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Michael Gurian
Michael Gurian talks about young men in moral crisis
By Jason Baker
Raising children is never black and white. Techniques for parenting that might work for one child often are completely ineffective on another child, even when applied to siblings.
According to Michael Gurian, family therapist and author of seven books on male development, children differ not only by personality but also by sex. His message is simple yet not without its detractors: Boys and girls are not the same, and society is creating generations of young men in moral crisis by refusing to acknowledge the differences.
In his most recent book, The Good Son, Gurian expounds on philosophies he first brought out in earlier works, The Wonder of Boys and A Fine Young Man. With The Good Son, the author provides what he calls a "complete parenting plan for boys," providing parenting techniques for boys from infancy through the teen years to adulthood.
Gurian talks about The Good Son at 7 p.m. on Sept. 28 at Calvary Church, 16330 Los Gatos Blvd. The program is part of the Parenting Continuum, sponsored in part by the Los Gatos Union School District, the Parent Education Council and the Los Gatos-Saratoga Joint Union High School District
Gurian, who lives in Spokane, Wash., first created public debate with his assertions in The Wonder of Boys that males are suffering from society's suppression of masculinity and attempted homogenization of the sexes.
"I think it is getting a little easier for people to accept," he said in a telephone interview with the Saratoga News. "But there still is a reluctance among educators to teach the philosophy on college campuses. For more than 25 years, students have been told that boys and girls are the same."
Gurian bases his argument not only on philosophy, he said, but on biological research, which he again devotes chapters to in his latest book. Boys and girls differ not only sexually, he said, but also in the very structure of their brains. There also are vast emotional differences between male and female children, he said, and failure to recognize these differences can create real problems with boys' emotional development.
"The cultural transitions of the women's movement have been good for women and good for girls," said Gurian, who is the father of two daughters. "Women gained a lot from the movement. But I don't want to hinge masculinity on what women want. There is a fear of masculinity in society--a fear of maleness."
The energy and aggression boys exhibit often is the basis for that fear, he said. But this natural drive has been neglected and even vilified in modern culture, leading to what Gurian called the "criminalization of boyhood." This very often manifests in parents and physicians employing behavior-modifying medications--including Ritalin and Prozac--as a stopgap for problematic behavior, he said. In fact, Gurian said, in angry acts, boys essentially are asking for more love, attention and discipline than they are receiving.
"All children are not aggressive but boys are more so than girls," he said. "The first thing we need to realize is that there is nothing wrong with admitting that males are more aggressive. Boys should be disciplined at an early age and should learn not to take out aggression on a living thing. They must be taught the limits and the boundaries of that aggression."
Gurian believes that boys want to be good sons, that they don't want to act out with rage and violence. But culture, he said, encourages these kinds of behaviors and sets boys up for moral failure. In The Good Son, Gurian provides steps to solidify what he called the basic building blocks of human behavior: emotional bonding with family and extended family, character education in all institutional settings and spiritual development from birth to adulthood. He also addresses techniques for parents faced with "moral emergencies" such as stealing and violence.
"Parents need to be 'friendly authorities,' " he said. "They don't need to be taskmasters, but they still need to be the author of their son's destiny until he can decide to be the author of his own."
A major pillar of Gurian's techniques for combating the manifestation of inappropriate violence in young men is limiting their exposure to violent media, including many Internet sites and computer games. Many boys bond to visual media before their brains are ready to process the stimulation, he said, causing not only academic and emotional problems later in life but moral numbness as well.
"The universal conception of morality in the world is compassion, but that's not the moral code of someone trying to sell advertising," he said. "The media are interested in making money and that's it. They're treating children like consumers and telling the stories they need to tell to make money.
"A lot of families raise their kids without a TV and the kids turn out fine. Yes, they might feel like an outcast at times, but truthfully, I don't want my son relating to the guy who knows everything about every site on the Internet," he said.
Boys at their core need a more rich spiritual vision than they are being provided, he said. They want to live a life of meaning, not just one of media stimulation and material distraction.
"Materialism has become one of our cultural dangers," he said, "but I don't think it's too late. I don't think it will last. The soul won't stand for crass materialism forever."
Men and boys should learn to view life as a quest, he said, and search for the moral mission in their lives. "One of the best ways to become a man is to start out by helping another man on his quest," he said. "Many men walk through every year of their lives without a sense of moral mission, and that's what's eating us alive."
There is no charge for Gurian's talk. A book signing follows. For more information, call 395-5570.
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Saratoga, California Since 1955
