Rescue mission for males

We are past the time of throwing up our collective hands and shouting “how awful,” but must strategise how to remedy this society’s crisis of masculinity. Why are our boys and men failing and what’s to be done about it? Yet again, we urge policymakers to reacquaint themselves with Prof Selwyn Ryan’s report, “No time to quit: Engaging youth at risk” (2013), which names positive influences as family, school, sport and a proposed national service, and negative influences as the drug trade, gangs, and anti-social music.

Amid this country’s general social breakdown, young males face specific challenges.

The phenomenon of young male failure has also affected societies such as the United States and United Kingdom, which can surely offer us some insights.

“Why society is failing young boys,” a 2012 article in the Huffington Post, largely blamed male failure on an absence of male role models for young boys who instead draw comfort from endless hours spent in front of a screen titillated by video games and/or online pornography.

The article was written by psychologist Dr Philip Zimbardo and artist Nikita Duncan, who found that males are getting conflicting messages — from media, institutions, parents and peers — about what it means to be a male, that is, what is acceptable and desirable male behaviour.

The authors note the “loser” stereotype of young men often portrayed by American movies, and we would be equally concerned at the mindless lout stereotype portrayed by Jamaican dancehall music, each equally unrealistic and unhealthy role models. The Huffington Post authors say the lack of role models is harming young males in their ability to succeed.

The US, like Trinidad and Tobago, has a high rate of fatherlessness.

“While moms are great at giving unconditional love regardless of their child’s performance, dads motivate sons to try harder, not to give up, to work for success.” The report laments that even a boy with a dad spends just half an hour a week in one-to-one conversation with his father, compared to 44 hours a week spent in front of a television or computer screen.

“Without better male role models in real life, guys become confused about what constitutes acceptable male behaviour. They don’t recognise the images presented in video games, movies, television, and porn as caricatures.” The article said research by one Maya G?tz and Dafna Lemish said boys are more vulnerable than girls to absorbing the messages of media.

Elsewhere, evidence strongly suggests that the excessive playing of video games can alter the function and indeed the very architecture of the human brain, producing boys bereft of social skills and detached from reality. The Huffington Post authors urge a calculated community effort in the home, schools, churches, athletics clubs and elsewhere, to mentor and coach youngsters in a healthy value system. Indeed, similar prescriptions have been suggested for TT from Prof Ryan. The solution does not lie in more prisons, more laws or more police, but in all of us as parents and communities cultivating better youngsters by a rescue mission for our young males. We trust this forms part of the work being done by the Office of the Prime Minister to reshape the behaviour of this country’s male population.