The boys are crying too

Emotions such as sadness, rage, and regret are a natural response to situations of loss or failure. On the other hand, the consequence of feeling these emotions is giving them expression, for example by crying or screaming. The ingrained rules against boys not crying (and girls not screaming) are no longer relevant. After all, the fact that we forbid our child to show fear, or we will scold our child for showing it, will not make the child stop feeling these emotions. Forbidding boys to cry, censoring their sadness or grief, is therefore not only a nod to the pointless, patriarchal belief that tears are a sign of weakness. It is also an expression of a lack of understanding of human nature. By forbidding a boy to show certain emotions, we are not making those feelings go away — we are merely suppressing them. The blockage in expressing one’s own feelings can, in turn, be a factor contributing to the occurrence of problems in childhood, adolescence and adulthood.