Our contemporary society is experimenting with the diminishment of caregivers for children. Some children are raised through crucial stages of life by only one person. This one person, who strives to give the best, may be overwhelmed, busy, trying to raise many children. And even in homes with two parents, many children are essentially alone.

The human community and individual people are more likely to hurt or undernourish children they think of as 'bodies' to be used. Cultures and people are more likely to raise children to be mere economic interns rather than fully developed humans if they see children as 'bodies' to be forced into certain economic and social molds.

As Carl Jung once said, 'When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate.' When our boys become adults, we become their inner situation. We become inner voices they often hear in their work, relationships and spiritual practice.

Boys get unfairly labeled as morally defective, hyperactive, undisciplined, or 'problem children,' when quite often the problem is not with the boys but with the families, extended families, or social environments, which do not understand their specific needs as human beings and as boys

The boy and the man must be raised to see the possibility of self worth, then meet a few others who provide the vision of a road toward it, then spend a lifetime pursing that worth through action and relationship. One of the great tragedies in human life is to be born a male and not be guided toward the value of a man.

The culture in which you parent, mentor, or educate boys exhorts them to be individualistic and group-oriented at once, but does not give them a tribal structure in which to accomplish both in balance. It used to be that the tribe formed a boy's character while the peer group existed primarily to test and befriend that character. Nowadays, boys' characters are often formed in the peer group. Mentors and intimate role models rarely exist to show the growing boy in any long-term and consistent way how both to serve a group and flourish as an independent self.

If Huck Finn or Tom Sawyer were alive today, we’d say they had ADD or a conduct disorder. They [boys] are who they are, and we need to love them for who they are. Let’s not try to rewire them.