Boy Culture and How it Affects Development with Dr. Niobe Way

00:00:00    Alyssa

You're listening to Voices of Your Village, and today we get to dive into boy culture and how it affects development with Dr. Niobe Way. For nearly 40 years, NYU developmental psychologist Dr. Niobe Way has been conducting groundbreaking research with teenagers, particularly boys and young men from diverse backgrounds. She's the author of more than 100 peer -reviewed research papers and is a go -to expert for media and the social science community on friendships, loneliness, teenagers, gender stereotypes, masculinity, and the roots of violence. Her work, which focuses on social and emotional development and how cultural ideologies shape child development, has broad appeal and resulted in everything from changes to APA policies and an Oscar -nominated film. Dr. Niobe Way is the author of two books, Deep Secrets and Rebels with a Cause. And this topic that we got to dive into about boy culture and what this means and what it looks like, it feels so dear to my heart as a mom raising a boy and also looking at what we can do to support the boys and men in our culture so that they're allowed to do things like feel sad, and that they aren't suppressing emotions that then come out in sometimes terrifying ways. I am so jazzed for y 'all to get to dive into this conversation. If this podcast is serving you, please take a moment to rate and review the podcast. It helps us serve more folks with free content so that they can build their toolbox right alongside us. Thank you. You are the bomb. All right, folks, let's dive in. 

00:01:50    Alyssa

Hey there, I'm Alyssa Blask Campbell. I'm a mom with a master's degree in early childhood education and co -creator of the Collaborative Emotion Processing Method, I'm here to walk alongside you through the messy, vulnerable parts of being humans raising other humans with deep thoughts and actionable tips. Let's dive in together. 

00:02:12    Alyssa

Tell me about Deep Secrets. 

00:02:13    Niobe

So Deep Secrets was the book I wrote in 2011 and it's called Deep Secrets: Boys, Friendships and the Crisis of Connection. It was made into an Oscar -nominated movie called Close that won the Grand Prix Award at Cannes. It won or was nominated for 110 awards around the world. Really amazing film. Based on essentially the finding from Deep Secrets, which was really a study of 150 boys that I followed over time. And now it's been thousands of boys at this point. Talking about their desire for close friendships with other boys, using a kind of what I would call relationally intelligent language, emotionally intelligent language is sort of talking in very sophisticated ways about what deep secrets are about, why they want deep secret friendships, meaning the ability to be vulnerable with one another. And so you had 12, 13, 14, 15, sometimes 16 year old boys just articulate in a very, what we call adultified way about the desire for close connection, particularly with other guys. And then the story is that you started, because I follow the same kids over time, you start to hear the boys struggle to either hold on to their existing friendships or find the ones they're looking for. So they start to experience what I call in the book, a crisis of connection. And this crisis of connection was that they started to talk about two patterns in the data really. One was that they started to give up on their search. So they just said, it's basically, I don't care anymore. It doesn't matter, whatever, you know, et cetera. Or they would just talk about how sad it was that they couldn't find someone they could really trust. And embedded in that language, and that's a big part of the story, is a kind of homophobic language that they started to also say things like, no homo. When I would ask them about their friendship, they'd start to say no homo, as if somehow by the time they were 15 or 16, the desire for close friendships was gay or girly. And I still hear that, by the way. 

00:04:10    Alyssa

Interesting.

00:04:10    Niobe

I just did an interview two weeks ago, 2024, two weeks ago. It was as if I could have been in an interview in 1987. It was unbelievable. The exact same language. Alyssa, exactly the same language. They said it would just seem gay. It would just seem girly to talk like that. But they talked about their own desire. It was just incredible. I was really mind blown two weeks ago. Cause I sat there after we were filming it. So we're making a film about something we're doing, the Listening Project, which hopefully we get to talk about in this interview. We're making a film about it. And so they're filming me interview these boys. And I just after they stopped filming, I just was sitting there like in with my mouth hanging open, like this, it brought me back to 1987. That's a long time ago. That's 40 years ago. You know, that is 40 years ago. And they sound exactly the same. The message they clearly gave the finding was that they don't just experience a crisis of connection as they get older. But that this sort of homophobic, hyper masculine belief system gets imposed on them to become a real man, a man, uh, to become, you know, if you want to be a man, you can't do anything that's soft. Um, and you can't talk soft. You can't act soft. You can't be soft in any way. There's a beautiful poem in Deep Secrets written by a young woman, actually, that I repeated in Rebels, um, which she talks about being with her boyfriend and not wanting her boyfriend to be too soft. But then if she doesn't like him being too hard, but she doesn't want him to be soft, because if he's soft, then maybe he's gay. And so the idea is that hearing this again and again and again, and then when it came out in 2012, the book, so that was essentially the finding, boys want close friendships, and they want deep secrets, friendships, not just buddies, they want someone to be vulnerable with, then as they get older, it becomes harder to have them and find them. And that these sort of what I call in a fancy academic language, macro ideologies of masculinity and norms of masculinity get in the way. And that is culture getting in the way because it's the culture of masculinity that gets in the way of boys' friendships. So that was Deep Secrets. It comes out in 2012. I am totally shocked the kind of attention it gets. I'm immediately on the Today Show. I'm on all the major networks. A profile was done on me in the New Yorker. The New York Times did a profile on me. I mean, I was stunned, Alyssa. I literally thought this was just a research finding that I had that I thought was really super interesting. 

00:06:39    Alyssa

Conversation we've all been needing to have. 

00:06:41    Niobe

Yeah. No, exactly. And so I was stunned. And I'm not exaggerating when I say this. It went on, the media attention went on for about a year or two, intense media attention. Then it sort of dissipated a little bit. Then when Trump became a candidate, I was inundated with interviews, constantly doing interviews, constantly doing interviews. Then he became president, still continued because the masculinity was so obvious in our culture. And then as it got to be 2020, it started to dissipate a little bit. Then COVID hit, you know, with the friendship crisis. 

00:07:12    Alyssa

Yeah. 

00:07:12    Niobe

And so then I started, since then, almost every week, Alyssa, I'm exaggerating slightly, but almost every week I'm interviewed by someone from the media about Deep Secrets. So in this whole decade, how long has it been? It's been 13 years since I wrote Deep Secrets. In this attention that I got, and in the emails I've gotten, the thousands and thousands of emails from people around the world saying, you're telling my story, you're telling my story. I've also teach at NYU. So I'm dealing with a hundred NYU undergraduates every semester, right? So I'm hearing from them, et cetera, et cetera. I realized in about 2013, and this is leading to Rebels, that they weren't just telling a story about boys, that this was not just a story about boys. And this was not just a story about young men. And this was not just a story about masculinity. I realized as I began to listen to young people, number one, the crisis of connection is not for boys, we're all facing a crisis of connection to different degrees. And the crisis of connection to define for your listeners, defined as increasing levels of depression, anxiety, loneliness, suicide, and I'm going to pick specific form of violence called mass violence or gun violence, mass shootings that are all rising in dramatic numbers over the past decade. And not just with COVID, it wasn't just a blip in COVID. So the idea is that that is what I call a crisis of connection, a disconnection from ourselves and each other, that boys teach us about as they go through adolescence as it relates to norms of masculinity. And this is the kicker. Alyssa, are you ready? 

00:08:40    Alyssa

Yeah. 

00:08:40    Niobe

The kicker is that, of course, I'm going to say an obvious thing, norms of masculinity, which is really not just for boys and men, it's for everybody, right? The whole notion is that we all live in a culture of patriarchy where masculinity is privileged over femininity, et cetera. And then it just became obvious. So girls were saying to me, and we started doing research on girls and masculinity, and we have found in our research that girls adhere to norms of masculinity, sometimes a little bit less than men, but in some context, more than men, more than young men. And the reason they say is because girls and women get it. You know, if you act like a boy, if you act like a man, you have more access to opportunity. 

