Raising Men

Written By Brad Korpalski

The other day I found myself with a few moments, and so I wandered into the local bookstore. Given the work I do, I directed my browsing to the subject of the raising of men.

That might seem like an odd thing to say. The “raising of men”.

After all, it’s boys we raise, right?

Aren’t men just the inevitable outcome of raising boys?

Well…no– no they aren’t.

And not for reasons of gender identity. This assertion has everything to do with human maturation and development; not identity.

More on that another time…

In the bookstore, I meandered. Past the book-adjacent items, the fiction, the Tarot section, and into the aisles of non-fiction.

There I found:

  • women’s health

  • parenting for expectant couples

  • parenting for children and teens

  • psychology

  • mental health

  • gender identity

  • religious studies

  • spirituality

And while I must admit– the amount of time I had was brief– in the time I did have, I didn’t find anything on the subject of raising men. Nothing on how to meet boys as they reach adolescence and begin the inquiry into self discovery.

No books on rites of passage. No section titled: men’s health.

Surely those books are there. I know they’ve been written. By the likes of Robert Bly, James Hillman, Robert Moore, and others.

Yet, perhaps indicative of society itself, they were not in plain sight. One would have to look, with intention, to find this work.

Is there a meta-narrative at play here?

Has the subject of men, manhood, and masculinity been relegated to the in-between spaces and storage rooms of our cultural library?

This is not a man writing a poutful plea of “WHAT ABOUT THE MEN???” I’m not poking the feminist bear, so to speak.

But, also– what about the men?

Do we imagine a whole, healthy, healing Earth can happen without mature men, fully realized into their sacred power, being of service to the Divine Feminine?

Do we really want to relegate our young boys, coming into their adolescence and beyond, to blanket punishment for the patriarchal crimes we attribute to the masculine run amok within previous generations?

I would argue this is where our attention is needed the most. You don’t heal a wound by massaging another part of the body. You heal a wound by going into the places where the healing is needed most.

This is a time to gather the tribes. To reunite men with the path of the masculine. Not to reclaim a false power of the ego for personal gain– to hold dominion over others– but to harmonize and be of service to beauty and love.

It’s time for a New Earth Pathway.  

Brad Korpalski