| | | | Where Boys Find their Mentors |
By Seth Mullins
Many sons in our day and age spend a lot of time separated from their fathers due to work constraints, divorce or other factors. The lack of a consistent male role model in the house can complicate their growing-up process and also leave them always with a sense of something missing. Oftentimes, though, these boys are able to find father figures and mentors in the men who facilitate their sport, day camp and extracurricular activities.
Sports coaches can often play a strong role in the mentoring of young boys. Good sportsmanship requires a degree of maturity in kids, and coaches can draw out their finer values of fair play, cooperation with teammates and respect for their peers. There are obviously those who value winning games above all else, who will drive their young players mercilessly and try to force the best performance out of them with negative reinforcement. But the coaches I’ve had experience with through my own son’s sporting activities have been good at recognizing the real strengths of the kids in their charge and drawing this out through encouragement, praise (when it was deserved) or constructive criticism (when improvement was wanted).
Camp counselors can also take on the roles of mentors for young boys. It is generally their job to initiate kids into a world of experiences often associated with male bonding: hiking, camping, woodwork, forestry, canoeing, etc. Boy Scouts of America have imparted to millions of kids worldly skills, reverence for nature and respect for fellow humans; and, particularly, a love for the outdoors. They have complex rites that are used to honor the different degrees of achievement scouts have attained – rites that strongly resemble the spirit of the male initiations of old times.
Some cities and even smaller towns have mentoring programs wherein boys can spend time with – and learn from – carpenters, masons, electricians and other tradesmen. Similar programs exist to match older men in various professions with juvenile delinquents and other troubled teens.
The absence of many fathers from their sons’ lives has created a void that our society attempts to fill with whoever is available. Mentors perform many of the functions fathers once did in our pre-industrial days, when they lived and worked in closer proximity to their kids and enjoyed more frequent contact. Guiding figures like coaches, scout leaders and camp counselors can help boys to understand what it means to enter a man’s world by bestowing knowledge, encouragement and recognition. They can provide crucial affirmation of the budding manhood of boys – boys who otherwise might never receive it because they have no steady father figures in their own homes.
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