“When the masculine mystique is pulling boys and men out into the world to growl manly noises at one another, the only power with astronger pull on the male psyche is maternally induced guilt. The guilt is quite necessary for our moral development, but it is often uncomfortable.” MenWorldMoralBoysDevelopmentGuiltMalesNoiseUncomfortablePullingMasculineManlyMystiqueMoral Development Author:Frank Pittman
“Becoming Father the Nurturer rather than just Father the Provider enables a man to fully feel and express his humanity and his masculinity. Fathering is the most masculine thing a man can do.” MenFeelsHumanityFatherCan DoBecomingMasculinityMasculineProvidersFathering Author:Frank Pittman
“In colonial America, the father was the primary parent. . . . Over the past two hundred years, each generation of fathers has hadless authority than the last. . . . Masculinity ceased to be defined in terms of domestic involvement, skills at fathering and husbanding, but began to be defined in terms of making money. Men had to leave home to work. They stopped doing all the things they used to do.” MenYearsTwoHomeLastsAmericaPastUsedFatherParentTermGenerationsSkillsAuthorityHundredDefinedPrimariesMaking MoneyMasculinityInvolvementOver The PastFathering Author:Frank Pittman
“Family life in Western society since the time of the Old Testament has been a struggle to maintain patriarchy, male domination, and double standards in the face of a natural drift towards monogamous bonding. Young men have been called upon to prove their masculinity by their willingness to die in warfare, and young women have been called upon to prove their femininity by their willingness to die for their man. Women have been asked to appear small, dumb, and helpless so men would feel big and strong, brave, and clever. It's been a trick.” MenFeelsHas BeensBigsFacesYoungDiesStrongNaturalStruggleProveStandardsBraveWesternMalesCleverTricksDumbYoung ManWillingnessWarfareHelplessYoung WomenPatriarchyTestamentMasculinityDominationFemininityFamily LifeOld TestamentBondingDouble StandardWestern Society Author:Frank Pittman
“Every boy was supposed to come into the world equipped with a father whose prime function was to be our father and show us how tobe men. He can escape us, but we can never escape him. Present or absent, dead or alive, real or imagined, our father is the main man in our masculinity.” MenWorldRealShowsFatherBoysAliveFunctionPrimeMasculinityAbsentOur Father Author:Frank Pittman
“The mother must teach her son how to respect and follow the rules. She must teach him how to compete successfully with the other boys. And she must teach him how to find a woman to take care of him and finish the job she began of training him how to live in a family. But no matter how good a job a woman does in teaching a boy how to be a man, he knows that she is not the real thing, and so he tends to exaggerate the differences between men and women that she embodies.” KnowsMenDoeRealMatterCareJobsMotherDifferencesBoysTeachTeachingSonTrainingMen And WomenTake CareBe A ManReal ThingsDifferences Between Man And Woman Author:Frank Pittman
“A real man doesn't have to run from his mother, and may even have to face the reality that no great deed is going to be great enough for him to ransom himself completely, and he may always be in his mother's debt. If he understands that . . . he won't have to feel guilty, and he won't have to please her completely. He can go ahead and be nice to her and let her be part of his life.” IfsMenFeelsMayRealEnoughRealityRunningFacesMotherNicePleaseDeedsDebtGuiltyBeing NiceReal MenRansom Author:Frank Pittman
“All those tough guys who want to scare the world into seeing them as men . . . who don't know how to be a man with a woman, only abrute or a boy, who fill up the divorce courts; all those corporate raiders and rain-forest burners and war starters who want more in hopes that will make them feel better; . . . are suffering from Father Hunger. They go through their puberty rituals day after day for a lifetime, waiting for a father to anoint them and say "Attaboy," to treat them as good enough to be considered a man.” KnowsMenWorldWantFeelsWarEnoughGuySufferingFatherWaitingBoysKnow HowSeeingToughRainTreatsCourtLifetimeHungerDivorceForestsCorporateGood EnoughRitualScareFeel BetterFatherhoodBe A ManPubertyStartersTough GuyRaiders Author:Frank Pittman
“Masculinity varies from time to time and place to place. But it doesn't exist just in the mind of a single guy: it is shared withthe other guys. It is a code of conduct that requires men to maintain masculine postures and attitudes (however they are defined) at all times and in all places. Masculinity includes the symbols, uniforms, chants, and plays that make this the boys' team rather than the girls' team.” MenMindPlayGuyGirlAttitudeBoysTeamAll TimeSymbolsDefinedCodeUniformsMasculinityMasculineVaryOther GuysPostureSingle Guy Author:Frank Pittman
