Why are American boys so aggressive? (compared to French boys)

Asheville Magazine ^ | current | unknows

[Rebelbase]

In a cross-cultural study of affection and aggression done at McDonald's playgrounds, pre-schoolers in France playfully touched each other twice as much US children did, but while the French children acted aggressively only 1 percent of the time, the US youth did so 29 percent of the time.

Anthropologists have long known that cultures that shower physical affection on young children have little adult violence, dating back to Margaret Mead's studies in New Guinea.

But the study in McDonald's playgrounds in France and the United States, along with other new evidence, suggests that it's time for America to take another look at how it raises its children, particularly boys, to stop the crisis of violence, researchers said at the nation's largest annual psychological association meeting.

"There's got to be some relationship between a lack of touching and violence," said Tiffany Field, MD of the University of Miami Medical School, who conducted the study at the McDonald's playgrounds especially since international statistics have consistently shown that France has the lowest homicide rate of developed nations, while the United States has the highest.

Dr. Field said she fears there will be even less physical affection toward children in our society as a result of teachers and day care providers worrying about accusations of sexual abuse

She joined several other researchers in presenting their recent findings about the root causes of anger, isolation and violence in boys, during a news conference Friday, August 20, 1999 at the annual American Psychological Association meeting in Boston, MA. (similar article in APA monitor)

While they agreed that the inability to express affection and other constructive emotions may play a role in violence, they cautioned that there are other factors as well, and that it is difficult to prove cause and effect.

But with headlines about schoolyard shootings and hate crimes perpetrated by boys and men, the need to understand the root causes are more important than ever, the researchers said.

For Harvard psychologist Dan Kindlon, the problem is "we give boys an emotional mis- education."

Society tells boys "you can punch each other, but you can't have any kind of affectionate touch," said Dr. Kindlon, an assistant professor at both Harvard Medical School and Harvard School of Public Health.

Boys grow up unable to talk about their emotions or to be aware of others' feelings, and they have fewer constructive ways of dealing with stress, said Kindlon, co-author of a book on the topic entitled Raising Cain. "Because of a lack of adaptive response, too many boys act out in violence and anger," Kindlon said.

Harvard and McLean Hospital psychologist William S. Pollack, author of the book Real Boys, said "we have a national crisis of boyhood in America" at the same time that there is a national crisis of violence.

In a study of 200 boys from ages 12 through 17, who were considered well- adjusted, normal boys, Pollack found much angst, depression and sadness. He linked these to their feeling they had to live up to the old myths about boys being boys and boys not crying, while on the other hand feeling they had to live up to new demands of being more sensitive and egalitarian toward girls.

This kind of turmoil and conflict may lead some boys to violence, Pollack said.

Other studies on presented at the conference touched upon such issues as schoolyard bullying and prevention of violence through negotiation.

Postscript:

Why should US boys be more violent than French boys? The above article gives some suggestions, but we can add to those suggestions:

* About 60% of American boys are genitally mutilated in infancy, while French boys are overwhelmingly not.

* American hospital births are more traumatic and damaging, even aside from circumcision: the USA rate of Cesarean section birth is currently at around 25%, which is 24.5% higher than it should be. Cesarean birth rates are a general indicator for the presence of other highly traumatic and invasive procedures which work a damage upon the maternal-infant bond, even when a laboring mother does not have a Cesarean. A high percentage of French births are delivered by midwives, often in out-of-hospital clinics; in the USA, only a low percentage of births are so delivered.

* AIDS hysteria and sex-repressive ideology are much more widespread in the USA than in France or Europe. "Abstinence education" is a main-stay of USA public school education, whereas schools in Western Europe emphasize contraceptive methods without the sex-negative ideology.

* "Don't Touch" phobias appear more predominant in the USA, where children are more and more brought up in environments where hugging and kissing and touching are increasingly taboo. USA children have been expelled from school for innocently kissing, for example, and teachers have been threatened or actually fired for hugging students. Among USA males, homophobia is also extreme, such that a boy who hugs another boy will certainly be ridiculed as being "queer", etc.

* Breast-feeding phobias are still abundant in the USA, to the point where state legislatures recently were forced to enact laws to end a spate of jailings and police harassment of mothers who had breast-fed their infants in public. The rates of breast-feeding in France are not available, but are believed to be higher than in the USA.

* "Statutory Rape" laws in the USA (originally formulated to prevent the recruitment of young girls into prostitution) currently are used to put adolescent and teen boys into youth detention centers and prisons for very natural and consensual sexual expression with consenting adolescent and teen girls, whereas in France and most of Europe, such laws are appropriately applied only when forcible rape occurs.

