The lost boys: We mothers think they're tougher than girls - but growing evidence suggests neglecting our sons' emotions scars them for life



All of my sisters vividly recall the first boy born into our extended family, where girls’ behaviour set the norm.



I am one of six daughters and my mother was one of three.



All of us — adults and children alike — regarded my cousin Bobby as the naughtiest child alive.



We were all aghast at how mad he could get and how he would hurl things around.



Neglected: Boys' emotions can be neglected by parents who just leave them to get on with things, rather than comforting them like girls

My grandfather — a gentle and indulgent man with all the little girls — used to shake his head at Bobby pondering aloud: ‘What is wrong with him?’



It wasn’t until 40 years later when I had my own son, Tony, and did some research about how little boys develop, that I realised there had been nothing ‘wrong’ with Bobby at all.



It’s just that little girls are not the same as little lads.

Back then Bobby at least had the status of being male.



In the Sixties, boys — whatever their troublesome traits — were highly valued.



Unskilled labour was still plentiful and it demanded a man’s superior physical strength.



Millions of men were in heavy industry — iron and steel making, engineering and the mines.



My parents and grandparents had another compelling reason to respect and revere men — they’d lived through the war when the courage of men saved us all from tyranny.

But spool forward a generation and all little boys are now suffering, just as my cousin Bobby did, from a negative comparison with girls.



These days an exasperated intolerance of normal boys’ behaviour is commonplace.



At the same time, the perceived value of boys has plummeted as manual jobs have disappeared to be replaced in a knowledge-based economy by roles which require ‘soft skills’ of empathy and communication — skills at which women excel.



Naughty little boys: They might just be having trouble expressing their emotions

These huge changes have piled enormous pressure on boys, but flick through newspapers and magazines and although you’ll find plenty of features about the problems girls face in childhood and their teens — early sexualisation, pressure to conform to unhealthy stereotypes, depression, anorexia and self-harm — you’ll find little or nothing about boys.



It’s as though an assumption has taken hold that boys don’t need or deserve our concern and help.



Worries that these attitudes may be damaging the upbringing and achievement of a generation of young men have prompted a number of professionals with experience of counselling troubled boys and their families to speak up for more sensitive and thoughtful handling of their emotional needs.



One boys’ champion, Uanu Seshmi, who runs the charity From Boyhood To Manhood Foundation and has advised the government on gun and knife crime, believes boys’ interests have been squeezed out in the rush to right historic injustices against women.



‘We have become more thoughtful and reflective parents now than we were in the Sixties and Seventies and our attitudes to what girls can achieve have changed, and that is a really good thing,’ he told me.



‘But the downside is that boys have not been paid the same attention. And when it comes to those long-held attitudes — that boys don’t experience strong emotions, that they must be tough and deal with problems by themselves — the same received wisdom prevails.



‘We still fear that encouraging our sons to express their feelings will turn them into sissies.’



Eton headmaster, Tony Little, caused quite a stir at a recent conference when he said that contrary to popular belief, boys are more emotional than girls and are driven at times by more intense feelings.

Eton headmaster Tony Little says: 'Treat your boys with the same tenderness and compassion you would your girls'

‘We assume girls have a rich emotional life and that boys are more physical,’ he told me.



‘But we are misreading boys. Girls are better at articulating and expressing emotional needs and because boys don’t express them, we wrongly assume they don’t have any.’



By contrast, we are now so sensitive to the needs of girls that the school curriculum and exams have been altered to include more project-based work, which suits girls’ learning habits better.



Boys have been left to do it the girls’ way, or lag behind — and lag behind they do.



Uanu Seshmi, who ran a unit for boys excluded from school in South London, says there is a profound ignorance of the way in which boys develop.



‘Boys are more physical in the way they learn,’ he insists, ‘they need to handle things, to make things, they need to move around’.



Eton headmaster, Tony Little (pictured) believes boys are more emotional than girls

But that is not the teaching style in what has become a female-dominated profession, particularly at primary level where one in four schools in England hasn’t a single man on the staff.



‘Boys who are forced to sit still for long periods can respond by being hyperactive and that label is attached to them when it shouldn’t be,’ says Seshmi.



He thinks boys’ needs were better understood in the past, when there were more single-sex schools and more male teachers.



This almost wilful ignorance about boys is a hangover from the Sixties when, in the drive for female equality, it became fashionable to insist that boys and girls were the same and that all differences were cultural or learned.



This is wrong, says Tony Little. ‘In the past ten years there’s been a general acceptance that some behaviours are hard-wired.



'In the Sixties and Seventies we thought all gender differences were cultural, they’re not, people now accept that.’



In his best-selling book, Raising Boys, psychologist Steve Biddulph sets out another reason boys may suffer in the modern world as they look beyond their mothers, from the age of about seven, to learn from adult males what it is to be a man.



In an ideal world a father is best-placed to share interests and experiences with a boy, but for many the absence of fathers is a huge source of sadness and a big added challenge for the mothers who are raising them.



Mentors may have been easier for boys to find in the past when family life was more stable and church and school played a greater role in local life.

Left unsupported and with the availability of the internet, young boys are vulnerable to toxic images of extreme misogyny and violence.



So why might parents be colluding in this emotional neglect of their sons?

Here, too, the answer probably lies in our general ignorance about how boys grow.



Who knew? A study from the University of Kent found that, from the age of four, girls believe they are cleverer, better behaved and try harder than boys

Steve Biddulph says boys may be up to a year behind girls in their development when they start school.



At three a little boy may have only a few words while a girl has whole sentences.



He may be only able to express happy and cross, while she has the words to describe a range of emotions.



For many parents, it’s easier to comfort a little girl. Boys who lash out in frustration when things go wrong can end up being punished when their naughtiness is really a sign of distress.



Treat your boys with the same tenderness and compassion you would your girls, says Tony Little.



‘Kiss your son; sit him on your knee and talk, just as you would your daughter.



You’ll have to accept with an adolescent boy there is a period of time when they are much more resistant to that approach, but keep trying, be there, see it through.



‘Don’t expect too many responses, talk about one issue, choose your moment. I ask parents when their sons talk to them: “In the car,” they tell me.



'Think about that, there is no eye contact, it may even be dark. A boy can feel at his own pace, in his own way, not under pressure.’



Some experts believe our tendency to ‘let boys get on with it’ helps explain why suicide rates are much higher among teenage boys than girls.



Dr Sebastian Kraemer, a consultant child and adolescent psychiatrist, explains: ‘Suicide happens when people feel there is no help available.

This tendency encouraged in males that they must be self-reliant is likely to be a factor.’



Considering these views, I’ve begun to notice the way parents push little boys away.



Just the other day at the station, a young couple were waiting for the train with a boy of perhaps six and a younger girl.



She was playing happily with a doll but the boy seemed tired and wanted to lean against his mother who kept nudging him off and refusing to hold his hand.



I’ve realised that I too have fallen into the trap in the past of describing my own son as less emotionally complex than a girl when really it’s just that his emotions are less likely to be readily expressed and so harder to read and understand.

