I'm Still Thinking About My Dissertation

We spend a great deal of time thinking about what we intentionally teach our children. I’m increasingly interested in everything they learn that we never intended to teach them at all.

About a decade ago, I began researching my doctoral dissertation on mothers’ perceived influence on their adolescent sons’ developing ideas about masculinity. The question underneath the research was fairly simple: What role do mothers play in teaching their sons what it means to be a man?

At the time, I was struck by something I kept encountering in the literature. There was considerable attention to the influence of fathers, male peers, teachers, coaches, and other men in boys’ development of masculinity. Mothers were certainly studied as parents, but their role specifically in their sons’ developing ideas about masculinity had received surprisingly little attention.

That seemed like an important omission. Mothers are often among the earliest and most significant attachment figures in boys’ lives. We respond to their fear and sadness. We react to their anger. We praise certain behaviors and discourage others. We communicate ideas about strength, independence, relationships, women, vulnerability, responsibility, and respect, sometimes deliberately and sometimes without realizing we are doing it.

What the Mothers Told Me

I asked mothers of adolescent boys about the messages they believed they were giving their sons. All of the mothers in my study rejected the idea that boys should be discouraged from expressing vulnerable emotions. Many described trying to raise sons who could talk about feelings, treat others with respect, become responsible and independent, and resist some of the more restrictive expectations traditionally associated with masculinity.

Their answers were also more nuanced than simply rejecting traditionally masculine qualities. Traits such as toughness, competition, dominance, and independence were often understood in context. Toughness could mean resilience or emotional shutdown. Competition could be motivating or destructive. Strength could be used well or poorly.

Several mothers essentially stepped outside the masculinity question altogether. They were less concerned with raising a particular kind of man than with raising a good person.

I liked that answer then. I still do. But years later, I think I understand the question differently.

The Part I Understand Differently Now

There was another reason this research was personal to me. While I was studying mothers of adolescent boys, I was also raising a son.

These weren't abstract questions. I was thinking about emotional expression, gender expectations, relationships, strength, vulnerability, and independence academically while also watching a boy I loved begin the complicated process of becoming a man.

Years later, I am enormously proud of the man he has become. Parenting has also given me a deeper appreciation for something I understood much more abstractly when I conducted the research: parents matter tremendously, but we are only part of the story.

Children do not develop inside the value system of their families alone. They grow up among peers. They encounter teachers and coaches. They learn what earns approval and what earns ridicule. They absorb messages from school, sports, relationships, media, and the broader culture. As they get older, those other voices become increasingly important, which is part of the normal work of growing up and becoming separate from us.

We can be very intentional parents and still not control every message our children receive. We can teach something clearly at home while our children encounter competing messages elsewhere. That isn't necessarily a failure of parenting. It is a reminder that human development is far more complicated than any single influence.

What I Would Ask Now

If I were beginning the research today, I think my questions would be different.

I would still want to know what mothers believe they are teaching their sons, but I would also want to hear from the sons. What did their mothers intend to communicate, and what did their sons actually receive? Where did those perceptions match, and where did they differ?

That question feels especially relevant to me after years of working with couples. Intent and impact are often remarkably different things. One person can genuinely believe, “I have always tried to make it safe for you to talk to me,” while the other person genuinely experiences, “I learned not to bring certain things to you.” Neither account necessarily requires someone to be lying or uncaring. Relationships are more complicated than that.

I would also be more interested now in how the different influences in a boy’s life interact. What happens when the message at home conflicts with the message from peers? What makes one adult’s influence more powerful than another’s? How do temperament, attachment, belonging, culture, and relationships shape which messages a young person keeps and which ones he eventually rejects?

And I would still be interested in that deceptively simple idea from several of the mothers in my study: perhaps the goal is less about raising a boy to meet some definition of masculinity and more about raising a good human being.

But even there, I have more questions than I did then. What does it mean to help a boy become strong without teaching him to shut down emotionally? Independent without becoming disconnected? Confident without needing to diminish someone else? Able to tolerate vulnerability, disappointment, rejection, and conflict without experiencing those things as threats to who he is?

Those questions extend well beyond masculinity. They are questions about emotional development, relationships, and ultimately the kind of adults we are helping our children become.

Years Later

One of the strange things about research is that eventually you finish it. You defend the dissertation, graduate, put the enormous document on a shelf, and move on with your life. The question doesn't necessarily stay on the shelf with it.

I spent the years after my PhD building the clinical practice I wanted, with an increasing focus on couples and relationships. Meanwhile, the boy who was in the background of my dissertation grew up.

My perspective has changed too. Years of sitting with couples have made me even more interested in how people learn to handle vulnerability, closeness, independence, conflict, disappointment, and emotional responsibility. Motherhood has given me a different vantage point on the limits of parental influence.

We help shape our children, but we do not author them. Family matters enormously, and so do relationships, experience, culture, temperament, and eventually their own choices about who they want to become.

I spent years studying one small piece of this question, and then I spent years watching a boy I love become a man. I’m less convinced than ever that there are simple answers. But I’m more convinced that these are questions worth continuing to ask.