On: Boys

“Boys will be boys…”: such a little phrase, yet so potent and (it seems) very well-used. It has tripped off many a tongue in conversations I have had with colleagues, friends and parents in my time in pastoral care, and is used both indulgently, in fond remembrance of youthful boisterous behaviour and dismissively, explaining away naughtiness. But what does this neatly-packaged locution really mean?

I suspect this is an expression we will return to, as it is not only commonplace but also – in my view – troublesome. The problem is threefold:

Firstly, this phrase is a generalisation. It implies that boys come in one form only: little cookie-cutter copies of each other, with hardwired behaviours, instincts and attitudes that simultaneously set them apart from the other type of child (the girl kind) whilst binding them together in one cohesive category. In other words, this four-word statement implies that all boys will be boys. (Perhaps it’s just me, but this conjures up Huxley-esque visions of boys growing in jars, being hatched to perform specific and near-identical functions to one another, while the girl-flavoured child exhibits different tendencies which are still, nonetheless, designed to enable her to fulfil her specific purpose. Anyway, I digress.)

This overly-simplistic generalisation ignores the very obvious reality that boys come in very different forms: there is no one type of boy, as there is no one type of girl. There is robust evidence to demonstrate that males and females are similar on most psychological variables. This means that boys and girls (and the men and women they will become) are more similar than they are different, and that any differences in attitudes and behaviours are a result of cultural expectations or of the great diversity that exists across the human spectrum. (For excellent gender meta-analyses, see ‘The Gender Similarities Hypothesis’ by J Shilbey Hyde.) I have been asked on rare occasions how I can relate to teenage boys, being as I am of the fairer sex, and I always just shrug: there is no one form of a teenage boy (you can read more here about what parents really think about their sons having a female Housemaster). I have found that, even in progressive literature on caring for boys, there is stereotyping of boys’ interests. “Boys like football”, we are told and, indeed, many do. As do many girls. And there are many boys for whom football is not an interest, but give them rugby, basketball, tennis, cricket, ping-pong, water polo, you name it, and they’ll be in their element. There are still others for whom any competitive sport is utterly distasteful and they would rather lose themselves in a novel, an aria, or a watercolour. Boys’ personalities are not the same: some are loud, some are quiet; some confident, some shy; some energetic, some calm; some hardworking, some lazy; some are intellectually skillful, some are physically deft. And, of course, we have boys who are myriad combinations of these characteristics.

Isn’t it obvious? Not all boys are the same.

Secondly, this phrase is all too often used to excuse boorish behaviour and bad manners. A fight breaks out* because Bart** uses Millhouse’s rugby ball without permission. We break them up but we say: “boys will be boys – they always fight it out”. Bert thinks it’s hilarious to soak Ernie with his brand new water pistol while he’s sleeping. We admonish Bert but say: “boys will be boys – they are so boisterous”. Kermit wolf-whistles when Miss Piggy, a girl in his glass, bends over to pick up the pen she has dropped (although these days, I suppose it would be a stylus for her tablet). We talk seriously to Kermit about respecting girls but say: “boys will be boys – they’re very visual beings”. When we talk about bad behaviour as if it is somehow integral to being a boy, we do all children (and the future adults they will become) a disservice. When boys are kind to one another, when they comfort one another, when they get upset, when they congratulate each other on achievements, do we ever say “boys will be boys”?

Thirdly, this little slogan is so fatalistic. Even when we decry the bad behaviour on show, if we accompany our response to it with “boys will be boys”, we are condemning the children in our care to a limited life of stereotype. If we don’t enable Bart and Millhouse to thrash out their problems using their words rather than their fists, are they not doomed to see violence as an instinctive response to disagreement? If we don’t engage Bert in opening up about why humour and jokes cease to be funny when someone is upset by them, are we not partially to blame when he becomes a deeply offensive, unfunny, man? If we don’t explain to Kermit why viewing girls as sexual objects is demeaning and harmful, are we limiting his ability to have meaningful relationships with the opposite sex as he matures?

You may think the above alarmist: typical feminist catastrophising. You may be right. But aren’t we doing the boys in our care a disservice when we view them as captives to their emotional responses? When we reduce them to a set of characteristics? Boys are wonderfully complex, deeply interesting and every bit as able to adapt their behaviour and responses as girls are. Boys aren’t just boys: they are people, too.

Boys will be boys – a poem
by Laura MacKenzie

Boys will be boorish.
Boys will be brash.
Boys will be brilliant at raising the cash
we need for our chosen charity.
Boys will be boys.

Boys will be cocky.
Boys will be crass.
Boys will be caringly cleaning the brass
in the dining room to help out our domestic team.
Boys will be boys.

Boys will be solid.
Boys will be strong.
Boys will be sensitively helping belong
the new boy who joined a year after them.
Boys will be boys.

Boys will be louts.
Boys will be liars.
Boys will be laying their arms round the crier
who feels homesick and just wants to speak to his mum.
Boys will be boys.

Boys will be daring.
Boys will be daft.
Boys will donate a significant raft
of tinned goods to the homeless shelter.
Boys will be boys.

Boys will be sporty.
Boys will be smelly.
Boys will salute their peer on how well he
performed in the musical theatre competition.
Boys will be boys.

Boys don’t need coddled.
Boys won’t be clipes.
Boys won’t conform to the stereotypes
we put on them when we say:
Boys will be boys.



Copyright – The Female Housemaster – 2023

* These scenarios are inspired by true events.
** Names have been changed. I am yet to come across a Kermit T Frog enrolling in my boarding house.