My first conflict with NOW erupted in the mid-’70s when NOW chapters increasingly rejected father involvement by rejecting shared parent time as the … - Warren Farrell

The New England Journal of Medicine has recently reported that speaking about one’s faults creates abnormalities in the pulsations of our heart. Tiny abnormalities? No. Abnormalities as great as those produced by riding a stationary bicycle to the point of either exhaustion or chest pain. Perhaps [the criticisms men exchange beginning with adolescence], then, contribute to men being four times more likely than women to suffer heart disease before age fifty. In essence, our sons might be practicing heart-disease training.

A woman living with her mother has limited freedom; a man living with his mother has limited freedom and limited respect. For most men, the vacuum (of no support system) is so devastating, they’d rather agree with their wife than express their feelings and risk emotional withdrawal.

Your son may simultaneously feel that the male role is pressuring him to feel obligated to earn money someone else spends while he dies sooner.