California and several other USA states now have Special Prosecutors whose sole job is to seek out and prosecute youth "statutory rape" cases, as part of the new "population control" regimen passed by Congress. If a state does not employ such Orwellian anti-sex prosecution of young males for healthy sexual expression, the State loses money ear-marked for contraceptive programs.

* American parents and teachers may be more dogmatic and authori- tarian, and less demonstrably physically affectionate towards their kids than French parents and teachers, with a higher percentage of hidden sadists, reflective of a more violent background population.

* American television and movies are demonstrably very violent, even for programs developed for youth. Many cartoons for boys are nothing more than mass-advertising for violent-type "action figures" modeled on the most violent adult-content movies (compare "Rambo" to "GI Joe").

Karate-type, wrestling and shoot-em-up police-criminal-violence programs occur during all hours of television, and young boys in the USA are often seen to mimic such media violence in their interactions.

* The same hypocritical President who authored and signed into law the above "Special Sex-Prosecutors for Kids" laws, also fired Jocelyn Elders, former Surgeon General, for openly saying that masturbation was OK for youth.

Americans were not detectably bothered by these extremely sex-repressive actions of the President, but many were extremely bothered to learn the President had a consensual extra-marital affair, to the point of demanding his resignation and/or impeachment. This suggests that many/most Americans generally agree that adolescent sexual expression of any kind is a very bad thing sometimes requiring hard jail time, and that Public Health officials who dare to publicly favor adolescent sexual pleasure should also be strongly punished -- and that extra-marital sex should also be punished. What are French attitudes towards masturbation?

The above factors, and general knowledge of French openness towards physical nudity on beaches, in magazine advertisements, and towards sexual matters in general, suggest they view adolescent sexual expression more positively than do Americans.

Obviously many of the above points require additional cross-cultural examination, but for the most part they are already demonstrated in various cross-cultural studies.

[SarahW]

I thought Dieter was German.

[apackof2]

Circumcision is a quaint, ancient practice

Hardly "quaint" nor ancient but a Biblical ceremony in obedience to the Lord as a symbolic gesture of a covenant relationship betwen God and His people still praticed by Jewish people today.

[apackof2]

See post #102

[ffusco]

Your argument is coming from a very pious point of view. If you want to hold your ritual as a sacred rite of passage I do not criticize you but it is a ritual that is symbolic. Once the tribes left the desert there was no hygeinic reason to practice circumcision except that it was customary. One thing I appreciate about Jewish tradition is the Kosher practice. This makes a lot of sense to me. Before refridgeration, foods like pork, eggs and dairy had big health risks. The Jews being a humane people made sure the animals were slaughtered and prepared cleanly and with respect. The Jewish people eventually codified this into their practice. Today a Jew who doesn't eat pork is practicing a form of privation to show respect, like Lent for Catholics, but the health risk has been eliminated. If you really want to get down to the nitty gritty, you should see all the clever Rube Goldberg type of contraptions some Jews in Isreali hospitals have invented to keep the lights on due to the restrictions of the Sabbeth. They reasoned that "you couldn't light a fire on the Sabbeth, but you can prevent a fire from going out." So a Jewish Doctor lets a ball roll down a ramp which turns on a light switch. Fascinating ingenuity applied to a moral dilemma.

[Quix]

I STRONGLY BELIEVE that boys and men's starvation level skin hunger is connected with a LOT of ills.

I agree men are caught in lots of destructive double binds and not reared remotely in a healthy, balanced way. I don't think the old ways are that wonderful and the current ways are hideous.

John the beloved evidently routinely leaned on Christ's breast and definitely was not a homosexual.

The cultures where I've been where men of all ages routinely walked down the street hand in hand or sat in theaters or concerts arm in arm etc. WITHOUT BEING homosexual seemed to have men who had a much wider, more balanced, healthier range of emotional and physical expressions of caring and response to other people.

Such men seemed more patient with others and with themselves. They seemed more in touch, bonded and communicative with those they cared for of both sexes.

I think the whole scene of our culture, values, sexuality, affection, anger and violence IS INCREDIBLY COMPLEX. And I don't want to over simplify the part that nonsexual healthy affection can play in rearing men. I'm just convinced it could be A LOT HEALTHIER AND A MUCH BIGGER PART OF HEALTHY REARING of men.