00:09:24    Alyssa

A hundred percent. You're respected in a different way. 

00:09:27    Niobe

You're respected. Oh, completely. So I've had young women say to me repeatedly, we're not supposed to act like a girl, act like a woman. We're supposed to look like a girl, not a woman, by the way, look like a girl and act like a guy. You know, she said, that's the expectation of women. So once I understood, oh my God, of course, it's not just a culture of masculinity that shapes boys and men, it's shaping all of us because it's the hierarchy. It's the hierarchy of humanness and human qualities. And so Rebels really came out of this recognition, number one, that it's not just boys and men that are shaped by a culture of masculinity. Secondly, the culture of masculinity, to be very specific for your listeners, to boil it down, it's privileging the hard over the soft, privileging everything that we deem as hard over the soft. So I'll give examples to just make it really obvious to your listeners. Thinking over feeling, self over other, Me over we. Autonomy over connectedness. I always pick on this because I'm a developmental psychologist. Emotional regulation over emotional sensitivity. We don't even study emotional sensitivity. We are obsessed with regulation over sensitivity. If we were only focused more on sensitivity, we'd be in better shape. 

00:10:36    Alyssa

Break that down for folks for a sec. This is something our audience, I think, will be interested in. 

00:10:40    Niobe

Yeah. So this is, this is totally fascinating. So we began about, I would say approximately 20, 25 years ago, maybe 30 years ago. We started as a field, we became more interested in emotions. We started becoming more interested in emotions. We've always had emotions as part of what we do in the field of developmental psychology, but we'd be focused on cognition for most of the 20th century. Basically looking at thinking patterns to put it simply for your listeners. So we focused on cognition in the late part of the 20th century, early part of the 21st century. We started to become interested in emotions, which was a good, you know, it's a good thing. So we started to focus on emotions. And before you know it, with the development of social emotional learning programs, and many of which are quite good, and this is not a critique of social emotional learning programs, it's a reflection of a culture that privileges the hard over the soft, right? SEL is a product in many ways of a culture that privileges the hard over the soft. So in this discussion of emotions, it all of a sudden became obsessed with teaching children, and it's a necessary skill, right? It's a necessary skill to control your emotions, to regulate your emotions. That is a good skill. I'm not critiquing it. I'm not critiquing the things that we deem hard. Independence, thinking, autonomy, those are all great things. They're equally great to the soft things. I'm not flipping the hierarchy, right? They're all good things. But looked at exclusively on one side makes us half -human, ultimately, and that's what's leading to our crisis of connection. So emotional regulation started to be focused on how do you help children control their emotions? And then we found that actually it's linked to better academic outcomes, emotional regulation. So we became super obsessed with getting children to control their emotions. Again, I'm not critiquing that. 

00:12:26    Alyssa

Sure. 

00:12:26    Niobe

Emotional regulation is an important skill for all children, all adults, oftentimes children have it more than adults, by the way. 

00:12:33    Alyssa

Sure. 

00:12:33    Niobe

So, you know, emotional regulation is a good thing. But the obvious thing to look at if you're really interested in emotions, emotions, emotions, right, is emotional sensitivity, is the capacity. And you can call it a cognitive thing. It's called in developmental psychology, theory of mind, right, or perspective taking. It's being sensitive to another person's emotions and feelings and thoughts. And I'm saying it slowly because I just want your parents and your listeners to understand that we have not been focused on fostering emotional sensitivity in our children. That should shock us, that that's not seen as a thing. And I'll give you another evidence of us not valuing what we deem as softer. So in the study of curiosity, this is stunning to me. I have a paper about it coming out. When we look at curiosity, we look at intellectual curiosity. We look at the growth of intellectual curiosity. You know, questions about the world, questions about the moon and the sun and the clouds and all sorts of good topics. Those are good topics. We have never looked at systematically as a field, the study of interpersonal curiosity. Your curiosity that you're born with and you hear it at four and five and six and seven years old about other people. 

00:13:51    Alyssa

Yeah, even before then. 

00:13:52    Niobe

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. 

00:13:53    Alyssa

I have a three -year -old. 

00:13:54    Niobe

No, exactly, exactly. 

00:13:55    Alyssa

Very curious. 

00:13:56    Niobe

Yeah, exactly. and I would even say it even starts from the beginning of language, right? And you could even say before language because it's pointing, right? You know, it's pointing to things that you aren't… 

00:14:05    Alyssa

Or my six -month -old hears somebody in the other room and is like, what is that? 

00:14:09    Niobe

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Curiosity, exactly. So I'm just, I want to repeat this for your listeners because it's so amazing to me and evidence of what I'm calling boy culture in my new book, and I'll talk about boy culture in a second. Boy in quotation marks, it's not a real boy, it's a stereotype of a boy that boys are teaching us about. So the idea is that we don't even study interpersonal curiosity, which we've deemed soft, because we often equate it with gossip or with talking about other people. It has nothing to do with gossip. It's a curiosity about other people's thoughts and feelings. We don't even study it. 

00:14:41    Alyssa

I would say even empathy, we often lump into that. We're like, a boy being empathetic, I think would be seen as soft. 

00:14:49    Niobe

Oh, completely. Oh, no. Every soft skill is sort of lumped together. But what's incredible to me about interpersonal curiosity and the lack of interest in my field in it, as well as in the whole world, you know, because we have it when we're born, which means it's natural to us, it's natural, is that it's essential for human connection. 

00:15:11    Alyssa

Sure. 

00:15:11    Niobe

So do you follow that? 

00:15:13    Alyssa

Yeah. 

00:15:13    Niobe

So the two things that are essential for human connection, I'm going to say the essence of my new book. Emotional sensitivity and interpersonal curiosity, the two elements that are essential for human connection are not valued in our culture, right? And not studied. We don't understand it. We don't nurture it. We don't talk about it. We don't value it. We dis on it. We call girls and women oftentimes overly sensitive and there's no such thing as I tell my students of being overly sensitive. You're just sensitive as a human. We're sensitive. There's no such thing as overly sensitive, but most girls and women have been called overly sensitive. And so the idea is our sensitivity and our interpersonal curiosity are our superpowers as humans to deeply connect with each other. And we don't value it and we don't nurture it. And then we wonder why do we have a crisis of connection? And Alyssa, the boys teach us why. Because all of a sudden you hear these boys with remarkable emotional sensitivity and remarkable interpersonal curiosity about their friends, about their worlds, about even the interviewer, when we interview, I mean you hear this, we're training it now in schools across New York City, it's something called The Listening Project where we're nurturing interpersonal curiosity and boys ask questions like this, girls do too but I'm gonna give examples of boys. Boys at 12 years old when you when I have them interview me or somebody in the room as part of the training and I say you can ask any question you want, I'll give you an example, a boy says in the classroom, this is a classroom of 24 12 year old boys. And you have to imagine 12 -year -old boys, you know, we stereotype them as not being very thoughtful, quite frankly. And they say, are you married? And I say, this was a while ago, 10 years ago, I said, no. And they said, you know, have you ever been married? Yes. And then they said on beats, like within a one second later, do you still love your ex -husband? Does he know that? Does, you know, do your children know that you still love your ex -husband? How do they know that? What do you do? I mean, that's just their natural curiosity. So the fact that we don't nurture that, and of course, what happens when someone does that to you, right? And then it's mutual. Alyssa, if you and I did that together and I asked you those kinds of questions and you asked me those kinds of questions, bang, the connection happens because all of a sudden we feel seen, we feel heard, we feel listened to. Someone's actually getting to know the intricacies of our feelings. 

