A little boy looks up at his mother one evening and asks, “Mom, people tell me boys don’t cry. So if I cry, does that make me weak?” She doesn’t have an answer ready. Most of us wouldn’t. Chances are, you’ve said “boys don’t cry” at some point: to your son, your nephew, maybe even to yourself when you were a kid and someone said it to you first. Nobody’s arguing against boys being strong. That’s not the issue. The issue is that somewhere along the way, “be strong” started meaning “feel nothing,” and those are not the same thing at all. Think about how differently we treat girls and boys when they’re upset. A girl crying gets comforted. A boy crying gets told to toughen up. Over time, boys figure out that emotions are something to hide, not share. So they stop crying. At least on the outside. But the feelings are still there. They just go underground.
