Our society’s failure to recognize and care for the social and emotional well-being of our boys contributes to a nation of young men who navigate adversity and conflict with an incomplete emotional skill set. Whether boys and later men have chosen to resist or conform to this masculine norm, there is loneliness, anxiety, and pain.
Interpretation
The quote highlights the neglect of emotional well-being in boys, leading to struggles in adulthood.
Jennifer Siebel Newsom emphasizes the importance of recognizing and nurturing the emotional and social well-being of boys in society. She argues that a lack of attention to these crucial aspects contributes to a generation of men who face challenges like loneliness, anxiety, and pain, regardless of whether they conform to or resist traditional masculine norms. This situation ultimately leads to a harmful emotional skill set that hampers their ability to navigate life's adversities effectively.
In practice
During a discussion on mental health, this quote can be used to highlight the need for better emotional support for boys.
If you want to have a more pleasant, cooperative teenager, be a more understanding, empathic, consistent, loving parent. If you want to have more freedom, more latitude in your job, be a more responsible, a more helpful, a more contributing employee.
Let us be a temple-attending people. Attend the temple as frequently as personal circumstances allow. Keep a picture of a temple in your home that your children may see it. Teach them about the purposes of the House of the Lord. Have them plan from their earliest years to go there and to remain worthy of that blessing.
You get older, and people start passing away. And so if you're lucky - my mom died very young, for instance, and I have friends who died very young - but the point being that, I think if you're awake, you know you're going to pass on. And that the real treasure in life is the long term - relationships that you really value.
I am simply the most conspicuous part of a large, thoroughly dedicated and professional staff that extends from just behind these cameras, across this country and around the world, in too many instances, in places of grave danger and personal hardship. They're family to me.
Vladimir: Did I ever leave you? Estragon: You let me go.
I was a pretty sensitive kid and quite neurotic, filled with a lot of anxiety, which all would have been very familiar to my pop, you know? Except it was a part of himself he was trying to reject, so I got caught in the middle of it, I think.
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