00:17:35    Alyssa

We also get to be vulnerable. I think one of the only spaces that boys and eventually men are really able to do this is through AA, where they have a space to be vulnerable with other humans. 

00:17:50    Niobe

Its a good point. You know what, Alyssa? I've been told that many, many times. I've been told many, many times, Niobe, you should really check out AA because it's an interesting model of ways to basically foster a kind of vulnerability. And I would add to that that it's a vulnerability rooted, however, in what I can learn from you about you, but also about myself. So rather than in a me, me, me culture, because that's part of the hard over the soft in where it's all about me, listen to me, listen to me, which is all what we're doing with each other. Everybody's doing that. Please listen to me. 

00:18:20    Alyssa

I want to just like note there, like you mentioned, everybody's doing that. And I think that needs a little more attention because I think what's happening, especially in we're in election year, what happens is this side of like, that's what they're doing over there. And the reality is, like everybody's doing that. 

00:18:39    Niobe

Everybody's doing it. 

00:18:40    Alyssa

What we've lost is the ability to sit down and listen and to have conversations with each other where we're not just formulating a counterpoint. 

00:18:50    Niobe

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And I would say we call it in our Listening Project method, we call it listening with curiosity, which means I listen not to judge, not to come back with, 'oh yes, I've had that experience', or, 'no, I haven't,' or, 'you're wrong,' right? Or 'you're right', whatever, opinion, actually I'm listening with what questions do I have about what you're saying that I need to understand more fully to understand you. So whatever the... 

00:19:17    Alyssa

To learn. 

00:19:18    Niobe

To learn. To learn. Yeah. Rather than to judge, rather than to agree or disagree. And so the idea, the thing that's so powerful for me, Alyssa, is if I was just talking about an abstracted skill that would be nice to have, okay, that's fine. But what's powerful is that we're born naturally doing that if you listen to three and four and five year olds, they're doing it all the time. Mommy, why do you smile when you're feeling sad? Wondering about why we fake emotions? 

00:19:44    Alyssa

So many why's, so many. 

00:19:46    Niobe

So many wise questions, but I'm saying they're not they're not just they're not I mean, they they are just why's but I'm just saying but they reveal what our natural capacity is, which is a genuinely look at someone with wonder and wonder what they can learn about the other person but really about themselves through listening to another person. And if we don't nurture it, it starts to die. And so I oftentimes say to my students, and they always laugh because I think I'm kidding and I'm not kidding. In this boy culture, we actually become less intelligent. We become less intelligent because it only becomes about, let me tell you my story. Let me tell you my... And anybody who's actually not reflecting on using their curiosity to deepen and their understanding of themselves doesn't understand themselves. 

00:20:30    Alyssa

Well, and it's this expectation then for boys to have all the answers, to just know and to not be able to ask for help, to not be able to tap out, to not be able to say, I can't do it all, or I don't know the answer or whatever. And I mean, I think we have a lot of societal jokes about it of like the guy who won't ask for directions or whatever and would rather get lost than do so or whatnot, but it's grounded in reality, right? That we've groomed or conditioned boys to not ask for help, to say, yeah, it is feminine. And you nailed it, that it's all a part of the patriarchy because feminine wouldn't be bad if it wasn't just a part of the patriarchy. 

00:21:14    Niobe

But that's what I'm all saying, and basically the reason why I have evidence for the patriarchy, which sounds odd in some ways because it sounds ideological. No, it's because the reason why being girly and gay is considered a negative thing is because it's homophobic and misogynist. But the whole point is that we hate on the feminine. I mean, we hate on things that we think are soft. And the thing I wanted to add about your boy comment is what you have to understand, what your audience has to understand, is that at this point, everybody feels that pressure to man up. It's not just a boy, man thing. Do they feel it more? Of course they feel it more because they are, they are boys and men. But the reality is all people, regardless of gender identity, including transgender, right, including non -gender binary, feel the pressure to man up. They may not call it, I'm a man, they may not do that, but the whole thing of privileging the hard over the soft, studying STEM fields rather than going into the caring professions, studying, you know, math and science is smart and going into nursing is like, that's a nice thing, but it's not, it's not necessarily being a smart, if you're smart, you'd be a doctor, you wouldn't be a nurse. And so the idea is that we see it everywhere, everywhere, everything we're doing is somehow trying to get on top of that hierarchy that...

00:22:30    Alyssa

I have a question. I want to dance with you on this for a sec, because I agree. And I also wonder, like when we're looking professionally, how much of it is this, we're supposed to go into these kind of male -dominated, traditionally male spaces, versus if we want to afford to live in the climate we live in, And we have to go into those fields because frankly, my first job was teaching preschool in Brooklyn and I made $30 ,000 a year teaching preschool in Brooklyn. You can't live in Brooklyn on $30 ,000 a year teaching preschool. And my best friend at the time, it was right out of college, she started at Goldman Sachs for much more than $30 ,000 a year, right? And I think when we look at that for her, I don't think it was necessarily I have to into this field because I have to man up in that sense, but I have to be able to afford life. And that was a way for her to be financially independent. 

00:23:25    Niobe

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So thank you for asking that question because it draws to the point I was trying to say earlier. So basically patriarchy does not stand alone as an ideology. It's intersectional with capitalism. And so capitalism and patriarchy, and you could also add heteronormativity, white supremacy. I mean, they're all in bed together. And by in bed together, I mean, they're all reinforcing each other. So it's money over people. So part of boy culture is not just a hating on the vulnerable and wanting the stoic. It's also money over people. It's having fun over taking responsibility. It's wanting toys rather than wanting to care for other people. I mean, the idea is that it's an immature culture that ultimately right is driven by, and some people could say it's actually more capitalism than patriarchy, and they have a point in many ways, I mean, you know, in many ways it is a sort of money over people is what really drives, you know, the society we're living in. And so that then, therefore, because it's patriarchy, what's paid well is the professions that make a lot of money. So the idea is that you wouldn't want your daughter or son or whomever to major in art because they'd never make a lot of money. And to me, that whole argument is, yeah, you have to put food on the table, of course, but why don't art teachers make a lot of money? 

00:24:41    Alyssa

100%. That's the problem. 

00:24:42    Niobe

Yeah. I mean, the problem is not that art doesn't make a lot of money. It's that why not teaching art would be the same thing as teaching science. But in order to make that change, because some people can say, well, you're being too ambitious in your desire for change in your new book. And I'd say, no, no, no, no, no. Basically people see the problem, but you have to reveal the problem to them. It's not an individual problem that we're having. It's not because of Jeff Bezos that we're having our problems. He reinforces it, and by the way, I want to do a tangent about social media because I want to pick on this issue very directly. It's not because of social media. It's social media and Jeff Bezos and that whole, I call them the billionaire boys. They all reinforce the boy culture. They all reinforce it. Social media does it by making the whole way we engage on social media about do you like my post or do you not like my post? 

00:25:33    Alyssa

Sure. 

00:25:33    Niobe

Am I sexy, hot, talented, whatever it is? It reinforces, it's not the cause of it. The cause is a culture that somehow has convinced itself, it doesn't see the water in which we swim, right? It doesn't see it. That we value the hard over the soft, and the hierarchy of humanness, some people seen as more human than others, and some human qualities that are associated with those humans on top over others. So we value not only men over women, but also rich people over poor people, white people over people of color, et cetera. I could go on and on and on. So the idea is we don't see the water in which we swim. So then we think the problem is I have to go into becoming a banker because that's the only way I could put food on the table. And that becomes, there's no arguing against it. It's like the starting place is problematic because if you think that it's okay that people who work in banking make billions of dollars and people who care for other people make $2, then yes, of course you have to go into banking so that you can put food on the table. You have to start a society and say, no, it's not okay that someone who takes care of other people for a living can't live off that salary. 

00:26:42    Alyssa

Correct. 

