All children are born with social-emotional capacities but sometimes we don’t give our kids the space to grow those capacities. For generations, boys have been treated differently and raised differently. In today’s episode we are going to dive into the why. Why do boys strip parts of themselves and are we asking them to? Why is this conversation so imperative today and what do the long term effects of this look like?
Jenna is joined by Author, Activist, and Facilitator, Mark Greene who has spent decades asking these challenging questions and finding new ways to help support our boys and ourselves.
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To learn more about how to support our children’s social-emotional development, visit beginlearning.com/sesame
Recap
Guests: Mark Greene (Author, Speaker, & Expert on Masculinity) & Dr. Jody LeVos (Child Development Expert) Host: Jenna Arnold
In a world entirely constructed by men, we are simultaneously reconsidering the architecture of that world—and that includes how we raise our sons. Parents often tell themselves they are raising their children the same, regardless of gender, but subconscious bias runs deep. We coddle toddlers but expect stoicism from young boys.
In this episode, Jenna sits down with Mark Greene to discuss the “Man Box”—the rigid set of rules defining what it means to be a man—and how these rules strip boys of their innate relational capacity. Later, Dr. Jody LeVos joins to discuss the science of emotional maturity, the debate around “red-shirting” (holding boys back a year), and why supporting boys ultimately supports everyone.
The Problem: The “Man Box” Culture
Mark Greene explains that while boys are born with a powerful capacity for connection, culture systematically trains it out of them. We force boys into a “dominance-based” culture where their worth is measured by their control over others, leading to a crisis of isolation.
- The Stat: Research shows that 94% of men in corporations report being pressured to perform masculinity in traditional ways (dominance, stoicism) rather than tracking equity or productivity.
- The Result: By late adolescence, boys disengage from close friendships to avoid appearing “girly or gay.” This isolation leads to drastically higher rates of heart disease, neurodegenerative disease, and suicide.
The Philosophy: Connection Over Control
The antidote to the “Man Box” is Relational Parenting. Mark argues that we don’t need to teach boys how to connect; we simply need to stop suppressing their natural instincts to do so. The goal is to move from a culture of “power over” to a culture of “power with.”
Mark’s advice:
“Your job is to keep expanding context… Boys contain a whole universe of selves. In a given moment, I may bring forward the rule self, but another time I may bring forward the caregiver or the trickster. Our children have those multiple selves as well.”
4 Insights on Raising Boys Differently
The conversation revealed specific, actionable ways to challenge the “Man Box” and foster emotional literacy in sons.
1. Identify the Rules of the “Man Box”
To break the rules, you must name them. Mark lists the universal rules boys are taught by age 10: Don’t show emotion (except anger), always be a breadwinner (never a caregiver), never ask for help, and have control over women and girls.
2. The “3 Selves” Strategy (Expanding Options)
When a child is struggling, parents often default to being the “Rule Enforcer.” Mark suggests parents role-model a “multiplicity of selves.” In difficult moments, try accessing your Questioning Self or your Playful Self instead of just your authoritative self. This teaches boys they don’t always have to be the “tough guy” to solve a problem.
3. Granting Permission to be Human
Children are constantly watching adults for “permission” to be human. If fathers and male role models show vulnerability, sadness, or uncertainty in front of their sons, boys realize these are valid options for them, too. If we don’t grant that permission, they default to the cultural norm of stoicism.
4. Challenge the False Binary
When boys feel they must choose between “winning” (sports, status) and “connection” (friendships with girls, kindness), parents must intervene. Jenna shares a story about her son not drafting his female best friend for a sports team because she wasn’t the “best” player. The solution isn’t to force the choice, but to ask: “Who told you it had to be one or the other? Why can’t you have both?”.
The Science: Red-Shirting & Readiness
Dr. Jody LeVos weighs in on the trend of “red-shirting”—holding boys back a year before starting school.
- The Reality: Children develop at unique paces. It is not necessarily that boys are biologically less mature, but that our school systems require self-regulation skills (sitting still, following multi-step instructions) that many young boys haven’t yet mastered.
- The Reframing: Holding a child back isn’t a failure; it’s a gift of time. It allows them to develop the social-emotional tools to navigate the classroom with confidence rather than anxiety.
- The Universal Truth: Practices that support boys (like more movement, clearer emotional signposting) are actually practices that support all children best.
