Concepts of masculinity seem to change over time and culture. I’ve been thinking about this a lot as my son transitions from being a boy to being an adolescent. I’m surprised at how uncomfortable some of it has made me. Even though I experienced this myself, I don’t feel well-equipped to handle it. I’ve resorted to, gulp, reading, and, breathe, talking to other men about it.

One of the current theories is that we could rely, in the past, on a rich tradition of male work to transmit basic concepts of acceptable male behavior and masculinity. As a boy, you hung out with an extended family of other men who hunted or farmed or whatever. It was necessary and has a long history.

Modern life does not provide that connection to extended male culture.

In addition, we lived through a difficult but necessary switch to an emerging feminine equality. Much of this was built on a now bankrupt idea that babies came into the world equal and were shaped to stereotype by the environment – nurture over nature.

Nearly anyone who’s ever seen baby girls and boys found this odd. But in order for women to gain some measure of fairness in the social world, this seemed like a necessary experiment.

This nurture idea is pretty much over because brain science shows us that male brains are indeed different from female brains. The value judgment that one is better than the other is a second, and only human judgment. In other words, it isn’t observable in fact.

My point is that I feel a bit at sea in conveying typically male stuff. I don’t really worry about my own masculinity, and I’m told that there are many good masculine models, not one. However, where to start?

While I love the outdoors and find no fault in hunting as sport, I will never hunt outside of some post-apocalypse. Even though I fished as a kid, I found it strange then and now, and other than the comradery angle, I can’t get with it.

My musical garage band experiences were great male bonding times, but there was no connection to past male culture. No one’s father was there – it was just “Lord of the Flies” teenage boy angst. A good thing, but not a historical connection.

And say what ever you want, playing a musical instrument in an orchestra is not exactly  macho in a blue collar community. That did occasionally create a bit of confusion for me. An orchestra is an odd domain of prima donnas, prissy men and women, but also a rather strict hierarchy. It isn’t an expressive experience either, contrary to popular opinion. Interpretation is frowned upon. Is that male?

My musical experience is predominately male and I must admit to a macho point of view on it. Brass is a more or less male domain and so is rock-and-roll, isn’t it?

So where does that leave us? It is important, I think, to convey to our boys an acceptable masculinity. One that respects the female as equal but different, and has no extra-ordinary insecurity in its own maleness (is that a word)? How do I do it?