00:26:42    Niobe

And that's why my new book, I really want to get it not only to parents, but really to the people, heads of corporations, heads of universities. I mean, people who are part of this conversation about, you know, the values that were perpetuating this culture. And the good news, Alyssa, because I know it sounds ambitious, is that you're already starting to see the change. You're already starting to see people giving messages about caring and about listening with curiosity and curiosity being key. And I know they're starting to change because all of a sudden I'm getting contacted by people who are curious about that message in my book. 

00:27:22    Alyssa

It is nice to hear that it's starting to change because it does feel daunting to be like, we're going to take over capitalism. 

00:27:29    Niobe

Yeah. No. 

00:27:30    Alyssa

I recently was in conversations. There's a lot of conversations around how to bring more men into the field of early childhood and I always start with like, pay us. Pay us what we deserve to be as teachers and men will start to come. This is like, they're not going to come at the pay that we have always accepted. 

00:27:51    Niobe

Yeah. I absolutely agree. I mean, that's sort of the structural change that needs to happen. There's no doubt. However, I would also say the simple thing of showing that being soft is not a gender, doesn't have a gender. 

00:28:04    Alyssa

For sure. 

00:28:04    Niobe

It's a human thing, right? And being hard is equally as good as being soft. So as a soft woman, I value my stoicism, my independence, my autonomy, my kick -ass ability to work through things as much as I do my sensitivity. So really, truly, and I refer to the yin and the yang in Chinese philosophy, really understanding that if we only value one half of our humanity, we're going to have problems. So the idea is in our homes, in our schools, in our workplaces, to actually really start valuing both sides of our capacity. Not only will it make for a more productive worker, right? If we're going to talk capitalist talk, you're going to make more money. I mean, quite frankly, I'm going to put it bluntly. You could make a lot of money by actually developing a healthy workspace with people who actually want to work for your company, if they're really invested and they really see what you're producing is positive and they're treated like a human, that that will be better for productivity. In homes, your child, because I know this from research, your child will do better in school if they have connected relationships. They will perform better. We know this from the research. They will perform better on standardized tests if they have deeply connected teaching, teachers who care about them, peers, et cetera. So we know about teacher expectations. If you think a kid is dumb, they will not perform well on a test. If you think a kid is brilliant, it will help them do well on a test as long as they have the basic skills, obviously. But the point is, is that understanding that the care part of ourselves, the curiosity, the capacity to listen is essential for the hard stuff, you know, like they're not separated. 

00:29:48    Alyssa

Correct. I think that focus on self -regulation, which I would argue is actually a focus on self -control in school systems and culturally, it is not possible without the self -awareness component. You can't regulate what you're not aware of and you can't operate with self -control without regulation, but we don't value the self -awareness piece. 

00:30:07    Niobe

Exactly, exactly. And quite frankly, I would even push it further that regulation is in response to emotional sensitivity. Because in some ways, when I'm regulating, when I'm feeling very angry about something, and I'm actively, I can feel myself regulating my emotion, it's actually my sensitivity that's allowing me to do it. Because what I'm realizing is that person is not gonna wanna feel yelled at, and that person's not gonna listen to me if I start raising my voice. So my sensitivity is actually being used to regulate. Right?

00:30:39    Alyssa

Yeah, so what you what you're using as emotional sensitivity here, we would use in our language here as social skills. And yeah, so when we're looking at the social skills piece, it feeds into your ability to regulate because you see somebody else's face change, or you see their body. Dr. Stephen Nowicki's work on nonverbal communication, I feel like comes up strong here. If we can help support those cues and help kids build their skill set for nonverbal communication and understanding it in others, that's such a huge part of the sensitivity piece here. 

00:31:13    Niobe

Oh, totally, totally. And I mean, I guess the reason why I like also including sensitivity, although it's definitely a social skill, is because I'm taking the word that we sort of have demonized. Because when I ask my undergraduate students at NYU how many women have been accused of being too sensitive, pretty much 90 % will raise their hand. So the notion that we even have in our water is 'too sensitive', and I've been accused of my whole life, is so damaging. Our superpower is our sensitivity. That is our superpower along with our curiosity. It allows us to have relationships. 

00:31:49    Alyssa

Yeah, to have that awareness of others in order to be in relationship. 

00:31:54    Niobe

Yeah, exactly, exactly. And also to be sensitive about ourselves, right? 

00:31:57    Alyssa

Totally

00:31:57    Niobe

I mean, to be tuned in at what you're saying, self -reflection, which I think is really important too. The self -reflection that comes from sensitivity. When you're sensitive to others, you're also all inevitably, it probably goes the other direction. Actually, you're sensitive to yourself, and thus you're better sensitive to others. 

00:32:14    Alyssa

Yeah, correct. I think so too. Yeah. And when we're looking at this, so in our work, we often separate emotional sensitivity and sensory sensitivities. And looking at the, because a lot of us grew up, I think, with the like dramatic sensitive labels. And we do a lot work with OTs in sensory systems. And so looking at those eight senses that we have and what we are working on from the Seed perspective is to lay out that we all have things that we're sensitive to and then things that we're seeking, right? Things that drain us, things that regulate us. And really trying to normalize, first of all, the word sensory, but also sensory sensitivities, that we all have them. I recently was chatting with somebody and I said something about my son being sensory sensitive. He has a number of sensitivities within the sensory systems. And so he's a human who is really good at noticing details, right? He notices how clothes feel on his body. He can hear sounds. He notices if something changes in his environment. He's a really, really great details person. And he also notices the energy in the room. He notices if somebody shifts, he notices people's facial expressions, and he'll ask about it. Why did they make that face? Why are you making that face, but you're saying it in this voice? He notices all those things. 

00:33:35    Niobe

Wow. 

00:33:35    Alyssa

He is very tuned into details. 

00:33:36    Niobe

He's such a human, but obviously he's such a human. To me, there's variation. Your son is obviously particularly skilled, but I'm just saying that is really our fundamental superpower as humans. 

00:33:49    Alyssa

I love that you noted it as skilled. Yeah. I think it's often seen as a deficit that for him, he could also become very overwhelmed very quickly from stimuli. And I think that's often how we see sensory sensitive humans is as a deficit. And I do see it as a superpower. 

00:34:05    Niobe

It is a superpower. No, it just simply is. But I'm saying, if we didn't live in a culture, a boy culture, that privileged the hard over soft,  we would obviously see it as a superpower. I mean, I always say if a sister from another planet came on this planet and watched your son move in the world, she would say, well, this kid is obviously going to be the one who's  of the most value, because he can tune into people, right? And yes, it can get overwhelming, but quite frankly, Alyssa, I'm going to say something very controversial. 

00:34:33    Alyssa

Yeah. Go. 

00:34:34    Niobe

The fact that we don't get overwhelmed by it is the problem. I mean, you know, the fact that we become immune to it, um, and 

00:34:41    Alyssa

Oh I don't think we become immune to it.

00:34:43    Niobe

But I'm saying we cover over better than someone who feels overwhelmed by it. I actually think we learn to cope with that overwhelming so we feel less overwhelmed. So I'm just saying, we should feel overwhelmed in a culture that doesn't value sensitivity. We should always feel overwhelmed. You know, and for some kids who are being more overwhelmed than other kids, again, I would say they're responding to a real situation, which is a culture that doesn't tune into other people's feelings. I'm just saying the point is it's such a beautiful skill. Same with, by the way, I've heard from my undergraduates who identify as being on the spectrum. They have said to me many times, they'll say, you know, this social skills thing, you know, we think sometimes a couple of them will say we're self -identified as on the spectrum, or we've been diagnosed on the spectrum. And we actually think we're better at social skills than other people, because we don't think those social skills that you call social skills, meaning that you fake that you like something when you don't like it, or that you... 