Final Thought: You Are Already Doing It
The episode concludes with a sigh of relief. Mark reminds parents that simply being in a conversation with your children—even an imperfect one—is transformational.
“When I grew up, nobody was talking to me. The agony you feel about whether a conversation went right? That level of engagement is transformational… As we are shaping them, they are shaping us.”
Episode Transcript
Mark: I believe all children are born with these powerful relational capacities for creating and caring for relationships. But the culture at large, and often we in our homes, are so busy reinforcing retrogressive masculine ideas that they don’t get a chance to do the trial and error work over the course of years to grow those capacities.
Jenna: Today is a discussion for the ages, or at least a conversation that is centuries or millennia overdue. I’m equally relieved to be having it on behalf of all of those wondering how to raise boys today, but I’m selfishly needing this therapy session as well.
We live in a world entirely constructed by men, and we are simultaneously reconsidering the architecture of that world, and that includes how we raise our sons. I’m raising a boy, and in some ways, my entire objective in that effort is to not make him struggle with so many behaviors I see in the men around me: emotionally shut down, unable to listen or receive feedback, lonely at best, or feeling rejected and playing that out in violent ways at worst.
I tell myself I’m raising my children the same, but I know that’s not true. I have been studying my behavior toward my son compared to my daughter very closely. I’ve always been cognizant that for generations, boys have been treated differently—letting the “boys be boys” method ride—and I wanted to see how that manifested in my own parenting. Pretty quickly, I started noticing that I coddled him more. As a toddler, he demanded more of my doting attention, and I gave it. And as a young boy, I’m noticing an air about him—a sort of “let’s do it my way, shall we, Mom?”
Fortunately, though, we are talking to my friend Mark Greene, an expert on binary, riddled dialogues around masculinity and the long-term impact on the men in our lives that we love. Over Mark’s long career, he has held up a magnifying glass to forks in the road, specifically looking at childhoods that require boys to strip themselves of parts of their humanity in order to be accepted, in order to just survive. What I’m most interested in exploring with Mark is how we reorient ourselves as parents around a revised ethos that includes protecting our sons’ dignity so they value protecting that for others too. Mark, thank God you are here.
Mark: It’s a pleasure to see you, Jenna. It’s a pleasure to be here.
Jenna: Mark, before we get going on the subject, I wanted to level-set at the top of this conversation: Why are we having a very focused conversation on the state of boys and the role that the “Man Box” and masculinity are playing in our raising and cultivation of emotionally literate boys and men with high levels of curiosity? Why is this conversation so imperative alongside what’s happening with our girls or the evolution of what’s happening with any number of issues we’re facing as young parents?
Mark: It’s important to understand that boys are either given permission to grow their relational capacities—their emotional expression, their ability to be in the back-and-forth of complex relationships—or we shut that down. The dominance-based culture of masculinity—what we refer to as “Man Box” culture, which was originally conceptualized by Paul Kivel in the early 1980s but goes back generations—says: don’t show your emotions, always be tough, be a breadwinner, never a caregiver.
These ideas of masculinity will shut down our sons’ ability to create and care for relationships. It will put them into a dominance-based, hierarchical version of masculinity where the only way they can validate their masculinity is to show dominance over others—the boys around them, the girls in their life, and so on.
So we face a task right now to resist that cultural message by being engaged with them in conversation and connection, growing opportunities for them to express and learn through trial and error how to be fully, authentically human. Otherwise, they’re going to get slotted into a culture of deep social isolation in which more than 50% of Americans say they sometimes feel alone.
When we talk about boys who are limited in terms of their ability to express and connect, understand that Niobe Way’s research tells us that by the end of adolescence, boys are taught to disconnect from their close friendships. Men who do not have a circle of close male friends face dramatically higher levels of heart disease, neurodegenerative diseases, cancer—they literally die earlier from that social isolation. But in addition to that, we take these young men and we say, “If you want any kind of expression or connection, get a girlfriend.” In that way, we put this huge amount of emotional labor on girls and women that these young women are not prepared to do and cannot sustain. Boys and girls together pay the price for this culture of disconnection that Man Box culture represents.
And understand that in Man Box culture, if you’re having a tough time showing dominance over the men around you, or you’re having a difficult day, or you haven’t made a bunch of money today—you made some yesterday but you got to do it every day or you’re failing—then you can let that anxiety come out sideways as violence towards women, people of color, immigrants, and others. That is a sign of dominance that scores high in the Man Box culture.
