This month we handed out a poisoned chalice when we asked Carl Beech to contribute something about boys and men. We wanted him to do more than just give us some tips on helping boys enjoy Sunday school (less craft, more games is the standard advice, by the way). Instead, we wanted to ask the underlying questions of whether we are succeeding in nurturing the faith of the boys in a way which enables them to become the men our churches need in the future. However, it’s hard to speak honestly and openly about the issues without running the risk of being accused of making huge generalisations or of sexism. We didn’t want those dangers to prevent us from asking some really important questions about how we can best develop the faith of both boys and girls.
I know some people really disagreed with Carl; you can find a fair summary of this line of thinking here in Ali Campbell’s response to the feature. My response to Carl’s feature is different; I can’t say I agree with every word he says, but then that’s true of most features we publish and is also true of Ali’s response. I do think he raises some issues that we should face up to even if we don’t necessarily agree with some of his solutions. My plan in this little piece is to try and draw out the stuff I think we should be thinking about from Carl and give a little of my perspective on these issues.
Boys and Girls are different.
On one level it’s a statement of the obvious but we do need to acknowledge that there are significant differences in the way boys and girls develop. Their brains are wired differently, they grow in different ways and their bodies are subject to the effects of different hormones, with testosterone being something that Carl picked up on. One result of this is that boys tend to need to be more active and aren’t so good at sessions that rely heavily on sitting, talking and using fine motor skills to do craft based activities. Boys tend to be more competitive, less collaborative and less willing to accept help; boys tend to want to lead rather than follow. Huge generalisations I know but equally things that have been observed and should be responded to even if we do accept that it won’t be true in every boy and the traits I’ve described may be observed in girls as well.
Carl majored on how are churches could become places where boys and men like this could fit in better, but it makes me ask a different question of how we hone and nurture these boys to be the type of men, fathers and husbands that our society needs. According to Steve Biddulph, in his excellent book Raising Boys, that means we need to actively engage in raising emotionally intelligent men who are more empathetic and better at processing their emotions, so that sadness or frustration or fear doesn’t all fly out as anger.
Testosterone and aggression
Carl was right to pick up on this. I know it’s simplistic to just say testosterone causes anger, but it is a factor. Anyone who has worked with boys has seen this and wondered quite what to do. For some the answer is to try and stop violence from children, others would want to allow ‘rough housing’ as an outlet, while others still see sports like rugby or martial arts as a way of helping boys control and channel the aggression that testosterone can produce. I’m not sure what I think about this. In principle, I think the idea of allowing ‘rougher play’ is fine, , within boundaries and understanding that it won’t only be boys wanting to join in, but the practicalities of how you decide what’s ok and what goes too far might mean that in reality I’d ban it. There’s also the thought of what a group like this would be like for other, less physical children who would have to be considered.
What about girls?
We have had comparative success retaining girls in our groups (i.e. we have lost them at a slower rate) but this may only reflect the fact that our curriculums fit better with girls learning styles (here I go with another sweeping generalisation) and that mustn’t prevent us from asking key questions about whether it is working. The girls in our groups are growing up in a society where there are amazing opportunities for them to work and lead in places that in the past were male-dominated, including church leadership, but they will still be likely to earn less than men and be judged more harshly, especially for their appearance. We need to think about how we inspire girls to take their places as leaders in the church even if they don’t see it happening in their church now.
It can be argued that the changes in the role of women have had knock on effects to men with their traditional roles now being shared with women or left in the past. These changes have been good but we do need to ask the question, as we nurture the boys in our groups: how are we setting them up to be a Christ-centred part of this society?