00:35:44    Alyssa

Masking. 

00:35:45    Niobe

Right. Masking. They said, why is that a skill? What a skill is, is actually being sensitive to somebody else's, how they may see something and being honest and open and forthright. They say, basically, we're more tuned in. And even when I teach them listening with curiosity, oftentimes they'll say, we're better at it because we're asking questions all the time. We're always asking questions. 

00:36:08    Alyssa

I think we can also see that folks on the spectrum can have a better, it can be easier for them to tune into themselves. They are generally sensory sensitive humans, right? So they are those details humans like my son who's taking in everything. I think there's room for all of it and I see our nervous system as a spectrum where some-- where it's what you're born with and having two very different children, like he came into the world sensory sensitive noticing all the details and she came into the world and was like, yeah, I can exist in a loud space and just smile and chat with the person in front of me and he can't focus on the conversation with the person in front of him with a lot of noise going on around him. He can't not hear the details of everything else. For me, I look at how do we make space for all of it, right? 

00:37:02    Niobe

Yeah, but I also think, but I would say something, I would say something slightly different. I would say not how do we make space for it, how do we learn, how do we learn from people who we haven't been listening to? 

00:37:15    Alyssa

Agreed.

00:37:15    Niobe

So in some ways, Rebels, the book is really about, because remember most of that studies, at least in the first 20 years of my work, was focused exclusively on boys of color from working class communities. And at some level, the message of that book is not only how do we learn from boys across the board, by now it's around the world, who haven't been listened to because they're children. But also how do we learn from people who we've identified as problematic? So it's not just how can we include them, it's how can we learn from them about them obviously, but about ourselves, which is really at the gut of Rebels, is what do we learn, right? What do we learn from boys and young men about ourselves and the culture we've constructed? And then most importantly, how to solve our own problems, which is this whole half of the book is about solutions and how to change the culture, how to change the way we interact with each other. By, Alyssa, you said it earlier, by turning our interactions into what can I learn from you? What can I learn? Even if you're on the spectrum, two years old, 97 years old, coming from a different community of mine, voted for Trump, I don't care who it is, meaning I don't care what stereotypes you've projected onto this person. What can I learn from them about things that are meaningful to me? And you can learn from everybody. And so the idea of Rebels is to shift the framework of not how do we include boys in our conversation or people of color or whatever it is, it's how do we learn, how do we learn from young people? Not even how, what do we learn from young people about ourselves, about the problems we're facing and how to fix them? 

00:38:50    Alyssa

It requires truly listening, which I know you've hit on so many times, but not to change them, not to get them to conform, not to, and this is where the inclusion work in the education system as it stands right now often drives me bonkers because it's often how do we help them feel included in this specific environment in a neurotypical world? How do we force them to be a part of this rather than listening to them of like, how does your brain and body work? What's best for you? And how do we co -create a different environment that's more suitable for all, or for you, or for you, or for you? 

00:39:32    Niobe

Yeah, but I would say, quite frankly, Alyssa, what's suitable for everyone. Because - 

00:39:37    Alyssa

That's what I'm saying. 

00:39:38    Niobe

Right? I mean, but suitable for everyone. So at some level, again, it's saying, how do we learn from you, who seems different in whatever it is, whatever way, not only about you, but about me? Because listening to your son, I promise you, Alyssa, which you already know as a mom, but I certainly know this from listening to kids across the board, regardless of their identities. I learn something from young people, I don't care what their identity is or what their age is almost every time I listen, because they'll offer an insight or they'll say something that will allow me to understand something better. And when your son is asking all those questions, it allows you to actually really ask questions like, why do we fake an emotion? Why do we laugh when a joke isn't really funny? Which kids on the spectrum oftentimes will identify as one of those weird things that socially skilled people do. 

00:40:30    Alyssa

Sure. 

00:40:31    Niobe

And that's a really good question. Why do we laugh when it's not, especially when it's an offensive joke, you know, and we end up laughing even if we think it's offensive. And so the whole thing is that, you know, we learn so much from young people, and we still have the model, even in teaching, I know this in education, that I'm the teacher, and I'm going to teach you, you know, the information. And so even in my classrooms, which is where the listening project came from, we do it in middle and high schools and university campuses, and we're now going into elementary schools, is the whole model is everybody has something to learn and everybody has something to teach. And if you take that and it's democratic, we do this whole, you know, curriculum around curiosity, and we have nine practices of curiosity. It's in the book. You know, we go through the practices of listening with curiosity. They're hard practices. There's practices your three -year -old would have a probably easy time doing. But by the time we're 12, 13, 14, 15, and certainly by the time we're a grownup, we have a hard time doing it because we're so disconnected from our curiosity. I have doctoral students interview seventh graders and seventh graders interview doctoral students. And it's always stunning because the doctoral students will come away and say, the seventh graders were so much better than we were. And it's because they're connected to their natural curiosity. They just ask a question, whereas doctoral students will be obsessed. Is it a good question? They'll look at me and they'll say, is that a good question? And I'll say, a seventh grader would never ask that question, whether it's a good question. So why are you asking me that? Just ask a question that you genuinely have. Well, I don't know if that's a good question. Like, is that a good question? I'm like, if it's coming from your genuine curiosity, it's a good question. 

00:42:05    Alyssa

Or I think even, and I'm curious what your research has shown here of the need to ask a question, the need to provide an opinion, the need to have a statement that I find myself in like committee, I was in a committee meeting today that's like probably 20 people. And I was in a space where I was like, I want to learn. I very much just want to learn what other people had. And I said nothing the entire committee meeting and I learned so much. And I had multiple people that like talked where I was like, they've said the same thing for two years. We know your perspective on this, but they can't not say something. 

00:42:45    Niobe

I know, I know. What we know from the research, and some part from our research, but others I've read. Essentially, if you don't feel listened to, which somehow, we're going to do a national study of it, but from the numbers I've seen, it's high, it's over half, close to 70, 80 % of people don't feel listened to, okay? They don't feel like people listen to them. And obviously that varies with some people, I'm sure kids feeling the most not listened to. You will not going to be able to listen. Because if you're not, I mean, it's a very fundamental human thing. If you don't feel like anyone's listening to what you have to say, you're not going to be able to listen. Because why should I listen to you if you're not listening to me? So what I would say, Alyssa, is that your ability to do that reflects that you actually feel listened to, right? In some ways. I'm not saying in every context. I'm not here, I'm not saying. But fundamentally, fundamentally, even that you do this podcast, you know what I mean? You feel listened to at a fundamental level. So you don't have that anxiety that nobody's listening to you. And I say the podcast because that is literally getting people to listen to you. Right? 

00:43:46    Alyssa

Sure. I also just think like, I don't think I have all the answers. 

00:43:50    Niobe

Yeah. 

00:43:51    Alyssa

And I see like the work that we do at Seed as a piece of a puzzle and not the puzzle. 

00:43:58    Niobe

Yeah. 

00:43:58    Alyssa

And so for me, the listening also provides context of like, yeah, where are the gaps? What is there that's still looming? Rather than like, and this is what I feel like I've witnessed so many times, is somebody listening for where are the gaps so I can tell you how my program and my thing fills it. And I'm like, if your program that already exists here in the state filled that gap, that gap would not exist. But it has to be us rather than this collaborative, like, how do these different programs and things fit together in a puzzle? 

00:44:34    Niobe

Yeah, no, I mean, I really resonate with that. I mean, I've been trying for so long to get programs to integrate and to share ideas and stuff. But it really comes from, I mean, I'm just saying, Alyssa, to be sympathetic to the people I get irritated with. 

00:44:49    Alyssa

Yeah. 

00:44:50    Niobe

Is it, no, no, I'm being serious because I think about it a lot. 