I think it's real sad that a lot of men run around on football fields playing with tight ends trying to get their meagerest of doses of physical contact.

And I have yet to be in a western church that routinely obeyed the "Greet the bretheren with a holy kiss" Scripture.

Healthy, masculine, manly nonsexual physical affection doesn't have anything to do with being a tinkerbell.

Men in western cultures have been robbed. And now we spread our distorted values around the world in our crazy movies.

I think a lot of what accompanied the article in terms of reasons for junk in men were junk comments.

[TontoKowalski]

Thank you for sharing your family's inspiring story. I strive to be the kind of Dad you had.

[apackof2]

If you want to hold your ritual as a sacred rite of passage

Actually it is not my ritual, I am a Christian and the Jews don't hold it out as scared, it is scared

Be that as it may some just may prefer to practice circumcision
and the reason(s) is not that it is just customary. Aesthetics

[PoorMuttly]

Bump post# 98 !

[GOP_Raider]

Please, my mother is more of a man than most French men. There are men in San Francisco that are more manly than the French, and that's saying something.

[Moosefart]

A guy boards a plane and sits down next to a very attractive woman. He notices she's reading a book on sex facts. The guy asks her if the book is any good and she says.."oh yes, lots of interesting stuff. Take for example, it says here that American Indians have the longest (manthings) and that Polish men have the thickest. That is interesting the man says, BTW my name is Tonto Kowalski. LOL

[Porterville]

Almost. It is because our parents and forefathers had the hairiest chest and largest B###s in their countries. We are pioneers, our parents were pioneers true; however, it is in our bloodlines to be the biggest, baddest, free human beings in the world. Those in other lands romanticize about their monarchies and still worship the sickly blood lines of the aristocrats and can not stand to see an up start country destroy all myth of birth-right and nobility. That is why we are the best and will always be the best.

[TontoKowalski]

All right, you've deciphered my callsign, which WAS a loosely held secret.

Now, how'd you get your handle? LOL!

[Doc On The Bay]

'Sounds like You're raising a Normal American Boy!

Keep up the "Good Work!"

Doc

[CurlyDave]

"Genitally mutilated" is the author's term for circumcision. I'd say the use of the phrase smacks of anti-semitism.

The fact that we have invented a fancy word for it does not mean that it is not a genital mutilation.

Muslims, Jews and many Americans all circumcise their boys. Why does calling this a genital mutilation (the truth) smack of anti-semitism?

[JudgemAll]

In a cross-cultural study of affection and aggression done at McDonald's playgrounds, pre-schoolers in France playfully touched each other twice as much US children did, but while the French children acted aggressively only 1 percent of the time, the US youth did so 29 percent of the time.

Where did they get this info from? THis is BS!!!!!

French schools are amongst the most violent schools due to the Napoleonic system. Kids smoke openly from Junior high and on, they engage in very aggressive social competitions that involve violent fightings, hazing, rapes and constant harrassment. Boarding schools are a hell hole.

Given the abortion of student prone of highly elitist and selective Napoleonic system, you have kids who don't make it year after year, and you have 18 year olds in the same class as little 13 year olds or less. THe result is constant abuse and assault of the younger ones by the bigger ones already abused by the system that leaves no room for error or free accademic endeavor time.

THe last grade in Jr. High, those who are already 18 have to go to professional school. THese places look like rioting jails with rapes , hazings, kids unable to sleep because of parties and fights. All the abusers get to meet each other there and it is an enclosed little hell so that the better and younger students can study unimpeded in high school, relatively so.

Drugs abound, and drinking too.

As for creches and day care type centers, they are sovietised virtualy autistic places, and it depends where you drop off your kids!!! Many parents fake addresses so that their kids get to go to the good district where good kids go. Other creches are extremely violent.

[Vic3O3]

Dieter's a Deutchlander, no?

[foreshadowed at waco]

Kids still play cops and robber in America. I bet they play UN inspector in France

Priceless...BTW this series of posts is just amazing...I love it when Freepers get all wordy and creative.

[Spruce]

No matter how they spin it, American boys are normal. French boys are Pu**ys. Only in the PC/Bizzaro world would the question be about American boys, the question should read "Why are French boys so Effeminate?"

[Ches]

"French boys are "gutless" as a result of natural selection."

Valid point, add to this that most European males with cajones left their homes and ventured to America.

Unscientific conclusion: Higher testosterone production in the New World.

This could have a scientific basis that I'm totally unaware of. The most fertile venture out to populate the new colonies. The only proof I have of this is my Viking heritage.