My husband comes from one of those hiking families who cherish long, dusty, uphill-both-ways walks. The second of six children, he and his three brothers proudly relay fond stories of their father’s antics on these family hikes. It started out innocently enough—throwing Starburst candies as far ahead as possible to make toddlers run ahead of the adults to grab the candies, thus keeping up the pace—progressing to more involved pranks as the kids grew.
A favorite childhood camping story relays the time the four boys hiked and hiked for what seemed like days, their camping packs feeling heavier and heavier—impossibly heavy—until their burden was all but intolerable. When they finally stumbled into camp and gratefully collapsed to the ground to unpack their things, the boys were shocked to find several gigantic rocks (which certainly had not been there at the start of their trip) tumbling out of their overturned packs. The brothers all tell this story with great affection for their father, laughing at the way in which he’d slyly added burdens to their load in order to toughen them up.
The family culture was not so much centered around a shared love of needlessly difficult tasks, but something more essential: the hikes presented an opportunity for little boys to be given a definite challenge and to meet an expectation. They were a kind of early rite of passage, intended to teach the boys to rise above adversity—in this case, adversity administered by their own father. And of course, the hiking culture also offered my father-in-law the opportunity to think of and administer adversities, a role he clearly relished.
I don’t know if my husband’s two sisters ever found huge rocks in their backpacks, but I doubt it. While weighing his sons down with added strain was certainly up the old man’s alley, he didn’t seem to derive similar pleasure at the thought of “making men” out of his daughters. In fact, I have never even heard anyone express a fear that a daughter would fail to “become a woman.” One might say that a girl failed to become a “good” woman or a “proper” woman, but I’ve never heard it implied that it takes societal effort to turn a girl into a woman. Girls seem to become women whether or not society facilitates it.
But boys are not this way. We have many phrases and stories indicating that a given boy failing to “become a man” is a real possibility. People say a boy “wasn’t made into a man” by his father. Or their speech implies that a certain action or event or trial could “make a man out of him.”
The Moves Make the Man
The rite of passage delivering male children into adulthood appears to be something that society must furnish, much like my father-in-law furnished hikes and giant rocks. The social effort that turns boys into men encompasses both a test or acquisition of skill and endurance, and also a celebration of the boys’ successful navigation or endurance of their trial. A rite of passage will often conclude with a ritualized social acknowledgement that the boys have indeed “taken it like a man” and have therefore earned respect.
Examples of male rites of passage from antiquity include African lion hunts, which were often performed by young boys on solo hunting trips, and the Spartan agoge, which removed boys from their families at age 7 and trained them to be soldiers. At age 18, these Spartan boys were sent out into the countryside to secretly kill as many Helots or slaves as possible, a mission that, if conducted successfully, culminated in a public declaration of manhood and permission to marry and reproduce. Many Native American tribes performed vision quests, in which young men would be isolated from the tribe to fast for four days and nights at a sacred site selected by the elders of the tribe. The young man would wait for a vision from the spirits detailing his purpose in life and would return to have the vision interpreted for him by the tribal elders. Each of these rites involved set stages: separation from society, trial or test, and then a reintroduction into society, often to be assessed, ranked and celebrated. Almost all historical rites of passage for men involve introduction or increased access to marriageable women at their conclusion.
A cultural effort of time and attention to administer rites of passage for boys appears across most human cultures and time periods, yet we do not see similar rites or rituals for girls. Multiple cultures have traditions and celebrations to mark the occurrence of girls’ maturity, such as a quinceañera, sweet 16, or debutante ball. These customs often announce a girl’s maturity and availability to be courted to the wider community, but these rituals do not exactly make the girl into a woman. The rite of passage for girls seems more interior, more removed from society. It seems probable that we do not see female rites of passage across cultures because girls are delivered into womanhood by their biology, as their transition from girl to woman occurs when they begin menstruation, and integration of their new identity is best processed in private, among family. The larger tribe or society is not needed to facilitate this transition from girl to woman in the same way it seems essential for young boys to leave childhood behind and embrace manhood.
