also giving honest feedback with respect. Be open to what your blind spots are that your family tells you about (our next book). Own them. Work with them. You are one of the most important emotional models for your son. Your son will grow up with troubles no matter what you do. Why? Because your son is human. It is the nature of being human to have troubles. Face YOUR troubles knowing that humans have this task in front of them, and it will never go away. Our children act as we model for them, not what we say.
Misty: When gender is a more flexible category than ever before, why do you think it’s important to offer parenting advice that is gender-based (or sex-based)?
Don: Reality, because biology trumps new ideas about things. As long as biology stays the same, it is an important element in raising both boys and girls. Not THE most important, but one that was missing until Raising a Son was published. Not to be glorified, just acknowledged for the role it plays in the actual lives we live.
Misty: What impact do you think Raising a Son has made on the ways that people parent boys, on parenting approaches, and other books on sons?
Don: We wrote Raising a Son to begin the personal, cultural, and spiritual conversation about what sons need and what parents need to know. We are continually humbled by the positive response we have received over the years and the personal “thank you’s” and stories we have heard about how Raising a Son has helped bring out the courage in both fathers and mothers to stop pathologizing maleness and to move toward working with the normal forces and mysteries that are inherent in our sons. We hoped that Raising A Son would be a discussion point that brings out the best in what it is to be a man AND to be a woman.
Don Elium is a licensed individual, marriage, and family therapist in the San Francisco Bay Area. Along with his wife Jeanne, he has co-authored four books in a series called Raising a Family. He is currently at work on a book about relationship blind spots. You can find him online at www.donelium.com/doneliumpresents.html and www.RaisingAFamily.com.
Misty McLaughlin edits the Family section of Role/Reboot. She is a parent by vocation, a nonprofit web consultant by trade, and a writer and seamstress by fits and starts. Among other topics, she’s passionate about exploring issues of gender and generation, helping other households to find cultural loopholes that allow them to make their own models, and promoting institutional support for rebooting our roles. Follow her on Twitter @mistymclaughlin.
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