Parents, civilize your sons

Schools shouldn't expect boys to behave like girls, writes Elizabeth Grace Matthew, the mother of four young boys. And schools shouldn't eliminate rules and routines so boys can run wild. Instead, she writes, parents should train their sons to "exist in a world with expectations, boundaries and standards."

Teachers can't exert authority in the classroom if every child has been raised to do what he or she feels like, she argues. Boys, in particular, need to learn at home how to behave in the world.

"Gentle parenting," which has become so common it's really “millennial parenting,” is part of the problem, Matthew suggests. It's "giving girls a cold (it’s not like they’re doing better, it’s just that boys are doing worse in comparison) and boys pneumonia."

What if training a little boy greatly resembles training a puppy, and our sons would be not only much better behaved, but also much happier, if they were routinely held to expectations no lower than we consider appropriate for canines? (“Sit,” anyone?)

Matthew writes about socializing her spacey oldest son and her aggressive second son. "There is a common misapprehension that discipline tempers vibrance and personality," she writes. "Actually, it’s the opposite: Kids who know where the boundaries are, and that adults expect them to bump into those boundaries but will hold them without discussion regardless, are kids who are free and independent within an age-appropriate sphere." Without boundaries, "the world has no reliable shape." That's scary.

Schools could be more boy-friendly, Matthew writes. "More physical activity is good. More academic competition is great. More challenge and less boredom is ideal." But students need to learn to behave -- at home and at school -- to make it work.

She has more about the downsides of gentle parenting on her Restoring American Adulthood site.

I had a routine with my daughter when she was small. "I'm the boss," I said. "You're the kid." As the boss, I was obligated to provide food, shelter and clothing and protection from wolves and bears. (For people who did not live in the wilderness, we spent a lot of time discussing wolves and bears.) As the kid, she had to do what I said. I think kids like the grown-ups to be in charge.

Men need to face hardship together, writes Catherine Morrissette in defense of a fraternity initiation that outraged many online. "Initiation practices are ancient," she writes. Boys "emerged as men, grown up and newly bound to their communities."

Though fraternity rituals are "contrived — no one is out hunting for dinner or fighting off invaders — it’s about doing something hard and emerging on the other side together, as brothers," Morissette writes. "We’ve been so conditioned into safety, into correctness and tone policing and safe spaces, that I’m not surprised when men go and create unsafe spaces for themselves."