The challenges of being a man

By Lara Pickford-Gordon

snrwriter.camsel@catholictt.org

It’s no secret that males face a unique set of challenges growing up and living up to their potential and societal expectations.

The Catholic News chatted with Nicholas Voisin, Counselling Psychologist and Original Pain Therapist about the challenges facing men and what is needed to regenerate men to face the challenges of today’s environment.

Nicholas Voisin

From the onset, Voisin said the topic was a “big conversation”. He however listed some issues relevant to the discourse: “broken family systems that are producing young men raised by women who know nothing about being male;  ‘big boys don’t cry’ as the mantra for a culture that rejects male vulnerability thus removing any opportunity for men to share, understand or learn to manage complex and painful emotions, where violent responses are approved and expected for most confrontational situations; a pervasive culture where machismo has turned into misogyny so that men see women as chattel or at least inferior and treat them as such.”

Voisin cited an education system that attempts to teach boys and girls the same way “even though the current science says that they learn and engage with each other differently”.

He also addressed the economic challenges in which the average man cannot take care of his family in the manner he wants leading to “deep feelings of hopelessness and emasculation”.

Voisin pointed to the removal of the glass ceiling and introduction of women into the world of work, challenging traditionally held male positions. This shift, he explained, has placed pressure on their earning potential and opportunities. Voisin said changing societal norms has resulted in a rejection of diligence, responsibility and hard work but encourages short cuts and self-centredness. He adds, “and demand more and more possessions be accumulated to buy happiness.”

When asked to prioritise the challenges, Voisin pointed to single-headed households, particularly headed by women. This comment will provoke the ire of the women doing their best to raise well-adjusted children and run homes while being employed, but Voisin made it clear the issue was not women. Voisin said, “There are experiences unique to men in much the same way there are experiences unique to women that the other gender cannot help you with, because they do not understand it from an experiential point-of-view no matter how many books you read.”

A woman can be doing a great job trying to raise her sons, but she cannot teach what she does not know. Influencing how she rears her sons are past experiences with men.

“If mummy has had bad experiences with men in the past and has not healed, all the venom she has for those unfortunate characters she encountered is likely going to leak out in the hearing of her boys and they will internalise that in what they are likely going to become”, he said.

He noted that critical comments about men are hardly ever specific, it is “all men bad…” Voisin said boys will model after the men who are constant in their lives or those “allowed to have an impact” whether it is the men on the block, sugar daddies, priest, the coach, scout leader, teacher.

Parenting a child singlehandedly is not easy and Voisin said mothers “burn the candle on both ends”, not sleeping properly and worrying constantly about meeting their child/children’s needs.

Voisin said “difficult situations” can manifest in the mother-son relationship with non-sexual or covert incest when the son becomes a teen and “de facto man of the house”.

Voisin continued, “mummy is having conversations with him she is supposed to be having with her husband not with her son, about the future and money and responsibility and earning…when he goes out and brings home money to pay the bills, pay the rent, mummy is going to ask him where he get it from? When the police shoot him because he is a pest and everybody say he is a pest you come out and say he was a good boy …is it because she is blind or that is how he was interacting with mummy…”