How to Raise a Boy by Michael C. Reichert

Author:Michael C. Reichert
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2019-04-08T16:00:00+00:00

Myths and Misdirection

Unfortunately, many boys must make their own way though the confusing myths propagated by popular media. As Justin Garcia and his team at the Kinsey Institute wrote, “Sexual scripts in popular entertainment media are exaggerated examples of behaviors that are taken to an extreme for the purposes of media sensationalism and activation of core guttural interests.”19 One such myth is “Everybody’s doing it.” But, in fact, teenage sexual activity is actually declining: a research team led by psychologist Jean Twenge examined large national surveys of American adolescents, totaling 8.4 million youths aged thirteen to nineteen, and found dramatic change. Among ninth graders, the number who said they were sexually active dropped from 54 percent in 1991 to 41 percent in 2015. She wrote: “18-year-olds now look like 15-year-olds once did.”20

Despite these cultural shifts, myths of male hypersexuality persist. Many boys feel compelled by stereotypes to perform instead of relate. The phenomenon of sexting—“the creation and transmission of sexual images by minors”—shows the gap between cultural mythology and real boys.21

Widespread beliefs about the explosion of sexting is misleading, according to the University of New Hampshire’s Crimes Against Children Research Center. Flawed research designs, inconsistent terminology, and difficulty comparing studies has allowed the media to inflate how many boys send sexual images of themselves: 18 percent—compared with 22 percent of girls—according to a survey conducted by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy.22 In a study of twelve-to-seventeen-year-olds carried out by the highly regarded Pew Internet and American Life Project, only 4 percent of teens said they had sent sexually suggestive photos or videos of themselves, while only 15 percent said they had received sexts.23 Though its prevalence seems in flux—another recent large-scale analysis of thirty-nine studies conducted between 2009 and 2016 found that 15 percent of teens were sexting, with older teens more likely to send and receive than younger ones—it is clear that fewer boys send or receive sexual images than media attention suggests. By contrast, 53 percent of adults report sexting.24

Though only one in seven teens actually exchange these images, 40 percent of students maintained they knew friends who had sexted, and 27 percent said that sexting happens “all the time.” A research team from the University of New Hampshire’s Crimes Against Children Center wrote, “While sexting does seem to occur among a notable minority of adolescents, there is little reliable evidence that the problem is as far-reaching as many media reports have suggested.”25

Such exaggerations take their toll in boys’ sexual development. Once these young men leave home, they may submit to what they believe everyone else thinks, making them more vulnerable to the worst sexual stereotypes. A recent American Association for Universities (AAU) campus climate report, based on a survey conducted by the research company Westat, indicated that at top colleges, as many as a third of underclass women had been assaulted by underclassmen.26 Sexual aggression has become so common, according to Peggy Orenstein, author of numerous books about girls, that “for many high

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