Questions for Men about Man-Making

Question 13. A Mom's Role in a Boy's Initiation to Manhood

In the message just below, a mother of two young boys asked me about her role in her boys' initiation to manhood. I have a lot of ideas on the subject, but after you read her questions and comments below, I’d like to hear about your feelings, opinions, and any related stories you might want to share on the topic.

The question for you is what would you say to moms who want to initiate their boys into Manhood?

As mother of two boys, I want to find out what my role should be in my sons’ initiation to manhood. Today mothers are involved more than ever with their boys' lives, and to ask them to step aside could backfire.

In any case, I agree that initiation is a man's job and mothers should encourage their boys to leave the secure and protective world of women, but I am sure there are contributions we can make. Any ideas, books, or essays in this regard would be a great help. Thank you.

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Bill - 41:  I think the biggest contribution a Mother can make to the Rite of Passage for her son becoming a man (besides helping to find the men, time, and arrangements to make it happen) is to honor and support the changes - both visible and symbolic - that occur after the rite. It's an odd thing in a way, but part of becoming a man is the symbolic death of the child and child status, and leaving the childhood behind. Acknowleged, remembered, and honored, yes, but a closed chapter and in the past. So when your son returns from the rite, it'll be a challenge to not slip into all the verbal and active expressions that come from your image and experience of him as "your little boy."

As a Mother, you could almost use a ritual yourself to cement your son's transition: that from this point on, your son is to be recognized, respected, and dealt with as a man, not a boy. That's a tough transition for many Mothers to make. I'm sure every Mother can imagine her son as a respectful, responsible, powerful male, leading a life designed and developed by his personal decided destiny. She can imagine him in the future as a wise elder male, as the caring and successful son that will be there for her old age. The trick is keep those future images confidentally in your mind, and not slip pack into regressing his face into that cute litte 5-year old you helped onto the school bus on his first day of 1st grade.

Respecting and responding to the role change from your son's rite of passage in a graceful and pragmatic way - while still expressing your love and support for him always as his Mother - is a challenge with results that will be treasured, foundational, and a real boon to your family.

Carl - 31: I would thank the mother for asking and suggest she find a good man. I am undertaking two imitation’s at the moment. The first is for a 41 year old man, the second is for a 13-year-old boy. Both are very different but contain, for the sake of this answer some core similarities:

1) The initiation must involve male elders. These the initiate can look to for masculine congruency, and receive spiritual, physical, emotional, and social tuition. Both of the initiations I mentioned include four male elders.

2) The initiation must have potency, or it is just another drive-by, take-away, corporate culture, shallow, quick-fix, head-based ritual. Potency is achieved through the construction of a psycho-physiological relationship in the initiate. The initiate must experience both the thinking and the feeling of a man. This can be achieved in diverse ways, and would take up too much space here, but needless to say, the initiation must speak to the heart and mind of the boy.

3) The single most important element is time and place. More important than cleverness, analysis, or words, is the commitment made to be with the initiate over an extended period of time to listen to him. This honors the discovery of purpose in the initiate in a way that shorter time frame would not. Place is also important, the home of the boy has too many symbols of his childhood.

Summary: Good men + Good Time + Good Place = Initiation.

Caution:   Unfortunately, as with the actual process of becoming a man, initiation is risky. It needs to have an element of danger so the initiate can face death and therefore make meaningful life choices. The two cautions I need to raise are: There is no need for actual physical danger of death if the process is undertaken with potent symbols, and secondly, the role of the boy in this initiation leaves him open to input from men. As we have all experienced first or second hand, the capacity for destruction in a broken man makes it essential that the elders have done great men's work themselves. It would be tragedy if at this key moment in a Boy’s journey, he received a wound which lamed him for life. 

Dennis- 51:  A woman cannot initiate a boy. It can only and must be done by a man and preferably a group of men skilled at initiation. The same holds true for women. It’s not possible for men to initiate girls. I can only suggest mothers look at the Boys to Men Mentoring website for one example of men doing a good job of initiating boys.

Mark - 56: I am the son of an alcoholic mother with horrible boundaries. That is how my background is skewed. Issues of sexuality felt out of bounds from a mother to a young man. I also felt like I was being “preloaded” with a lot of dissatisfaction on her part with the abruptness of men as lovers and partners. When my mother provided me with books on sexuality, I was satisfied with the information available and read them. I did not feel comfortable when she brought up issues of adolescence and sexuality personally. I think an arm’s length approach is best from a mother to a son, as it is with a father and daughter. Making oneself available to our offspring and practicing respect and confidentiality when we are consulted is the best way to contribute to their passage into adulthood. I felt honored and appreciated as a guide when my daughter and son were growing up, and I hope they did as well.

Mike - 61:  A Mom can help with a boys' initiation by:

•   Not speaking negatively about men in general
  
  
•   Finding healthy males who can serve as role models -- uncles, friends, etc. if the father is not available.
  
  
•   Realize that as a woman, she can not initiate her son into manhood.
  
  
•   Teach as best she can the qualities of mature manhood -- purpose, passion, power, piety, paternity, patience, persistence, partnership, pliability, peace-making, playfulness, presence, pardon, perspective.

Charlie: What can a mother do to help?

As a facilitator of a boy’s initiation and mentorship program, I've gotten to see how many different women respond to their son's passage into adolescence.  First off, they are usually the first to "get" that the boy needs strong loving male mentorship at this time in his life. Most of the boys we get are brought in by the moms.  We've had our most troubling incidents brought on by competition and defensiveness from the fathers. Not at all what I expected!