Boys do not necessarily exit adolescence at sexual maturity, but instead need to be shaped or molded into men by society. Premodern societies also seemed to have an interest in marking or selecting the boys most suitable for reproduction via their success in the tribe’s initiation rituals. Many historical rites of passage across societies isolated the young men who didn’t pass the test, even abandoning or ostracizing them. But we do not see a similar ostracization for girls. Society seems always to have a need for its girls but often selects among the boys those it finds most useful or suitable for reproduction, and labels these men.
Modern American Rites of Passage
While the majority of ancient and premodern rites of passage focused on male initiation, it seems clear that girls do not arrive into physical maturity with quite everything they need to be good wives, mothers, and peers. Surely girls also benefit from conventional rites and rituals intended to aid their maturation and flourishing. But historically, societies with limited time and resources clearly tend to lavish more energy on the rites of manhood. Is this done at the expense of girls?
It’s possible that only the wealthiest and most secure societies can spare the surplus time and resources to tend to the adolescent development of both girls and boys. For example, the necessity of turning boys into useful men is obvious in wartime, and we don’t have to look very far back in our own history to see accelerated rites of passage hastily employed so we could send more boys off to fight sooner.
It also seems clear that society suffers more negative consequences from extended male adolescence than it does from extended female adolescence, simply because male hormones and physical strength tend towards destruction and violence when not properly directed. There are surely consequences of undersocialized girls as well, but these tend to be more subtle and do not often result in death and property destruction.
Does America have sufficient resources to invest in rites of passage for both girls and boys? In some ways, our education system is evidence of this. As our economy and national security have evolved to meet needs beyond subsistence and survival, we have tailored education to meet the social and cultural goals of a flourishing civilization. No longer concerned with where our food, safety, and even prosperity will come from, we have largely redirected our efforts to culture and leisure. This investment in society goals above and beyond the necessities of life seems to suit women more than men: women do better in school and make up the majority of college graduates. But the loss in societal focus on the basics—on necessity—means that boys largely skip the traditional rites of passage that once sharpened them into soldiers or scavengers or survivors and spend the majority of their childhood in a post-necessities education system.
It’s worth asking: has modern society skipped over an essential stage in male development?
In the last decade, the consequences of male loneliness and social isolation have inspired considerable anxiety. The same modern hands-off approach to rites of passage that has encouraged more girls to delay marriage and motherhood in order to pursue their education has also enabled boys to continue in relative adolescence indefinitely. The loss of a clearly identified “finish line” for boys marking the end of childhood and the beginning of adulthood contributes to modern male malaise.
College became something like a rite of passage for a slim majority of boys late in the last century, but rites, of necessity, involve leaving an old identity or stage behind and transitioning into a new one. College no longer guarantees such a change will take place, and as such, ceases to stand as a universally acknowledged rite of passage from childhood to adulthood. The loss of college as a clear indication of masculine achievement and maturity could partially explain why fewer and fewer boys want to attend.
Is it possible to address the growing needs of boys without shortchanging the girls? Yes, I think so. I’m not sure that diverting more social attention to male rites of passage isn’t ultimately in the girls’ best interest, anyway. If more men were ready and willing to shoulder the masculine burden of supporting a wife and family sooner—if we could shorten our modern lengthy male adolescence—this would greatly benefit girls, most of whom still wish to become mothers. As male college attendance continues to dwindle, establishing alternative means for young men to signal to women that they would make good husbands is essential. If we no longer consider college to be the making of a man, what can we establish to replace this rite of passage?
If our country now rarely fights in wars—and no longer sends the majority of young men to fight even when we do—what can we design to replace this traditional rite of passage going forward? Is it crazy to consider the establishment of something like the Mormon two-year voluntary mission, or universal military training like that of Israel, Switzerland, Finland, Singapore, and Austria? Can we design public works or defense projects with an eye to offering more boys something that can equip them with physical, mental, and emotional tools to properly direct their energy and talents?
In an era of ease, prosperity, and relative safety, should we find a few giant rocks to add to the burden and aid in the toughening of America’s boys? Or are we all so confident in masculine obsolescence that we no longer believe we must invest our time, attention, and money into making men out of them?