00:44:52    Alyssa

Yeah, I appreciate it. 

00:44:53    Niobe

Is that, remember in a culture where it's all about getting on top and it's all about making the most money and it's all about proving that you're worthy of being on top, we create our own mess. So then it's about proving that your solution is the solution that will put everybody on top. You know, and so it's not about valuing the yin and the yang. It's just about, about valuing the yang, which is it, which is the solution that you think is going to be, you know, the smartest, the best, the, you know, whatever, and coming from a space of starvation in many ways, because we're human. So I mean, starvation in the sense of someone see me as I see myself. So you're hoping that if you just give the solution that will help you solve the problem that you're facing, then you'll love me, right? Then you'll love my program, you'll love what I've created, and then I'll be on top. And so I just think the ways in which the boy culture insinuates itself into these conversations where you get these people who are talking the most and almost always, I mean, I hate to be so psychology when I say this, but almost the most insecure people in the room are the ones who are talking the most, right? Because they're trying to convince you that they should be or should stay on top or not be pushed to the bottom. Whereas the people that are more confident in their own capacity to integrate, to think, are often, not always, but are oftentimes the more confident, right? That they won't be lost if they take in somebody else's ideas, right? They won't be denied. They won't be erased if they take in somebody else's ideas. And so to me, you know, it's funny because there's a whole, so I have a book event for my new book and Blair Miller is interviewing me and she's a business leader, and she talks about the social skills revolution in the workplace, but she makes a really, really good argument. She makes the case that basically people of color and women are going to be leading the social skills revolution because when you're on the fringe of power as a person of color or as a woman, you have to use those skills of listening, listening with curiosity, asking questions. You have to get in the door so that ultimately we, even if it's not encouraged among women, we know how to do it better than many boys and men, because it's necessary. 

00:47:16    Alyssa

I was gonna say it's essential. Yeah. 

00:47:17    Niobe

It's essential. It's essential. So she argues that people of color and women will be at the forefront as we move along. And we realize that these soft skills, right, are necessary for the hard skills and that we, we make more money when we bring in both sides of our humanity. I mean, I'm not saying that's my ultimate goal, but I'm saying you're going to talk like a capitalist, you can make a lot of money by actually treating someone like a full human. 

00:47:45    Alyssa

You sure can. 

00:47:46    Niobe

Right? Yeah. 

00:47:47    Alyssa

And we can save a lot of money. 

00:47:49    Niobe

Totally. Totally. Totally. All the job instability. 

00:47:51    Alyssa

We can save a whole lot. 

00:47:52    Niobe

Yeah. All the job instability. 

00:47:53    Alyssa

I mean, the prison system, expulsions, arrests, so much that it's like we spend a whole lot of money. 

00:48:01    Niobe

I know. I know. We do spend a whole lot of money. So, to me, you can make an economic argument, but what's interesting to me is to really make the point that boys and young men who have been nourished to express both sides of their humanity, going back to the point of your podcast in many ways, and for girls and women who have also done that, and people of color who have also been in families where both sides of their humanity are nurtured within their families and communities, that they actually offer a set of skills that are essential for our ability to not only thrive, of course, but to survive as a society. And so to me, it's Blair Miller's argument. And I just think it's brilliant because it really makes sense. 

00:48:39    Alyssa

It makes sense. 

00:48:39    Niobe

It totally makes sense. And it also just shows that we can change the culture because we're already changing as we have a lot of women and we have a lot of people of color working with us. And we have a lot of boys and young men and men who actually are now recognizing their soft skills and using it. And I get a lot of impressive, amazing men who are really trying to do the work of bringing in both their soft and their hard and being self -reflective. And so I'm very hopeful, Alyssa, that once we can start to see the water, and I'm hoping Rebels will help us see the water in which we swim, and with techniques of sort of how do we re -engage with each other, re -imagining and recognizing that our stereotypes about ourselves are not based in fact, and that we've gendered and sexualized core human capacities, thinking, and feeling, and they're not gendered. They're not sexualized. They're just human. And if we need to end on that note, that's the best note we could end on. 

00:49:43    Alyssa

I love it so much. Thank you so much for this work and for sharing it with us. Folks, head on out and grab Rebels With a Cause: Reimagining Boys, Ourselves, and Our Culture. I'm so jazzed for this to be out in the world. Thank you. 

00:49:57    Niobe

Thank you, Alyssa. That was a wonderful interview. Thank you so much. 

00:50:05    Alyssa

Hey, hey, hey. 

00:50:07    Rachel

Hey. 

00:50:08    Alyssa

Zach, the other, no, that was this morning, was like, is there anything else we can do for Mila's sleep right now. 

00:50:20    Rachel

Desperation. You guys just got back from an international trip. 

00:50:26    Alyssa

It's been bad for so long. 

00:50:28    Rachel

That's true. 

00:50:30    Alyssa

But it, and like, honestly, every time we'll like, be like, okay, we're gonna do something. Then she gets through whatever, and we have a couple days of like, okay, it's okay. 

00:50:43    Rachel

So... 

00:50:44    Alyssa

And she's right now doing stairs, and she is cruising on everything. And then this morning, I was like, oh my gosh, she's so drooly, is she cutting another tooth? And it just feels like, I hate this part of the first 18 months. 

00:51:00    Rachel

Yes. So Abel was like, he went from gross motor thing to right. So the first six months, I'm like, of course, sleep is going to be crappy, whatever. And then-- 

00:51:09    Alyssa

That was the best frickin stretch. The first four months were glorious, 

00:51:13    Rachel

Which is wild. But-- 

00:51:15    Alyssa

That was the only time she wasn't doing something. 

00:51:18    Rachel

This is the thing. It's like once the gross motor development starts, it's like from one thing to another to another. I'd be like, all right, great. He mastered crawling. Like now he's gonna sleep. And then it'd be like, oh, he's pulling to stand, you know, and it was just on and on and on. He didn't sleep until after a year old when he had mastered all of his development. 

00:51:39    Alyssa

Oh, I'm like, I don't want to like wish time away, but man - 

00:51:44    Rachel

But you can wish for sleep. 

00:51:47    Alyssa

Yeah, I do wish for sleep. And we haven't moved her into her own room because she shares a wall with Sagey and he's so sensitive and she is so loud as a human and I'm ready for her to be in her room and not in ours. 

00:52:09    Rachel

That makes total sense. 

00:52:12    Alyssa

She's also like every time Zach comes into bed, she's not in our bed but she's in our bedroom, every time he comes into bed she wakes up and I'm like, stop it! And then I get annoyed with him and I'm mad at him and he's like, I'm going as quietly as I can. 

00:52:27    Rachel

Yeah. 

00:52:28    Alyssa

But you know, he dolphins. He has to fluff his pillow before he freaking goes to sleep. I'm like, what are you doing? What are you doing with that pillow? 

00:52:36    Rachel

Cody dolphins too. So me and Abel's beds are right next to each other, and sometimes Abel falls asleep in my bed. And Abel weighs like 50 pounds now. So sometimes it's hard for me to like lift him into his bed, but I have like a method for not disturbing him because he's so sensory sensitive. So one time I like asked Cody to help me. Well, that was a really stupid mistake because he didn't have the technique. He fully woke up Abel. It's just like, sometimes they just don't have the right energy for the space. We also had that issue of like, so Nora has subglottic stenosis, which is like a narrowing of the upper airway. So when she's sick, as you know, you've witnessed many times. I've never heard a child cough louder than her. It is like a seal cough and it goes on and on and on forever. And she shares a wall with Abel. And so when he was a baby and I was trying to like have him be in his own room, if Nora had a seal cough, which at that point she did like every winter, all winter. Aghh!  

00:53:39    Alyssa

I just had a flashback to being, I think it was at your shower. 

