Jennifer L.W. Fink and 'Building Boys'
On the harm of viewing boys as potential problems, and the magic of meeting kids where they are, both at school and at home.
Jennifer L.W. Fink is founder of Building Boys, a website, book and newsletter for anyone who cares about boys.
Can you say a little bit about Building Boys — the book and the newsletter. What is your focus, and who is your audience?
Both the book and the newsletter grew out of necessity. I have four children who all ended up being boys, and by the time I had two of them, I realized there were a lot of things I didn’t know about boys, and had never even thought about. So that started my learning for my purposes, and then I looked around and realized, I’m not the only one who doesn’t know this stuff, I’m not the only one struggling with these issues. So I initially started a blog, and that grew into the Building Boys website, and that grew into “Building Boys: Raising Great Guys in a World That Misunderstands Males,” the book, and then there’s Building Boys Bulletin, which is my newsletter.
The primary audience for both of them is parents of boys — generally moms, because I think moms are a lot more confused by boy stuff than dads, simply because we have never been boys, we have not had that experience. And also teachers, because teachers are in a similar position. A lot of teachers are also female and don't really get what is going on with these guys.
So I hope to demystify some of that, and also let parents and teachers know, You're not alone in this. This is not unusual, what you’re dealing with; this isn’t a mark of your failure, this doesn’t mean there’s necessarily something wrong with this particular kid. Some of this is just stuff where we don’t understand what’s going on or we’re working in systems that aren’t supporting any of us in giving kids what they need. So I look at Building Boys as a tool to empower other parents and educators.
I love what you said about the fact that we’re all in systems that don’t necessarily work for maybe this individual kid, maybe a lot of kids, in a lot of ways. That is something I’ve come to realize isn’t always easy for us to see. We’re more accustomed to look inward at our own selves — what am I doing wrong, what do I need to do differently?
Absolutely! I spent so much of my early parenting really stuck in that place because I had really bought into the idea that if I do everything right, then everything will turn out well. My kid will be well behaved, he will do well in school, he will treat other people well. Naively, I thought it was that simple. And there are so many variables that I did not even consider back then.
I love the way you bring research into your writing. What are some of the things that you have found most surprising or eye-opening in your research?
The biggest thing is that the pace of development is generally different, boys and girls. There is a wide variety within girls and within males, and there’s a lot of overlap, but generally speaking, males from prebirth all the way through the lifespan, develop more slowly than females and are generally biologically physiologically more vulnerable to exterior stresses, whether that’s something infectious or something like living in a chaotic, stressful, abusive or not-enough kind of environment.
That’s a big difference that I didn't know; that a male baby at birth is generally not as neurologically or cognitively mature as a female at birth. Even though we as adults kind of end up in the same place, the pace and the timing are different. And that is one reason why a lot of boys, generally speaking, develop their gross motor skills more quickly than their fine motor. It seems cliche that boys generally do better at running around kicking balls than holding pencils, and yes it’s also particularly due to socialization. But the parts of the brain that handle language mature more slowly in boys than in girls, as well as the parts of the brains that are about impulse control and executive function.
When you put all that together, and when you think about kindergarten and preschool is a lot closer to what we were doing in first grade, it’s no wonder so many boys struggle with sitting down, writing their name, learning how to read. It’s pretty easy to see how little boys could go from that to “I hate school” by third grade. And if you have older kids and want to look ahead, think about the teenage years. There is a clear difference in maturity between your average 15-year-old girl and your average 15-year-old boy. And that’s not because boys are idiots; it’s just a different pace of development.
I think there’s a very positive impulse to treat students the same regardless of gender and hold them to the same expectations, but I also wonder if something isn’t a bit lost if we fail to recognize that these students coming into kindergarten might have different capacity to do the things we’re asking them to do for a number of reasons, and one of those reasons might be gender.
It’s a really tricky thing because, yes, we want people to be treated equally and then we get into, what is equal, what is equity, what do those things mean? Richard V. Reeves is a Brookings Institute scholar, he published a book, Of Boys and Men and really looks at the differences in achievement between boys and men and girls and women over the years. The trends have been really good for women and girls. There is a lot of progress to be made yet. Also, the trend generally for boys and men has been not good, which isn’t good for anyone. When he looks at the developmental difference, an idea that he puts forth in his books is universally as a baseline red-shirting boys at kindergarten so that boys, instead of having the starting age be baseline 5 years old, have it be 6 years old. His thinking behind this is the difference in the developmental maturity, and the fact that this is already happening in many places. There are a lot of parents who do hold their boys back. Sometimes for academic concerns, sometimes, let’s be real, it’s for athletic reasons, they want their kids to be the biggest and strongest.
Reeves also points out that it’s generally the more affluent families who can afford to do that, because if you don’t put your kid in school, you are usually having to pay for an extra year of child care. So we need to have some kind of at least availability of structured affordable option for families.
You're not alone in this. This is not unusual, what you’re dealing with;
this isn’t a mark of your failure, this doesn’t mean there’s necessarily something wrong with this particular kid.
I also really wish that we as a whole country could step away from just reading and writing as the avenue toward learning and recognize that little kids, every little kid — you watch them, they learn by doing, by exploring, by listening. I wish we could incorporate more of that for all kids. If we open ourselves to those other avenues of learning, you don’t necessarily feel like a failure if you can’t read or write your name yet. You can still learn, and you’ll get those skills when you’re ready.