Jenna: Specifically on how masculine culture was developed, has been protected, and manifests itself in our boys’ sports games or when we’re disciplining our kids—how does one actually try to wrap their arms around seeing masculine culture?
Mark: The good news is there’s a lot of research out there that has confirmed something that was originally conceptualized by Paul Kivel in the early 1980s. He went into high schools and asked boys a very simple question: “What are the rules for being a man?”
What he discovered was that they all knew the rules. I asked this question just two weeks ago of a group of eighth graders here in New York, and they gave me the same answers. So it’s pretty consistent what boys think are the rules for being a man. They include things like: Don’t show your emotions (except anger). Be a breadwinner, never a caregiver. Be tough, never ask for help. Talk to men about cars, sports, women, but don’t talk about anything deep, ever. Be heterosexual, never homosexual. And then this jewel: Have control over women and girls. Those are the rules of the Man Box that Paul Kivel discovered, and that’s what we’re facing right now in our culture of masculinity.
Jenna: As a mom of a boy who is really into sports, I’m seeing what I would have categorized as natural division and competition after school at the playground regarding who’s allowed to be on whose team based on who can throw the ball further. My son’s best friend has been a girl for the past five years of his life, and I saw him not draft her on his team this past weekend because she can’t throw the ball as far as some of their peers. I’ve been really worried about the role that sports as an on-ramp creates for boys to devalue friendships and prioritize more of the brute force characteristics that masculinity protects and cherishes.
Mark: If we look at our culture of masculinity, this Man Box culture, it’s important to note that a lot of the rules are about creating power over others. You’re describing a situation that is echoed in Judy Chu’s book, When Boys Become Boys. She was embedded in a pre-K class watching the dynamic between boys and girls for two years. A little boy comes up to her and says, “Miss Judy, I’m friends with all the girls, but don’t tell Bob, the head of the boys’ club. Because if he finds out I’m friends with the girls, he’ll kick me off the club and I won’t have a club anymore.”
What we’re talking about in that moment is boys beginning to hide and suppress authentic aspects of themselves, including these friendships with girls, in order to fit in. What Chu says is that boys are born wanting to belong, wanting to feel this connection. They feel it with all the kids around them, boys and girls equally. But the culture of masculinity says, “Yeah, you want to belong? You can belong in this group. Come on in. But here’s a set of rules you have to follow.” By the time boys look up and realize what’s happened, they’ve begun to hide authentic aspects of themselves in really significant ways and they’re stuck in this Man Box set of rules.
Ultimately, your son was offered a false binary, which is: sports or this girl that he’s a friend with. My advice to any parent who’s facing that is to just ask your child, “Hey, why would you limit your choices? Why can’t you have both? Who told you it had to be one or the other? How did you arrive at that?” And then hear what they say.
Jenna: We had a long conversation about it. One of the frames that I so appreciate you holding center in how parents maneuver with their kids today is offering “open doors” and “breadcrumbs” to having these conversations, versus having “complete” conversations. I’m so used to sitting down, having a meeting, and making a decision about what the go-forward is. But I am heeding your advice that for our boys to feel comfortable continuing to come to us, we can’t ever bookend it with, “Okay, now here’s what you have to go and do.” We have to reposition ourselves around the constant curious stance of, “How did that make you feel that you weren’t able to invite her onto your team because you were concerned she wasn’t going to be able to run fast enough?”
When I was posing those questions to him, he actually started to cry. He started to weep. I started naming what I thought those emotions would be because I think he felt really, really bad around choosing. I think he is as close with this girl as he is with his own sibling. But I wanted to protect him from that contradiction that I feel like the Man Box requires of him—that he has to pick winning over his relationships.
Mark: What I always try to do in a moment like that—my son’s 19 years old now, but I’ve been through a whole series of similar events—is look at all the different factors that are intersecting. One of the questions that would come to me in a moment like that is: Have you ever had a conversation with her about how you really like spending time with her and you’re a good friend, but you’re not going to pick her for your team? Because the idea that picking for the team was a litmus test for that relationship remaining close or not—she may not care.
