Boys don’t come into the world with some inborn tendency toward domination or violence. As the Stanford psychologist Albert Bandura explained: “People are not born with preformed repertoires of aggressive behavior. They must learn them.” The problem is rooted in boys’ socialization, which is characterized by physical discipline, control and disdain for weakness.

With this template for relating to themselves and to the world, it is not surprising that, compared with girls, adolescent boys and young men abuse tobacco at higher rates, drive more recklessly and engage in riskier sex. In the United States, 75 percent of deaths among 15- to 24-year-olds are of boys and young men . Males are more likely than females to die from injuries sustained in car accidents or falls, and from homicides. Especially when the risks of masculinity are compounded by racism and poverty, too many boys do not survive into manhood.

When I was young I went to an urban, all-boys’ high school where the bigger and more violent guys ruled. One spring, after a school dance, the electric charge of a fight surged and a crowd rushed to one of the gym exits. I could make out some of the guys from my lunch table. One of them, an older boy others said was “crazy,” was hauling off and kicking another boy, who died that night from head trauma.

I have never forgotten that scene. As a psychologist, I have spoken with many young men who have had similarly harrowing experiences, and I have heard from many parents about the effects on their sons. In the grip of stressful experiences like these, boys often pull away from their families. They become accountable not to those who love them but to a brotherhood they seek to impress.

The parents, understandably, feel anxious. Their sons behave a certain way — lackadaisical in school, unkind toward their siblings, anxious or angry or shy — and parents intervene, with concern, irritation, with a hand heavy. They try to give advice and become even more frustrated or alarmed when their sons cannot hear them.

Fathers, especially, may feel that times have changed so much since they were boys that their counsel amounts to outdated clichés. And it’s true that this generation of boys is in a much better position than we are to assess the future. But it’s not true that we are not needed — far from it.

What parents can do, must do, for their sons is never underestimate the power of listening to them, knowing them, and standing by while they navigate the rough waters of boyhood. Behind every boy who avoids being swept away in the current is someone who holds him — and believes in his ability to hold his own.

Michael C. Reichert is the author of the forthcoming “How to Raise a Boy: The Power of Connection to Build Good Men,” from which this essay is adapted.

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