What are some of your least favorite, or most frustrating, stereotypes about boys?
My least favorite is this broad assumption that boys are troublemakers or potential predators. There is this tendency to assume that a boy or man is just trouble waiting to happen.
I want to be clear that there are reasons for that, especially for women. There are a lot of women who have suffered greatly at the hands of males. So it’s sort of reasonable to have a bit of fear and hesitation. But when we approach boys and young men as, We expect trouble or you’re going to hurt us or you’re going to cause harm, we’re very quick to see harm and disrespect in things that may be really innocent, or bids for connection or playfulness. There is research that shows that teachers are more likely to view boy behavior as a discipline issue, as trouble, than if a girl does the same thing. And it’s way more likely for a Black boy than for a white boy.
I was just thinking about the compounding effect that race plays — if you’re already predisposed to see a boy or young man as trouble. And how damaging that is for boys and young men, especially of color.
The expulsion rates in preschool are sky high for boys compared to girls and super sky high for Black boys. So if that is your experience as a boy in preschool or in kindergarten, how are you going to like going to this place where you are treated like a problem?
As parents, we’re hyper alert in a lot of ways because none of us wants to raise a bad guy. We all know what that looks like; we have many examples in the public sphere or in our private lives. I do not want to raise a violent man or someone who disrespects others. So it’s very easy and not helpful to impose all of that on a preschool age child and see wrestling and roughhousing and say, Oh my gosh, he’s going to be a violent person! But 4-year-olds play like that. It is completely normal and healthy for everybody, and kids can actually learn a lot about respect and boundaries and consent through roughhousing. But because it can kinda look like and sound like violence, a lot of people will assume the worst.
I find it interesting the kind of behaviors that are not acceptable in schools. I think it comes from a very well-meaning place of wanting to keep kids safe, which is very important. But sometimes there’s just no room for that physicality that kids have.
One time I was sitting behind my son’s first-grade class, and these kids reminded me of nothing so much as puppies. You’ve got teachers who are trying to enforce proper behavior — you want the kids to sit still, you want them to listen, you want them to keep their hands to themselves. But that’s not how they’re wired to learn. Little mammals of all types — they are on top of each other, they are exploring together, and there is a lot lost when we keep them from doing that. There’s a lot of time that we waste, trying to get kids to do these things that we think will make things easier.
What’s something about raising your boys that challenged you to parent differently than your own family of origin?
Emotions are not a thing in my family. I mean, of course they are, but they’re not acknowledged. Stuff it — that’s what you are taught and what you learn. So that’s one thing that I’m trying to do differently.
The other was that there wasn’t really room to be who you were. You felt like to gain acceptance, you had to live up to other peoples’ expectations, instead of being who you are and have people support you. So those were the two things that I think I have done differently. I really tried to follow my boys’ lead and let them be who they are and kind of facilitate whatever the thing is. Kids go through stages. My now-22-year-old, when he was 4 or 5, he was totally into dinosaurs, and then butterflies. And he’s not into either one of those things now, but you support the interests as they come, and they learn through those things.
I’m sure my parents did the best they could, and really tried. And they likely did better than their parents, and now I’m going to try. I always think of it as evolution through the generations. This is big stuff; not all of it is going to happen all at once. But if I can make a little step toward a healthier tomorrow, that sets generations up down the line.
Your boys are older now, but when they were school-age, where were they when you were working? What did that look like in your household — how did you fit work in around their schedules and activities?
Because we did home school a lot and also because I’m a freelance writer, when they were very little, it was working at nap time or quiet time. As they got older, there was more working at night after they went to bed. But then they got to be older-older, and they never sleep anymore! For a while, I hired a teenager to help watch the kids while I had a couple hours of work. She also was from a family of four kids, but it was all girls, so it was not the best fit. Although the boys got their fingernails done, which was fantastic. But because my kids grew up with me working, I had to be so specific, and tell them, I am making a call, the door is closed, you do not disturb me unless it is an emergency. An emergency means, there is blood, there is a fire, a broken bone.
Tell me something your boys do or did that drove you crazy, and then something wonderful about one or all of your boys:
Here’s a wonderful one from yesterday. My second son is now 22, he happened to stop by yesterday to pick something up. We invited him to eat with us, and he was gracious enough to accept. We had a great time with him, and when we were done eating, he picked up our plates and he took it all out to the kitchen, and he loaded them all in the dishwasher, and he put the salad dressing away, and I didn’t have to ask him to do any of it. Now that he’s been out on his own and has bought his own groceries and had to cook and clean for himself, he realizes these things. Also the fact that he voluntarily did it.
That’s a great moment to relish in. We have to savor these moments.
That particular child had a thing where he could not stay on a chair for the life of him. This was just who he was. I remember thinking, my measures of parenting success will be, if any of these children decide to get married, if they are just sitting there eating their meal and no one falls off their chair, I’ve done it. And I just realized, we’ve done it!
I know this might sound like a low bar — that my son sat in a chair at a meal. That should be baseline. But these things we obsess about and worry about and think they're never going to get it and therefore we must do something different? That’s not the case. They do their thing, which is to grow; we do our thing, which is to remind them; and eventually it all comes together. I spent so much time worrying and stressing out about stuff that really did not need that level of worry or concern.
Listen to my interview with Jen as a podcast: