Raising Boys: Why Boys are Different – and How to Help them Become Happy and Well-Balanced Men. Steve BiddulphЧитать онлайн книгу.

      Why Boys Scuffle and Fight

      Testosterone affects mood and energy levels; it’s more than just a growth hormone. That’s why, for centuries, horses were gelded to make them better behaved. (I know, don’t go there!) Testosterone injected into female rats makes them try to mate with other female rats and fight with each other. It makes certain parts of the brain grow and others slow down their growth. It can grow more muscles and less fat, and it can make you go bald and bad-tempered!

      How testosterone affects the psychology of males can be illustrated by a famous study. A tribe of monkeys in a laboratory was closely observed to learn about its social structure. Researchers found that the male monkeys had a definite hierarchy, or pecking order. The females’ hierarchy was looser and more relaxed, based on who groomed whose hair! But the males always knew who was boss, sub-boss, and sub-sub-boss, and had frequent fights to prove it.12

      PRACTICAL HELP

      TEENAGE BOYS AND CARS

      The biggest single worry for most parents of boys is safety. In the adolescent years, as he spends more time away from your direct care and his mobility and independence grow, it’s hard to relax and just ‘let go’. And in fact there is growing evidence that this fear is well grounded, that we are letting go too soon. This is especially true in the matter of driving cars. Every year the newspapers carry stories of small towns or suburban communities across the nation devastated by multiple fatality crashes, where four or five teenagers die in collisions caused by immaturity and inexperience.

      As a community we care deeply about the lives of our young people, and this has prompted some astounding research into why boys die like this and how to prevent it. It has been discovered that one boy on his own driving a car, aged in his late teens, is relatively safe. Today’s emphasis on driver training and 50–100 hours of practise driving with an adult supervising (usually Mum or Dad) means young men have greater awareness and skill than young drivers in our day. They probably drive too fast at times, but are also more focused on and attentive to their driving, so they do not fare too badly as long as alcohol is not involved. However, if you add a male passenger in the car, things begin to change: the young driver takes more risks, and the chances of a fatal crash increase by 50 per cent. If the passenger is a girl, however, a male driver usually becomes protective and careful, and is actually safer than he is on his own.

      The next part will shock you. If you now add one or more other young people in the back seat, the death rate of the driver increases by over 400 per cent. The distraction, the need to impress, and the difficulty of staying in a calm, careful state of mind, mean that all those in the car are at serious risk. This is especially so after dark, and of course is much worse with drugs or alcohol present.11 This astonishingly clear research has lead to law reforms that are saving lives around the world. In Australia, a bereaved father, Rob Wells, who lost his son along with three other boys in a single car crash, has campaigned to persuade governments in several states to restrict young drivers carrying more than one passenger, especially late at night. These laws have worked very effectively in New Zealand and Canada for many years.

      Meanwhile, it helps that parents know about this ‘brain overload factor’ – the ‘maturity bypass effect’ of having friends in a car – and can make informed decisions. Psychologists now believe seventeen-year-olds are too young to drive groups of friends about at any time. You have ferried them about for sixteen years already; why not do it for another year or two, to know they won’t die or kill their friends?

      At seventeen, teenagers can sound persuasive. They can say the right things. But it’s later, under pressure, that their brains are not able to cope. The last thing parents of dead teenagers ever hear them say is, ‘I’ll be fine, Mum’. A year or two later, and with more experience, they will be so much safer.