Joseph R. Melanson
Information Literacy
Professor Franz
August 26, 2011
You did a nice job with the organization of the information, as well as the intext citations, with the exception of the citation information on page 5 – see comments. Your margins were not 1” all around (left and right margins were 1.25). When I did some comments, I noticed that instead of setting the spacing to double you did the spacing manually. Take advantage of the software to set your spacing – it saves a lot of work. This would be done by going to Paragraph and setting line spacing to double. 24.25 out of 25
In our society, much like societies around the globe, there is a growing trend of fathers abandoning their offspring, and the responsibilities of raising their children. This failure affects male children the most as the father is the most important role model to a boy in showing him how to develop into his own responsible, healthy adult role in our society. Unless a mature, male role model is present in a boy’s life during his formative years, it is unlikely that the boy will become a successful and healthy functioning member of society when his only role model is a single female parent.
Masculinity is the code of conduct for males in a society and can only be taught by a male role model. According to Blankenhorn (1995), “men, more than women, are culture-made” (p. 17). Men, as the more physically powerful gender, are generally entrusted by the society to protect its culture within some established boundary system. Men exist to protect the society’s social and traditional values. Masculinity is the cultures codes of conduct for the men of that particular society to follow in serving as the caretakers of society. Without a masculine role model introducing him to these codes of conduct, culture is nothing more than a confusing mystery to the male child being raised by a single parent female.
Masculinity serves to teach men their roles and position in the hierarchy of males and other group systems of a culture. According to Gilmore (1990), “the moral codes and norms of culture encourage people (sometimes through psychological rather than material reward and punishment) to pursue social ends at the same time that they follow their own personal desires” (p. 225). Gilmore goes on to state that, “this is the genius of culture: to reconcile individual with group goals” (p. 225). It is the father’s role within the culture to embody these “moral codes and norms of culture” to his children, especially his male children, to give the child some standard to emulate and measure himself against other males in his environment. The male child then uses this standard of his father to learn how to participate in the world of men through first imitating his father’s behaviors. The boy later learns to shed the example of his imitated father for his own self created identity after having learned a standard of masculinity from his father, and then measuring this example to the cultural ideal reflected by other men. In this way a boy learns how to mediate his own wants and desires to the needs and requirements placed upon him by his society. But it is important for the boy to first have the solid foundation of his father’s influence and example to prepare him for the psychological uncertainty of the world that the boy must face during his progression into adulthood. Without the father’s example it is up to the male child to discover his masculinity, and how to interact within this hierarchy of other males, on his own.
Masculinity as modeled by the father teaches the boy how to fill his role in a society. According to Gilmore (1990), the culture of a society
is nothing more than work, physical and mental: human effort, constantly reproducing the conditions that give it birth. For this work to have value it has to be meaningful in social terms; that is, it has to make a contribution to this general constructivity. Manhood ideals force men to overcome their inherent inertia and fearfulness and to “work,” both in the sense of expending energy and in the sense of being efficient or “serviceable” in doing so. (p. 227).
Boys become successful men in their society by learning how to navigate its myriad social norms that it finds acceptable in one condition, and deters others in other conditions. A man is only successful in how he learns to function within his society, and how well he can embody his society’s ideals of success. One can learn to become a doctor, a lawyer, an athlete, an artist, but only ever by first following someone else’s example. If a boy does not have a healthy masculine role model in his youth to provide some direction in the finding of his function in his environment, then it is more likely for the boy that he will be unable to find the successful means to integrate himself into the proper functioning of his society as a whole. In a sense, we are nothing more than how well we learn to serve our social function and the roles we play within our society.
A father’s embodied masculinity teaches the male child how to make sense of and how to relate to his mother and other females on a psychological level. According to Hill (2010),
single mothers are tested by their children’s behavior or lack thereof. To make matters worse, single mothers are raising their children without support from their children’s fathers. Many fathers have chosen not to be an active part of their children’s lives. This decision has hardened the hearts of many single mothers (p. 3).
This “hardening of hearts” is often sensed by the child mind and adds to any sense of confusion he has when the boy child compares his own situation to that of other children who have both parents. As the male child ages and begins to see an ongoing pattern of his mother’s discomfort, of which she can never truly hide, the male child may not be able to make sense of this discomfort on his own.
A father serves to teach a sexual role model to his male children through the example of his own masculinity. Wineburgh (2000) states, “later [the male child] establishes sexual partner orientation, where modes of relating between the sexes are modeled on parental interactions” (p. 7). Wineburgh (2000) suggests that there may be an impediment in the ability to differentiate the sex roles and a delayed development if there is a lack of an active and present male role model during the boys youth (p. 7). If the father is completely absent from the home then the child must rely solely on his single female parent for not only his sense of physical and psychological security, but for his initial sexual impression of women as well.
Male children more successfully interact with peers with the presence in the home of a male role model with a healthy masculine identity. The first time this source is cited it would be Office on Child Abuse and Neglect, U. S. Children’s Bureau, Rosenberg, J., & Wilcox, W. B. (2006) rather than Rosenberg and Wilcox (2006) since the citation should take the reader directly to the source on the References page. assert that a father who is present from birth, are healthier emotionally, more confident interacting in their environment, and, have a higher quality of peer interaction as they age (p.20). “These children also are less likely to get in trouble at home, school, or in the neighborhood” (Office on Child Abuse and Neglect et al., 2006, p. 20). Rosenberg and Wilcox (2006) state that babies whose fathers actively participate and respond to them in their infancy are more psychologically sturdy and capable of exploring an interest in their surroundings than infants whose fathers are absent. Office on Child Abuse and Neglect et al. (2006) go on to say that “a number of studies suggest they also are more sociable and popular with other children throughout early childhood” (p.20). It is likely a male child who grows up in the presence of a male role model with a healthy masculine identity is likely to later become healthy in his identity as well.
Masculine identity is the integral core and critical component of a man. A man learns his masculine identity by being exposed to examples of it from older males when the man is a boy. The components of masculinity that a male child learns from his mature, masculine role models are: his codes of conduct and moral behavior, his social and cultural roles, his psychological integrity, his gender identity and sexual modeling, and his sense of emotional stability. These critical components are necessary for the social, psychological, and emotional development of a man. When a male child is raised in the home of a single female parent, it is more probable that the boy will not form a healthy masculine identity in adulthood, than if the father was present during the formative years of the boy’s youth.
Blankenhorn, D. (1995). Fatherless America: Confronting Our Most Urgent Social Problem. New York, NY: BasicBooks.
Gilmore, D. D. (1990). Manhood in the Making: Cultural Concepts of Masculinity. New Hartford, CT: Yale University Press.
Hill, K. L. (2010). Single Mothers - How Are They Doing? Allied Academics International Conference. Academy of Organizational Culture, Communications, and Conflict. Proceeding, 15(1), 20-25. Retrieved from http://proquest.umi.com.library.esc.edu/
Office on Child Abuse and Neglect, U. S. Children’s Bureau, Rosenberg, J., & Wilcox, W. B. (2006). The Importance of Fathers in the Healthy Development of Children. In U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Child Welfare Information Gateway. Retrieved from Child Welfare Information Gateway http://www.childwelfare.gov/pubs/usermanuals/fatherhood/
Wineburgh, A. L. (2000). Treatment of Children with Absent Fathers. Child and Adolescent Social Work Journal, 17(4), 255-73. Retrieved from http://find.galegroup.com.library.esc.edu
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