Rob Henderson, a contributing writer for Globe Opinion, is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and the author of “Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class.”
After years of living in foster homes, I was adopted by a woman who got a divorce — which was followed by a string of catastrophes in our lives. Then my adoptive mom entered a relationship with a woman named Shelly. When I was in eighth grade, they figured out that heating a house with firewood was cheaper than using the central heating system.
That winter, I woke up at 5:30 a.m. every day to light a fire so the house would be warm by the time my moms got up for work. At first I objected to this new chore, complaining that it wasn’t fair. My mom and Shelly calmly explained that they worked all day to pay the bills, and keeping the house warm was the least I could do as “the man of the house.”
At age 13, this was the first time anyone had ever described me as a “man.” I implicitly grasped that it had something to do with responsibility and contribution.
Depending on where they fall politically, many people believe, hope, or fear that men are “naturally” ambitious, confrontational, risk-seeking, and other male-coded attributes. Until recently, I believed this myself.
But recently I read “Manhood in the Making,” a 1991 book by the anthropologist David Gilmore. It changed my mind. Gilmore argues that masculinity isn’t something that just happens to boys as they grow up. Cultures had to create manhood — had to actively train it into young men — because the natural state of young males is apathy, self-indulgence, and laziness.
Indeed, many young men today don’t seem like they’re bursting with disruptive energy. They seem checked out. Detached. Coasting through life.
Now, many are told that manhood is just a social construct. And, as Gilmore points out in his fascinating book, it is. But it is a useful one.
A status that is earned
Social constructivism has gotten a bad rap in recent years, mostly because of how it’s been used and misused in debates about sex and gender identity. That’s unfortunate, because when it’s done properly, constructivist thinking can offer important insights about how the world actually works.
The philosopher Joseph Heath has observed that many progressive academics are drawn to constructivism because they’re frustrated by certain aspects of society but also recognize there’s no use criticizing something that can’t be changed. If a particular social arrangement is a construct, then maybe it can be changed, and so it becomes worth criticizing.
The problem is, people sometimes take this logic too far. They start declaring things to be social constructs simply because they wish they were different. For example, some argue that biological sex itself is purely a social construct — not because there’s strong evidence against sex differences, but because redefining sex as entirely socially constructed would support political goals regarding gender equality or identity.
But many people also make the opposite mistake. They assume the social world around them is natural, fixed, and inevitable. They forget that many of the things they take for granted are actually constructs. Anyone who spends time reading history or studying other societies eventually sees this. Other people in other places have lived by very different rules.
That’s what Gilmore’s book helped clarify for me. Manhood is not a biological fact. It’s a social role, built around expectations and obligations. Being male is biological, but in cultures all over the world and throughout history, manhood has been a title — a status one must earn.
How to have a strong head
There’s a scene in the 1999 cult classic film “Office Space” where the protagonist is asked what he’d do if he had a million dollars. After a few crude jokes, he pauses and says, “Nothing. I would relax. I would sit on my ass all day. I would do nothing.”
Most men, particularly young men, would far prefer this mode of living as opposed to, say, being a domineering tyrant or a responsible authority figure.
Mature masculinity is artificially induced through culture. Mature men do not naturally emerge like butterflies from boyish cocoons. Rather, they must be carefully encouraged, nurtured, counseled, and prodded into taking the actions necessary to achieve mature manhood.
Gilmore writes, “Manhood is a cultural construct based on group needs that overlays and counteracts a hesitant and resisting nature.” In other words, manhood exists to push against the default setting: self-indulgence and avoidance of responsibility.
Social conservatives often assume men naturally want to be good husbands and fathers. If that were true, ancient Rome wouldn’t have needed laws against bachelorhood. It took serious effort to get men to take on those roles. Progressives make a similar mistake, assuming men desire power and control. But most young men today aren’t power-hungry. They’re increasingly checked out.
This is why cultures around the world created rituals to shape boys into men. As the psychologist Roy Baumeister has written, “In many societies, any girl who grows up automatically becomes a woman. … Meanwhile, a boy does not automatically become a man, and instead is often required to prove himself, usually by passing stringent tests or producing more than he consumes.”
Gilmore points out that on the Greek Aegean island of Kalymnos, many of the inhabitants make their living by commercial sponge fishing. The men dive into deep water without the aid of special equipment, which they scorn. Diving this way is a gamble because many men are injured. Young divers who take precautions are mocked as effeminate and ridiculed by their peers.
Halfway around the world, in the high mountains of Melanesia, young boys undergo intense trials before achieving the status of manhood. Young boys are torn from their mothers and forced to undergo a series of brutal masculinizing rituals. These include whippings, beatings, and other forms of terror at the hands of older men, which the boys must endure stoically and silently. This community believes that without such hazing, boys will never mature into men but will remain weak and childlike. Real men are made, they insist, not born.
Perhaps my favorite manhood-related insult comes from Papua New Guinea. Men who are cultural contributors and creators are honored for their constructive manhood and are said to have “strong heads.” The object of shame is the man who “consumes more than he produces,” and thus “fails in all the constructive masculine pursuits: he provisions no one, cannot protect his kinsmen from attack, impregnates few women, and contributes little that is new and useful to the economy, religion, or technology,” Gilmore writes. This physically and culturally sterile man is said to have a “soft head” — like a baby.
In many societies, men who chose hardship in service of others were rewarded. They were given the title of man. With that came honor, status, and more opportunities to pass on their genes. Men who opted out, who sought comfort over challenge, were shamed. The desire for recognition from their community served as a powerful incentive.
Which might help explain why, in wealthy, modern societies, masculinity is now mocked or pathologized. In safe, prosperous environments, many question whether masculine strength was ever necessary at all.
The paradox of manhood
There’s a common belief that men are naturally dangerous — aggressive, predatory, criminally inclined. In truth, the average man is only slightly more adventurous, slightly more aggressive than the average woman. The difference is real, but it’s not dramatic. The average man isn’t wildly different from the average woman when it comes to traits like courage, assertiveness, or even the tendency toward violence.
This creates a strange paradox. The worst men — the true predators — need to be constrained. They need less boldness, less aggression, less entitlement. But the rest — the vast majority — need the opposite. They need encouragement. They need to be challenged to step up, take risks, and take responsibility.
The problem is, most public conversations don’t make this distinction. They flatten the male experience into one story. But blanket advice doesn’t work. A society that wants to flourish has to learn how to contain the worst men and cultivate the best ones.
Looking back, I realize my first real lesson in manhood didn’t come from a father figure or a traditional rite of passage. It came from two hardworking women trying to hold things together in a tough situation. When they called me the “man of the house,” they were challenging me to live up to a title that must be earned.
This is part of a series from Globe Ideas about how people change their minds. If you’d like to write about a book or film or other work that made you reconsider your point of view on an issue, we’re accepting submissions at ideas@globe.com.