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Big Boys Don't Cry

By Susanna Freymark
Published Thursday, 15 January 2009, viewed 710 times

Compiled and introduced by Susannna Freymark

Fathers are encouraged to spend more time with their boys, to help shape them into the men they will become, but is their own conditioning inhibiting their son’s emotions? Confronting our cultural beliefs about crying and expressing emotion reveals a gender inequality. What does crying mean to the Australian male?

I was sixteen when I last cried in front of my father. Our dog, which had been a part of my life since I was seven years old, was dying. Tears ran down my face as we climbed into the car to head home, leaving the old dog with the vet to be put down. Across the roof of the car my father asked me why I was crying. Wasn’t it obvious? I stared out the side window on the journey home; I didn’t want to show my dad my tears. He didn’t say a word.

This incident didn’t inhibit my need or willingness to cry in adult life. But I am a daughter. Not a son. If I had been told, over and over, been given the silent message, ‘you are like me, be a man, don’t cry,’ it could have been a different story.

The latest results of a survey by Kids Helpline suggests that boys find it harder to cry than girls. This we know. The study showed that the main reasons boys cry are physical hurt, relationship problems, teasing, bullying and death of a loved one or pet. Ten per cent said that nothing made them cry. Boys do cry, and 53 per cent of the boys surveyed were able to talk about their feelings but they were less likely than girls to seek help.

What was most startling from this research was that boys, who spend a lot of time with their fathers and even when that relationship is close, are less emotionally expressive.

Even when the father openly expresses his feelings it doesn’t follow that the boys will. And fathers who were ‘silenced’ themselves as children, actually try harder with their sons, by telling them they love them and by validating their feelings. Yet boys in single parent families were more capable of talking about their feelings.

These findings are tentative and further research is needed but they raise significant questions for fathers and their families. Gary Simpson from Queensland Men’s Health and Wellbeing expressed the fears around crying with the phrase,
If a man starts crying, his tears will flood the world.

Other men spoke about the crying messages they were given as children:
It is a sign of weakness.
I had coaches who said, boys don’t cry; don’t show the opposition your weakness.

Is this what men do? Hold back the tears because they are not allowed to cry? Are they perceived by others as less manly if they do cry?

The Kids Helpline survey encourages men to think about the effect their father has had on their own ability to express themselves and what they are passing on to their sons.
Will there be a time when cry-baby is no longer a taunt and everyone, whatever their gender, can have a good sob if they want to?