“The men who are messing up their lives, their families, and their world in their quest to feel man enough are not exercising truemasculinity, but a grotesque exaggeration of what they think a man is. When we see men overdoing their masculinity, we can assume that they haven't been raised by men, that they have taken cultural stereotypes literally, and that they are scared they aren't being manly enough.” ThinkingMenWorldFeelsEnoughTakenHavensHe ManExerciseAssumingRaisedScaredQuestsStereotypeMasculinityExaggerationManlyGrotesqueMessing Up Author:Frank Pittman
“In time, after a dozen years of centering their lives around the games boys play with one another, the boys' bodies change and that changes everything else. But the memories are not erased of that safest time in the lives of men, when their prime concern was playing games with guys who just wanted to be their friendly competitors. Life never again gets so simple.” MenYearsPlayBodyWantedGuyGamesMemoriesSimpleBoysConcernFriendlyPrimeDozenCompetitorsPlaying GamesCenteringBody Change Author:Frank Pittman
“The great passion in a man's life may not be for women or men or wealth or toys or fame, or even for his children, but for his masculinity, and at any point in his life he may be tempted to throw over the things for which he regularly lays down his life for the sake of that masculinity. He may keep this passion secret from women, and he may even deny it to himself, but the other boys know it about themselves and the wiser ones know it about the rest of us as well.” KnowsMenWellsMayChildrenPassionWealthSecretBoysFameLaysSakeDenyToysWiserMasculinityTemptedGreat Passion Author:Frank Pittman
“We become male automatically because of the Y chromosome and the little magic peanut, but if we are to become men we need the helpof other men--we need our fathers to model for us and then to anoint us, we need our buddies to share the coming-of-age rituals with us and to let us join the team of men, and we need myths of heroes to inspire us and to show us the way.” IfsMenWayNeedsLittlesShowsAgeFatherMagicTeamShareInspireHeroModelsMalesMythComing Of AgeRitualOur FatherBuddyPeanutsChromosomes Author:Frank Pittman
“Our father has an even more important function than modeling manhood for us. He is also the authority to let us relax the requirements of the masculine model: if our father accepts us, then that declares us masculine enough to join the company of men. We, in effect, have our diploma in masculinity and can go on to develop other skills.” IfsMenImportantEnoughFatherCompanyAcceptingEffectsGoes OnSkillsAuthorityModelsFunctionRelaxRequirementsManhoodMasculinityMasculineModelingOur FatherDiploma Author:Frank Pittman
“We long for our father. We wear his clothes, and actually try to fill his shoes. . . . We hang on to him, begging him to teach ushow to do whatever is masculine, to throw balls or be in the woods or go see where he works. . . . We want our fathers to protect us from coming too completely under the control of our mothers. . . . We want to be seen with Dad, hanging out with men and doing men things.” MenWantTryingLongMotherFatherTeachDadProtectClothesBallsShoesWoodsHanging OutMasculineOur FatherBeggingDoing Me Author:Frank Pittman
“At the heart of male bonding is this experience of boys in early puberty: they know they must break free from their mothers and the civilized world of women, but they are not ready yet for the world of men, so they are only at home with other boys, equally outcast, equally frightened, and equally involved in posturing what they believe to be manhood.” KnowsMenWorldBelieveHeartHomeMotherBoysBreakReadyInvolvedMalesCivilizedFrightenedManhoodNot ReadyOutcastBondingPuberty Author:Frank Pittman
“I'm not suggesting that all men are beautiful, vulnerable boys, but we all started out that way. What happened to us? How did we become monsters of feminist nightmares? The answer, of course, is that we underwent a careful and deliberate process of gender training, sometimes brutal, always dehumanizing, cutting away large chunks of ourselves. Little girls went through something similarly crippling. If the gender training was successful, we each ended up being half a person.” IfsMenWayLittlesPersonsSometimesBeautifulGirlCoursesProcessAnswersHalfBoysSuccessfulCuttingHappenedTrainingFeministCarefulGenderMonstersVulnerableNightmareBrutalDeliberateSuggestingChunks Author:Frank Pittman