Mothers need to continue being mothers, and themselves. That consistency is just as important as anything else, even when a boy is trying to separate; trying to get independence.  Mom needs to continue loving and setting healthy boundaries while taking care of herself and not taking any shit from her son. She needs to let the boy separate, to honor his growing insights and peculiar passions with increasing empowerment, when it is merited by the boys equal ownership of responsibility and accountability.

Both need to learn how to honor the others unique energies, and see how both are vitally necessary and different. A boy’s ability to separate, to run out into the world confident, is still somewhat based upon his perception that mom will still love him when he comes back

Mothers also need to let go while they stay attached; to grieve the separation with the faith that the universe will continue his shaping and nurturing. 

Most of all, mom can be aware of her own projections on him, then be open to seeing the new him that is growing inside the one she knows.  She is still his primary teacher, but he will restrict the ways he is open to her as he seeks his own voice. She still knows him better than he may know himself, yet she will be able to tell him less and less.

Since this task is so enormous on a soul level, it seems to me that there must be as much transformation possible in it for Mother as well.

Michael:

1.   Women can’t initiate boys into manhood. Would women want men initiating girls into womanhood?
   
   
2.   If boys do not have good male role models, they will try to initiate themselves without their mother’s permission. This initiation process is sometimes called a gang. The majority of gangs are involved in illegal activities. Is this what women want for their sons?
   
   
3.   Women can’t role model manhood. They can only attempt to push or pull their sons in the direction of what they think a man should be. To me is sort of like having someone help a boy read a book about how to plan basketball. But when it comes time to actually play, the helper can't help.
   
   
4.   There are many boys in men's bodies, who have not been initiated. They can’t initiate anyone's son, because they have not been initiated themselves.
   
   
5.   Finding men to initiate her son is somewhat like helping him pick a college. There are literally thousands for colleges or universities that wouldn’t be a good fit for her son, and a few that would be perfect. The mother and her son can sort through them to find a college that works for him. In the same way, they can find a group of men or a man that can mentor and possibly initiate her son. This man or group of men must be people they can both trust. It may not be easy finding male initiators for a son, but the effort will be well rewarded.
   
   
6.   Women should not hand their sons over to men they don't trust.
   
   
7.   When women turn their sons over to men for initiation, the sons will come back a changed young man. The mother’s role is to accept, admire, and complement the positive changes in her son.
   
   
8.   Boys who don not have good male role models or are not initiated by men, often become soft or naive boys and men.
   
   
9.   There are several good books on the topic of initiation.  Mothers should read these books for perspective. A couple that come to mind are books by Robert Bly and Robert Moore. 

Brother Mustafa - 46:  I think mothers should be concerned about the men in their son’s lives. I have found it necessary to be very cautious and selective about the men who are allowed to volunteer as mentors with the young men in my program. Many men have good intentions but also carry some very bad notions of what manhood is all about. Many talk the talk, but don’t walk the talk.

One mother shared a very personal story with me about her twelve-year-old son Andre. He has a serious case of father hunger, and desperately wants his mother to be married so he will have a daddy. His mother, like most women, is very cautious and selective about the men she allows in her life and around her son.

One man in particular has been very helpful to the mother with household and automotive repairs, and has developed a close relationship with her son. Andre likes the man very much and has been telling his friends at school that he and his "daddy" are having lots of fun on the weekends. This man has become a very good friend, but not someone she would consider marrying. She also realizes that her son has grown too attached to the man, and that the man was using his closeness to her son to get closer to her. As a result, she has had to make the very difficult decision to distance herself and her son from the relationship.

As his mother told me, its hard to find a good husband and ever more difficult to find one when you have children. But she is grateful that she has found a good mentoring program that helps to fill a place in her son's life.

Fred:   I had a girl friend once that complained to me about how she had had a previous lover who was "uninitiated.” She said she felt she had to teach him to be a man. I asked her, "How did you learn to be a man?" Now this woman was a psychologist and also savvy and gracious. She raised her index finger and marked one on the board for me.

Generally, I think that women and men have to be in conflict about the process of boys separating off from the family feminine, both male and female love parenting, and becoming a part of the world of the masculine, which is also shared by both men and women.

Dwayne - 24:  Women raising boys who will eventually become men is always a challenging situation. I have known gay men who blame their mothers for allowing them to play with girl toys when they were children. Some say that their mothers allowed them to play dress up with their sisters. I think it is vital that single mothers create an environment for the male child that is not dominated by feminine themes.

To step aside from the manly way to raise a boy, there are universal lessons that parents should teach any child regardless of gender. But to compensate for the disproportionate home environment, a female parent can actively allow the child to partake in boyish activities, like dating girls (safely), joining sports teams, having male mentors, and hanging with friends.  I think that sexuality will take care of itself in that type of technique.

As far as the child’s journey to manhood with a strong mother behind him, I say that all she needs to do is instill strong values, in him and be frank about life without being too subjective and bitter about past experiences with men. Allow the child to think for himself, yet creatively guide him in the direction of becoming a good man.

Mark - 56:  I'd say to the mother to get him into a Big Brother program. I think mothers can do so much, but a boy needs another older man or boy to do boy things like play sports, go to events, just talk with the older person about what is going on in his life, etc.

Maybe more importantly, moms can teach a boy to share his innermost thoughts with her. If he can't with share with her, it will be tough to do it with other people. Unfortunately, I never got this from my mother, she being a narcissist. I see healthier males if they've had a warm and wonderful relationship with their mother.  

Dave - 59:   I don't think that a mother can do for her son what a father or male role model can, it is not in the nature of motherhood, it is noble and caring to want her son to be initiated into manhood but the whole point of the ritual is to "tear the boy away from the mother" so my advice to her would be to find a suitable male to help her with this.

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