Also, importantly, the idea that he is feeling remorse about that—sometimes that’s coming from the focus we’re putting on it. He may feel bad in part because he knows it mattered to you. So it’s better maybe to open it up into a wider context saying, “Hey, well go check in with her and see if she’s just dying to play on your team. Maybe one time let her do it.” In these ways, we let everybody off the hook from this binary idea that if he doesn’t pick her, he’s somehow wounding their friendship.
Jenna: I definitely delivered that in spades. Great. [Laughs] So, as a mom who’s doing everything I can to hold space for emoting—and I already messed up the “Hey, I hope she’s okay” part, where I went into the other room and frantically called to see if she was okay—how was both my behavior and the belief that he has to choose part of the Man Box structure that we’re all living in?
Mark: It’s dominance-based masculine culture. It’s a culture that is intended to disconnect boy emotional expression and connection. Niobe Way’s research points to it happening sometime in mid-adolescence. At the beginning of adolescence, boys say, “I love my best friend and without my best friend I would go crazy.” By late adolescence, they’re saying, “My friend lives around the corner, I don’t see him that much anymore.”
What she discovered was the constant cultural messages from this retrogressive masculinity taught them to stop caring about who they are authentically and start trying to prove what they’re not, which is “little kids, girly, or gay.” By late adolescence, they disengage from these friendships they said they’d go crazy without, and boy suicide numbers become four times that of girls. The culture of masculinity breaks their connection in the world and then slots them into this hierarchical masculine pecking order system where it says to boys: “Look, prove you can dominate the men, women, and everybody else around you, or lose status. That’s your choice. Good luck.”
Honestly, all of us have internalized that Man Box culture. If I’m a woman, I may be looking at the man in my life saying, “Show me some emotion… wait, that’s too much. You need to be tough in this world.” We’re enforcing the Man Box just like men are on each other. It’s universal.
I like to say that boys, mothers, and fathers—all of us—contain a whole universe of selves. In a given moment with a given challenge, I may bring forward that side of myself that’s a little tough or sets boundaries. But at another time, I may bring forward the caregiver, the trickster, or the Joker. Our children have those multiple selves as well. When there’s a challenging moment, we can ask questions to see what other possible selves are out there that we can call forward for them.
Jenna: One of the first times that I saw my son wrestle with control over himself and his identity in the context of some of his other boy peers… we named our son Atlas Oz. Atlas is his first name, Oz being his middle name, and we have been calling him Oz since he was a baby. In the middle of kindergarten, I get a phone call from the teacher saying, “I just want you to know that Oz changed his name to Atlas and he’s asking all of his friends and teachers to call him Atlas.”
When he started coming home, we asked, “Do you want us to call you Atlas?” He said, “No, no, no. You can call me Oz. I want my family to call me Oz, but I want the rest of the world to call me Atlas.” I started trying to get to the bottom of this. Suddenly “Oz” only had two letters, and some of the kids were making fun of it that it was too short and too little. So he went and pulled from his formal first name, Atlas, which is five letters.
As I think about Oz’s capacity to understand himself, I know that I also have to level up. I’m most concerned about how the men in his life are leveling up to this and what kind of humility and vulnerability they role model. I was really inspired by one of your suggestions to fathers in particular: not only how they emote, but how they emote in front of other men.
Mark: That’s a powerful observation because our children are always watching us. I call it “permission granting.” They’re looking for permission to be more human. If we don’t grant that, they may dial down their expression. But if we make that part of how we relate to them and how we relate in front of them, then they’ll pick that up as an option.
We’re talking about emotions a lot, and I want to take it one more level and talk about the relational—the idea of the “You,” the “Me,” and the “Us.” In this idea of the “Us,” who is caring for the relationship? When I make choices where I’m trying to change your opinion but I’m not paying attention to how I’m caring for the “Us” (what we’re creating), I lose a lot of options.
When we go into that relational space with curiosity—when we go in “not knowing,” asking questions—we are priming that space to be emergent. Something new is going to come out of that. With my son Gus when he was little, it was the conversations themselves, Jenna. Not even if we did them right or wrong. It’s about being in that dialogue in an ongoing way.
Gus might have gotten shoved at the park. I’d ask, “Why do you think Randy shoved you?” He’d say, “I don’t know, he’s just that way.” I’d ask, “Do you think Randy’s that way with everybody? Maybe Randy’s having a tough time at home?” “Well, maybe.” And then we let it go and talk about Legos. But the idea that our children can expand their context of understanding so that it’s not their fault all the time is key.
