Connor Beaton asks how to guide boys through adolescence into manhood, arguing that puberty activates primal, biological impulses (aggression, violence) that cannot simply be socialized away. He emphasizes that part of becoming a man is learning to contend with and manage these more aggressive, primal aspects of the self.
How do you take a young boy and turn that young boy into a man? How do you get him through the hellscape that can be adolescence for a young boy? Because I can tell you, no man that I have ever talked to said going through puberty as a young man was just the easiest thing in the world. The reality is that there are these very primal parts that come online biologically inside of an adolescent teen boy that are very different. And for better or or worse, whether we like it or not, we can't simply socialize that out of a young boy. We can't simply say, you shouldn't feel any of that aggression. But the reality is that is a part of being a man. Part of being a man is learning how to contend with the more aggressive, more violent, more primal part of your physical being.
How to Raise Strong, Unshakable Boys in Today's Culture, with Dr. Shefali Tsabary