“As a guy develops and practices his masculinity, he is accompanied by an invisible male chorus of all the other guys, who hiss orcheer as he attempts to approximate the masculine ideal, who push him to sacrifice more of his humanity for the sake of his masculinity, and who ridicule him when he holds back. The chorus is made up of all the guy's comrades and rivals, his buddies and bosses, his male ancestors and his male cultural heroes--and above all, his father, who may have been a real person in his life, or may have existed only as the myth of the man who got away.” MenMayPersonsHas BeensMadeRealGuyHumanityFatherPracticeSacrificeHe ManHeroIdealsMalesSakeMythInvisibleBossAncestorMasculinityRidiculeMasculineRivalsBuddyOther GuysComradeChorusReal Person Author:Frank Pittman
“What we men share is the experience of having been raised by women in a culture that stopped our fathers from being close enough to teach us how to be men, in a world in which men were discouraged from talking about our masculinity and questioning its roots and its mystique, in a world that glorified masculinity and gave us impossibly unachievable myths of masculine heroics, but no domestic models to teach us how to do it.” MenWorldEnoughCultureFatherTalkingTeachShareModelsRootsRaisedMythQuestioningMasculinityMasculineDiscouragedBe A ManOur FatherMystique Author:Frank Pittman
“At the heart of the matter of masculine excess is a great longing for the love and approval of a father, a man who can tell another man that his masculinity is splendid enough and he can now relax.” MenHeartMatterEnoughFatherLongingRelaxExcessApprovalMasculinityMasculineSplendidAnother Man Author:Frank Pittman
“Most of us have felt barriers between ourselves and our fathers and had thought that going it alone was part of what it meant to be a man. We tried to get close to our children when we became fathers, and yet the business of practicing masculinity kept getting in the way. We men have begun to talk about that.” MenWayChildrenFatherFeltOur ChildrenBarriersMeant To BeMasculinityBe A ManOur Father Author:Frank Pittman
“It's not that we have too much mother, but too little father. We can't forgive our mothers for taking the place of our fathers until we are ready to see that the point of a man's life is to be a father and a mentor, and we can't do that because we don't know how we would be a father or a mentor when we never had one.” KnowsMenLittlesWould BeLife IsMotherFatherKnow HowToo MuchReadyForgivingMentorOur FatherCan't Forgive Author:Frank Pittman
“Infidelity flows from a belief that women have the power to make you feel like a man if you only find a woman that thinks you're perfect; if you can only find a woman that you haven't hurt or disappointed yet.” IfsThinkingMenFeelsBeliefHurtPerfectMarriageHavensFlowDisappointedInfidelity Author:Frank Pittman
“. . . in the end, there is nothing a man can do that a woman can't, except be a father.” MenEndsFatherCan DoMarriage Author:Frank Pittman
“The guys who fear becoming fathers don't understand that fathering is not something perfect men do, but something that perfects the man. The end product of child-raising is not the child but the parent.” MenChildrenEndsGuyFatherParentPerfectHe ManProductsBecomingDadParentingParenthoodRaising ChildrenBeing A ParentChildren And ParentsBeing A FatherPerfect ManParent ChildFatheringBecoming A FatherPerfect ParentsBecoming A Parent Author:Frank Pittman
“The most likely cause of a man's depression is his failure to be the man he thinks he should be” ThinkingMenShouldCausesEmotionHe Man Author:Frank Pittman
“Fathering is the most masculine thing a man can do.” MenFatherCan DoDaddyMasculineFathering Author:Frank Pittman
“A man doesn't have to have all the answers; children will teach him how to parent them, and in the process will teach him everything he needs to know about life.” KnowsMenNeedsChildrenProcessParentAnswersTeachParenthood Author:Frank Pittman
“Fathering makes a man, whatever his standing in the eyes of the world, feel strong and good and important, just as he makes his child feel loved and valued.” MenWorldFeelsChildrenImportantEyeStrongStrengthStandingFathering Author:Frank Pittman
“Fathering is not something perfect men do, but something that perfects the man.” MenParentPerfectHe ManBeing A ParentBeing A FatherPerfect ManFatheringBecoming A FatherPerfect ParentsBecoming A Parent Author:Frank Pittman
“Men who have been raised violently have every reason to believe it is appropriate for them to control others through violence; they feel no compunction over being violent to women, children, and one another.” MenFeelsBelieveChildrenHas BeensReasonViolenceRaisedViolentAppropriateCompunction Author:Frank Pittman
“Why do otherwise sane, competent, strong men, men who can wrestle bears or raid corporations, shrink away in horror at the thought of washing a dish or changing a diaper?” MenStrongBearsHorrorCorporationsInsecuritySaneDishesShrinksCompetentWashingStrong ManDiapers Author:Frank Pittman