00:53:42    Rachel

It was at Abel's baby shower. 

00:53:44    Alyssa

Yeah. 

00:53:46    Rachel

It was so bad.

00:53:48    Alyssa

 It was so bad. And it was so funny. And oh my gosh. I, yeah. 

00:53:55    Rachel

It had almost turned into like a tic by that point though. Cause like-- 

00:53:58    Alyssa

Yeah. It was like a tic. 

00:54:00    Rachel

Yeah. Cause it wasn't happening at night anymore. It was only happening when she was awake. It was like, it started with viral cough and then it just turned into like a tic. And it was so loud. Part of me was like, oh, I'm going to laugh about this. And the other part of me was like, if this doesn't stop soon, I'm going to lose my mind. 

00:54:20    Alyssa

Yeah, 100%. I remember that. That was so funny. But yeah, so what did you do with Abel? 

00:54:26    Rachel

I had her bed like on the furthest wall in her room and then like his bed on the furthest wall in his room and then just Hatches in both rooms. And like, I'm sure people will absolutely cringe to hear this, but there was a time that Abel's Hatch was set to 100%. His hearing is intact. He can still hear a pin drop. 

00:54:47    Alyssa

His hearing is intact. 

00:54:51    Rachel

But like that was, there was no way that that would have worked and he would have slept if we didn't have that just like blaring. 

00:54:58    Alyssa

Yeah.  Yeah. So we're about to travel again, Bean's about to be on the road for a week. But I was like, maybe when we get back, I'm just going to do it, I'm just going to put her in her room. 

00:55:11    Rachel

She's already not sleeping well, so you might as well try something. 

00:55:18    Alyssa

I mean, it's the Sagey of it all that is hard. I think if I prep him, there's no wiggle room for where his bed can be because it's a cape style ceiling.

00:55:28    Rachel

Oh, that's right. Yeah, I'm picturing the rooms now. 

00:55:32    Alyssa

Yeah, and hers is pretty much as far away. Like we have her crib kind of right when you come in her door, so it's as far away from his wall as it can go. But I think if I prep him and just let him know like, you might hear her, we're gonna help her, if you wake up you can go back to sleep. I just see how it goes. 

00:55:49    Rachel

Yeah, I mean you could always pull out the Swedish fish again if you have to. 

00:55:54    Alyssa

Which he like that's just like fully, it's not a thing anymore. 

00:55:59    Rachel

Yeah, you created a new habit. But if you need to create another new habit, which is go back to sleep after Mila wakes you up. 

00:56:07    Alyssa

Yeah, you can have a fish. 

00:56:09    Rachel

Yeah. 

00:56:10    Alyssa

Oh my gosh. Also, LOL, just like expectations versus reality. So I, after Austria, the boys went home and the girls went to Paris, cause I had work in Paris. And so Zach and Sage went home on Wednesday and then we got home on Saturday. And so I hadn't seen him since Wednesday morning. I come home Saturday afternoon. He's in full meltdown mode. And Zach said, like, leading up to this, he was like, he's been so regulated. Our time together has been so great and connected and blah, blah, blah. And so that's what I think I'm walking into. And I show up and he is, Zach had just set a boundary he didn't like. And then also we were showing up and the whole whatever. And he is yelling, "go away. I don't want you here, mom." And I was like, just LOL of like, oh my gosh, I'm so excited to see my kid. And I like, we got to the airport in Montreal and I saw this kid like run up to his dad that like had just come in. And I was like, oh my gosh, I'm so excited to see my son when I get home. 

00:57:15    Rachel

And then he's like, get out of here. 

00:57:17    Alyssa

Literally. And I was like, oh, it's just so classic. So classic. One thing we've been working on is you don't have to touch anybody. But if somebody comes into our house or into your space, our expectation is that you will say hi, and that you say bye when they're leaving. And you don't have to touch, you don't have to high five, you don't have to hug, but you'll pause what you're doing and just say bye or hi to them. And so later, because I just showed up at the and he was like melting, screaming. And then later when he regulated and we did connect, he was like, "and I didn't even say hi to you". And I was like, it's okay, buddy. 

00:58:05    Rachel

Oh, man. 

00:58:07    Alyssa

So funny. Who are we chatting about? 

00:58:10    Rachel

Okay, today, we are chatting about Dr. Niobe. 

00:58:15    Alyssa

Yeah, boy culture. 

00:58:17    Rachel

Boy culture. This was a packed one. 

00:58:22    Alyssa

Yeah. I feel like she could have done like seven billion interviews. We had so many things we could have gone off on. 

00:58:27    Rachel

There were so many things. And I think first, as a parent of a boy, I felt sadness that right now the climate for boys is that they want connected, vulnerable friendships with one another. And because of masculinity culture, they really can't access them. 

00:58:53    Alyssa

Yeah. 

00:58:54    Rachel

Yeah, it made me feel sad. It made me think, like, a couple weeks ago, Abel got hurt and some other adult who is nearby had been like, oh, you're tough, you know, whatever, get up, buddy, brush it off. And later that night, he was like, "mom, when I get hurt, I don't like it when people say I'm tough". 

00:59:12    Alyssa

Mm -hmm. 

00:59:13    Rachel

And I was like, oh, do you feel like if somebody says you're tough, like then you're not allowed to feel sad or cry or whatever. And he was like, yeah, I don't want to be tough. I'm sad. 

00:59:25    Alyssa

Sweetness. 

00:59:25    Rachel

I know. And so listening to some of this, like I've just like, dang, there's so much that I wish I had more control over for him as he moves through the world. And I don't want him to be in a space where he feels like he has to be tough or-- yeah, mainly that. And also the flip side of that is like, the reason that boys can't access these deeply intimate, connected relationships with one another is because they're seen as feminine and being feminine is seen as less than. So there's all these layers, right? It's like, it's not just a patriarchy. And it's not just affecting, boy culture doesn't just affect boys. It's the whole, it's the water we swim in. 

01:00:16    Alyssa

It's the water we swim in. I have heard Liz Plank, who wrote, oh gosh, what is it? For the Love of Men, I think is the name of the book, years ago, and I read it maybe five years ago or something like that. And what I love about it, it's a book about masculinity and the patriarchy, but it really highlights how much the patriarchy really hurts men and boys and that what we're doing is creating a space where often the only space that men and boys are allowed to have feelings and be vulnerable outside of anger or frustration is in AA and how much it bleeds into everything else that when our where men and boys aren't allowed to feel sad or embarrassed or disappointed. That what ends up happening is they either repress it or they mask it and then we see mistreatment and disconnection with their partners and female partners and it can lead to things like abuse and it's really coming from this place of like we're just not letting boys feel all of the range of feelings. 

01:01:35    Rachel

Yeah. 

01:01:36    Alyssa

And it's so wild because it sounds so simple as a fix. 

01:01:40    Rachel

One of the other things that like stuck out to me was, I think she was talking about, like she had talked with a teenage girl about what she was looking for in a potential partner or whatever. And she talked about how like, she doesn't want a guy that's too hard, but she also doesn't want a guy that's too soft, because that's like not attractive to her. And it was interesting for me in that, A, we view softness as feminine, inherently feminine, which it's not. Any human can be soft and sensitive and connected and whatever. But also, often when we talk about the patriarchy as women, we're like, oh, this is men's problem. Men need to fix this, whatever. And there are a lot of ways in which we perpetuate the patriarchy in our expectation of men and boys. And so then I was thinking about it, not just in terms of my relationship with my son, but my relationship with Cody. And like, in what ways am I maybe perpetuating masculinity, ultra masculinity culture in my expectations for him? And like, I do want him to be soft, but also like, have there been times where I have expected him to be strong or hard or however you want to say it, you know what I mean? 

