Articles

Promoting Emotional Disclosure in Adolescent Boys

Renee Spencer recently wrote an article in, Psychology of Men and Masculinity, which   discussed something that I have long felt to be such an important component of helping males develop more depth in their capacity to reveal emotional issues.  Many aspects of male development are in place to foster components of masculinity that can inhibit emotional disclosure, e.g., competition, drive, and achievement.  This makes it important that we look at what components of society can play a role in fostering boys’ ability to be emotionally open, and allow themselves feelings of vulnerability. This can lead to helping boys become more complete men, wherein they are able to disclose emotional components of themselves.

Spencer’s work looked at male mentoring as a means by which adolescent boys might be able to discuss more emotional components of their personality.  Six major themes emerged as fostering emotional disclosure in adolescent boys: 1. The importance of relationships with caring and open adult men in young adolescent boys lives.  Herein, we need to look at what opportunities adolescent boys have to accessing caring and open adult men; 2. Mentors need to be involved, committed, and emotionally connected to their male youth partners in order for the relationship to be fostering of emotional closeness.  Finding such men, however, can be difficult; 3.  An enduring component of the relationship is crucial.  Men cannot be in these mentoring roles for the short term.  Men need to see this as a multi-year commitment for their influence to be significant; 4. These relationships need safe places to allow boys to feel sufficiently safe to allow themselves to enter a position of emotional vulnerability and then ask for support, if needed;   5. Mentors and the adolescent boys with whom they develop a relationship need to expect ups and downs in their relationship in terms of how emotional these relationships can be.  So many boys are most comfortable in relationships with adult men when such relationships are characterized by a shared activity.  Research on adolescent girls has shown that relationships they develop with adult women are more easily established via emotional disclosure, while boys often report shared activities with adult men as the sine qua non of closeness with an adult man.  As, such, men who engage boys in this relatively uncharted territory, must expect some resistance at times;  6. Both adults and adolescents need to appreciate the manner in which emotional vulnerability and closeness between the mentoree and the mentor can help adolescent males manage feelings of anger more effectively.  Many boys recognize their need for “Anger Management”, particularly since the movie release with the same title in 2003. Often this awareness can help them to value emotional disclosure as a mechanism to achieve improved anger management. 

So often, adolescent males have relatively few opportunities to deal with the fathers of their peers, except as coaches when they play on competitive athletic teams.  Opportunities for men who wish to influence the lives of boys on route to becoming men need to be explored by all men who view a component of their role in society to be shaping the generation behind them to become honorable and caring men.

May 2006