October’s Topic: Redefining Manhood
This month, guest Tiffany Lewis joins the Round Table to discuss issues relating to her Deseret News article, Raising our boys into men. Here are some of our initial reactions to the article, which we share with Tiffany in our group discussion.
From Lisa: “The thing she says that I do have some interest in/ sympathy for, is the idea that boys can benefit from having defined markers to look forward to that mark them as ‘men’. I also think these things can be very good for helping girls feel like ‘women’. Although then you end up with the problem that boys who don’t go on missions or girls who don’t become mothers (for instance) both suffer a loss of social status that can never really be ‘fixed’ through other acts of service.”
From Chelsea: “The types of upheaval and emotional loss I see in men today (in my mind) has to do with the fact that the public sphere has opened up for women, but the private sphere has not for men.”
From Neylan: ”It seems quite evident to me that in our middle/upper class educated American society men are struggling educationally, financially and existentially with the rise of women. I think the responsibility to solve that lies with men, not with women.”
During the conversation we reference Chelsea’s article on the Exponent blog, titled Rituals of Adulthood and Equality. Other articles relevant to the discussion are The Opposite of ‘Man’ is ‘Boy’, not ‘Woman” on Jezebel.com, and Fatherhood Leads to Drop in Testosterone in the NY Times.
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Guest Bio:
Tiffany Gee Lewis is a writer and journalist who grew up hopping from one U.S. city to another. She has a BA in journalism from BYU, and has done work for National Geographic Online, The Miami Herald, The Austin American-Statesman, The Minneapolis Star Tribune, Meridian Magazine and other publications. For three years she has written the popular From the Homefront column for Mormon Times. Her favorite topic for writing is family life. She especially likes to explore the humor behind parenting and the need for mothers to find a creative space amidst the sometimes-tedium of keeping house. When she is not writing, Tiffany manages to avoid housework by running, singing, gardening, and sprouting her own alfalfa. She blogs at The Tiffany Window and lives with her husband and four young sons in Minnesota.