01:02:55    Alyssa

Oh, 100%. And even in like what we are attracted to and what we're looking for in a partner and what-- we're sending boys and men when we're looking at hetero relationships, we're sending them signals about how they're supposed to show up in the world to be loved, to have a family potentially, right? Which is so primal to like want and desire those things. And so if what we're saying is, yeah, you have to be strong, right? And not cry when you get hurt or not feel embarrassed or left out or talk about that. That what we're saying is that that's how you're gonna, that's how we're gonna love you. That's how we're gonna be attracted to you. Of course, that's how they're going to then learn to show up. 

01:03:54    Rachel

Right. 

01:03:55    Alyssa

Yeah, I think we are, as women, playing a huge role in this in hetero relationships and what we're communicating as masculine versus feminine and desirable versus undesirable. 

01:04:13    Rachel

Right. But then when we have an emotionally unavailable partner, we're like, what the heck? Why is it so hard to communicate with you? Why won't you tell me how you're feeling? Why do you default to anger? 

01:04:28    Alyssa

Yeah. I used to get triggered about this because I've gotten over, Zach and I have been together for what, 12, 13 years, something like that. And we have, there's been a number of times that people are like, I just want a Zach. When they hear about his ability to have these types of conversations, or be a kind, gentle parent, or whatever. And I'm like, yeah, I wouldn't have married somebody who couldn't have these kinds of conversations that like, for me, that was a priority in partnership. I am not attracted to emotional immaturity, and the inability to navigate your feelings and emotions. And it doesn't mean he came to me and was like fully, like we navigated a lot of this together. We grew up a lot together and he built a lot of skills. We both built a lot of skills in partnership together, but it used to be really triggering for me because I'm like, yeah, don't marry that person. Like don't, like we as women have to also say, I have this distinct memory of being in the car with Zach and someone else that he was like close with and we were driving and the other person made a comment about a group of girls outside the car. Like not to them, but in the car about them. 

01:05:53    Rachel

About them

01:05:53    Alyssa

And correct. And they were trying, the person in the car was trying to like connect with Zach and I about like, like talk about this group of girls in a way that then we would be like, oh yeah, blah, blah, blah. And I just flat out said, oh, I don't think that that's a funny joke, and I don't wanna talk about those people. Please don't do that around me. And I was like 23 years old or whatever, and I remember Zach like clamming up. But for me, it's like, I'm not gonna be around that. I am going to say, even when it's uncomfortable, I'm gonna say, I don't think that's funny. That's not a way to connect with me. 

01:06:38    Rachel

I'm the queen of making Cody uncomfortable because of stuff like that. 

01:06:42    Alyssa

I know. I love it. 

01:06:43    Rachel

And of course, you know, my kids go to a Christian school, so there's a lot of families with really conservative values. And I'm already sort of known as somebody who like rocks the boat. So we were at like a, this was like two nights ago, we were at like a wiffle ball game. It was girls against boys, it was adults, and like some of the girls had to leave. And so we were way outnumbered. So we asked one of the like teenage boys to be on our team. And he was like, yeah, sure. And then one of the adult men that were present was like, oh, you don't want to be on that team. You don't want to be a girl. And I'm like, oh, are you saying that like being associated with girls or being a girl is like a bad thing? Let's unpack that. And this is somebody that I've had a lot of back and forth with. Like I've known this person for several years. We've had several times where I've just been like, oh, that's misogyny. Like just calling it what it is, you know. And so we have this like back and forth. And it used to be like Cody's worst nightmare. And now he's kind of like, if you say that stuff in front of Rachel, she's probably going to say something back. And like my friend, we were on a camping trip, her husband said something about her body. And she was just like, you know that Rachel's here, right? So I have this like, this reputation of like, yeah, I'm going to say like, I don't think that's funny or I don't think it's right to say that. Mostly because I don't want that modeled for my children. 

01:08:10    Alyssa

Right, thats it. 

01:08:10    Rachel

My children are often present in these spaces and like, I'm not trying to get in a debate with you or change your views because I don't think that this conversation is going to do that. But like, I don't want that stuff said in front of my kids and shaping their world view. 

01:08:26    Alyssa

Especially without them then getting the model of like, what does advocacy look like? How do you say something in a respectful manner where we're not dysregulated, we're able to say, oh, I don't think that's funny. Please don't say that around me or whatever. And your kid then learns that they can say that too. 

01:08:47    Rachel

Yeah. 

01:08:48    Alyssa

Yeah. Yeah. I think that's huge. Well, I also, in raising a boy who's just such a sweet, sensitive human, like Beans, I'm not nervous about. She came into this world fierce and she will, just this morning, I went to change her diaper and she really wanted to pull the like string on the light switch and turn the light on and off. And she let me know that that is what she wanted to be doing while I was changing her diaper. She will let you know how she feels about something. She is not afraid to do it. She's not here to make friends doing it. She's like, these are my needs. I will get them met. 

01:09:27    Rachel

Self -advocacy is her jam. 

01:09:30    Alyssa

She's fine. She's fine there. And she's fierce and I love it. And I said that to her in the moment. I said, oh girl, this is so fierce and it is going to serve you so well in life. And right now I got to change your diaper and you can turn that light on afterwards. But I don't want that to go away. I don't want to like tamper down her fierce nature of like self -advocacy. And hopefully we can then also carve that into like advocacy for others and what that looks like to use your voice to say the thing that's going to be uncomfortable in the moment but that stands up for others or for what feels right and for your values. But for my sweet sensitive boy, I just want him to continue to get to be sensitive and sweet and to know that he's loved and valued when he is sensitive and kind and vulnerable. And that feels more precarious. 

01:10:34    Rachel

I feel the same with Abel. And like, I don't want him to grow up thinking that he has to be tough in order to be loved or to be accepted or to have friendships. And that's the messaging that boys get from so many places and I just really want to be mindful of making sure that the message that he gets at home is that he gets to show up as the vulnerable human that he is and he's lovable. 

01:11:04    Alyssa

I love that and then he has a place to turn with those hard feelings even if they aren't socially supported that they're supported at home, right? That like I feel like that's what I can continue to do. I can't control how the world will treat my child. I can control the environment he has at home in terms of his ability to continue to be vulnerable and sensitive and express and know that he is loved and valued and worthy through all of his feelings. And so that was like my takeaway here of like, oh, it's that relinquish of control and advocate where I can, but also just know that the greatest thing I can do for my little guy is continue to provide that space at home where he can express all of his emotions. 

01:11:58    Rachel

Yeah, same. 

01:12:01    Alyssa

Love you. 

01:12:02    Rachel

Love you. 

01:12:04    Alyssa

Thanks for tuning in to Voices of Your Village. Check out the transcript at voicesofyourvillage.com. Did you know that we have a special community over on Instagram hanging out every day with more free content? Come join us at @seed.and.sew S -E -W. Take a screenshot of you tuning in, share it on the ‘Gram and tag @seed.and.sew to let me know your key takeaway. If you're digging this podcast, make sure to subscribe so you don't miss an episode. We love collaborating with you to raise emotionally intelligent humans.

Connect with Dr. Niobe Way:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/niobe-way-75270534

Website: https://niobewaylab.squarespace.com/partners

Order the books: Rebels with a Cause: Reimagining Boys, Ourselves, and Our Culture, and

Deep Secrets: Boys’ Friendships and the Crisis of Connection 

Connect with us:

Instagram: @seed.and.sew 

Podcast page: Voices of Your Village

Seed and Sew's Regulation Quiz: Take the Quiz

Order Tiny Humans, Big Emotions now! 

Website: seedandsew.org

Podcast episode with Dr. Nowicki about non verbal communication: How to Raise a Socially Successful Child

Music by: Ruby Adams and  Bensound