In the UK today, a young person is more likely to have a television in their bedroom than a father in their house by the end of their childhood.
And even if fathers are around, their sons don’t engage with them much: boys spend 44 hours in front of a TV, smartphone or computer screen for every half hour in conversation with their fathers.
Why does any of this really matter, I ask the American psychologist Philip Zimbardo, who cites these figures in his new book Man (Dis)connected: How Technology Has Sabotaged What It Means To Be Male.
Why do boys need fathers?
Zimbardo, professor emeritus at Stanford University, replies that everybody needs a mother and father because they give different kinds of love. “Mothers give love unconditionally – because you came out of her body, a mother loves you. You bring home your report card and it’s all Cs? Mom will say, ‘It’s OK. Momma loves you anyway. Try harder.’
“Fathers give love provisionally. If you want your allowance, if you don’t want me to turn off your computer, then you’ve got to perform. That’s always been the deal with fathers and sons – you don’t get a pass just because you exist, just because you got my name on your birth certificate. You’re going to do it because you want your father to love you and admire you. That central source of extrinsic motivation is gone now for almost one out of every two kids.”
The book, by Zimbardo and his co-author Nikita D Coulombe, is about why boys don’t man up as previous generations of males ostensibly did. Continue reading
- Stuart Jeffries has been a Guardian subeditor, TV critic, Friday review editor, Paris correspondent and is now a feature writer and columnist for the paper