Start with three selves: That’s my Rule Self, that’s my Question Self, and that’s my Playful Self. Just work with three to begin with. When things were rough with my son, I leaned into questioning and play because I was pretty sure I was going to get it wrong if I had to guess what was going on for him.
Jenna: I find myself having to unpack and challenge the myth that if you have a certain title at work, money, or power, that you are all-knowing. To me, there’s such invitation in us all repositioning ourselves into the “I don’t know-ness” of it all.
Mark: I’ve been doing a lot of work lately with corporations like LVMH. I speak to the DEI person and I say, “Are there any men here who are already getting this inclusive, questioning, heart-led style of leadership?” They always say yes. I say, “Bring them. Let’s put them on a panel.”
You get the president of an organization saying, “I used to lead with that ‘I know everything’ style, and it was difficult. People were leaving my team. I finally decided to shift to something that feels more natural, holding some uncertainty.” The result is leaders saying their teams are more productive, having more interesting ideas, and that they like their jobs better.
Deloitte came out with a study saying fully inclusive organizations with diverse leadership have six times higher levels of innovation and eight times better business outcomes. Just let that sink in. If for the last 600 years we’d had six times higher levels of innovation, imagine how many problems would be solved.
So, if you think you’re preparing your son by letting him be tough and always having the answers for corporate success, I got news for you: what’s happening there is very different now. We need the full range of relational capacities. Sure, be tough, be a leader. But also learn how to hold uncertainty, ask questions, and take a “not knowing” position—all those aspects which have been wrongly gendered as feminine.
Jenna: Dr. Jody, thank you so much for being here. We just finished with the expert of all experts on boys. He’s really forcing me to level up my value set by saying “I don’t know, it’s non-linear.” I’m wanting to hear from you: Do we always hold boys back if their birthday is part of that arbitrary calendar, or don’t we?
Dr. Jody: I was so excited to hear Mark say “I don’t know.” It’s wonderful when an expert models that curiosity. My background is in child development, but I’m also a boy mom—I have two sons.
In terms of holding kids back, one term used a lot is “red-shirting.” It’s a sports analogy—athletes given a red shirt and an extra year to practice so they could perform at the highest level. When we started to see this trend of families holding their kids back, primarily boys, it was called red-shirting. It’s really this sense of: let’s give these kids an extra year to get ready.
Jenna: I appreciate you bringing up this theory of success. We chose to hold my son back because of emotional literacy, but that might also just be code for “I wanted him to have a driver’s license in 10th grade instead of 11th.”
Dr. Jody: I did the same thing. I have two sons, both fall babies. I knew they would be the youngest in their class. That’s not just a decision for that year; you’re thinking about their entire journey. For me, it was a sense of: Are they able to regulate their emotions in a classroom? Are they able to follow multi-step instructions? Toilet, dress, gross and fine motor skills?
As we think about redefining those milestones that matter, I’m trying to be very expansive. Every child develops at their own unique rate. Progress isn’t always linear. Readiness is about so much more than ABCs and 123s. Can they wait their turn? Can they regulate big emotions?
Jenna: Why is there a knee-jerk response from academics to create these very unique tracks (STEM for girls, Arts for boys) when it’s all universal? Have we left boys behind on the social-emotional learning track?
Dr. Jody: When I was looking at optimal classroom practices for children with ADHD, one of the big outcomes was that practices that support kids with learning differences are practices that support all kids best. If we address the issues we know boys are struggling with, ultimately everybody benefits.
Jenna: I feel like the big outtake from this entire series is going to be: “You actually know what you’re doing, stop listening.”
Dr. Jody: None of us know what we’re doing, and that’s okay too! We’re talking about it and creating a network.
Jenna: If anything, Mark mentioned that we want our boys to ask for help. This series is specifically saying: “Help, I don’t get it.”
Dr. Jody: Yes. That’s one step closer to us navigating it together and breaking the boundary that we’re all supposed to know how to do this perfectly.
Jenna: It’s clear this is an unfolding conversation, one that requires more of our personal experimentation and humility. Please be kind to yourselves as we navigate these collective questions around boys. Role model kindness as we grapple with this; the boys will feel it, and hopefully, they’ll do it too.
