If there is one thing Kiwi men could have had more of as boys, it is praise from their parents, says Richard Aston, CEO of Big Buddy, which matches fatherless boys with male mentors.
During in-depth interviews with potential mentors over his 13 years as CEO, he heard the same issues from childhood arising again and again – a raft of common woes he believed could easily be avoided in the next generation.
To help give parents that knowledge, Richard joined forces with his wife, Ruth Kerr – Big Buddy’s media co-ordinator, a journalist for more than 30 years, and co-parent of their blended family of four children, Sia, Djan, Lara and Tessa – to write Our Boys.
It’s a book on raising boys in today’s world, and combines Richard’s experience at Big Buddy (which has seen him match 630 boys with mentors) with Ruth’s investigative skills, which she used to research the latest findings on boys and men.
Authors Ruth Kerr and Richard Aston.
Here they talk about when boys need male role models most:
When a boy is about six or seven, it is Dad’s (or another man in the boy’s life) time to shine.
“At this age, boys are on a pretty visceral, primal level, looking at how men operate in the world and how that is different from women. How do they walk? How do they talk? How do they drive the car? Every little detail is noticed, and the young boy needs to absorb that.
“He needs that male ally now, because most men have gone through that stuff themselves, and they are open to risk,” says Richard.
“The classic story I tell is of the little six-year-old who is climbing the pohutukawa tree in the back garden and Mum is saying, ‘Be careful,’ and Dad is saying, ‘Grab that branch with your left hand, that branch above you is too thin, step to the right.’ He’s teaching practical ways of managing the risk.”
“And Mum is thinking, ‘Just get out of the tree!’” adds Ruth.
The next stage of development when a strong male role model becomes pivotal to boys’ development is the age of 14.
“Here it’s about the big question: ‘Who am I?’” says Richard. “And the first answer is, ‘I am a man,’ and you can’t ask your mum about that. He is trying to absorb by osmosis what maleness is, and it is a big job so Mum needs to back off because it takes all his attention.”
But that boy still needs his mum.
“Mum still very much needs to be alongside him,” says Ruth. “But be alongside him rather than hovering above him!”
“He is starting to grow into an adult,” says Richard. “A lot of cultures have initiation rites at that point, when the boy is taken away to join men and then he’ll come back slightly different. Mum’s job is to go, ‘Okay, he is more of a man and I will have a slightly different relationship with him.’”
For more insights on raising boys from Ruth Kerr and Richard Aston, see the August edition of The Australian Women’s Weekly, out now.
