Conventional
opinion has held that children of absent fathers are more likely to sexually mature
earlier, and have their first sexual experience earlier, than children of
fathers who remain in the family.The
conclusion has always been that it is the absence of the fathers that cause the
early sexual maturation and activity.New research is suggesting that this might not be the case.
Jane
Mendle examined data from the US National Longitudinal Survey of Youth and
compared the age of first intercourse with genetically related individuals such
as twins, sisters and cousins.What the
researcher found was that the more closely related the children were, the more
likely they were to be close in terms of first intercourse, and this was the
most important factor regardless of absent fathers.
What
this research demonstrates is that correlation (fathers presence/absence with
age of sexual maturity/first intercourse) does not necessarily imply
causation.It also shows that
researchers in the past have been too quick to ‘blame’ absent fathers for their
children’s sexual behaviour.
Over
the last 200 years or so, there has been ongoing debate about the relative role
of psychology and biology in a range of human behaviours.Autism and homosexuality are two good
examples that research has placed firmly on the side of biology.For many years professionals tried talking
therapies to help people with autism and homosexuality overcome their
‘afflictions’.In both cases all they served
to do was increase the distress of the patient, and their families, by making
them feel responsible for their behaviour.
With
respect to homosexuality, the psychiatric profession for many years held it to
be an illness.This is no longer the
case.Although the causes of
homosexuality are still debated in nuance, there is increasing consensus that
it is biology that determines a person’s sexuality, not psychology, upbringing
or indeed, personal choice.Interestingly there are different biological reasons for male
homosexuality and female homosexuality, rather than a unified reason that
accounts for both.
Furthermore,
a survey of all published research about therapies that have tried to change a
person’s sexuality has shown that it has always failed to do so, and often
causes harm.This has recently led to
the American Psychological Society issuing a declaration that therapy to change
a person’s sexuality does not work, with the implication that it is unethical
to try to do so.Pressure is being put
on the British Psychological Society and the Royal College of Psychiatry to issue
a similar statement.
Given
this backdrop it is alarming that a recent study in MBC Psychiatry found that as many as 1 in 6 therapists have
attempted to change at least one person’s sexual orientation in their professional career.On the face of it this seems to go against
the evidence.I wonder, though, if
something more subtle is going on – namely a difficulty knowing how to deal
with gay clients who are unhappy about their sexuality.
In the
life history of most gay men there is likely to be a period when they couldn’t
accept their sexuality, and therefore really didn’t want to be gay.The pressures of family and society to
conform to a heterosexual norm seem insurmountable for many men.It is clear that many gay clients have a lot
of soul searching to do before they form an acceptance of their sexuality.Indeed, it could be argued that many gay men,
though superficially accepting and adopting a gay lifestyle, still suffer from
a hangover of ‘internalised homophobia’ that continues to impact on their
emotional wellbeing and ability to form meaningful relationships.
Given
the very real unhappiness that finding oneself gay can bring to a person, it
seems understandable, if ill advised, to try and help the person to lead a
straight lifestyle.I suspect this,
rather than a real belief in its possibility, that has led so many of my
colleagues to try and change a persons sexuality.
It is
within this backdrop, however, that the real danger to gay men’s well-being
lies – namely in those religious organisations that still offer ‘treatments’
for homosexuality. Against the grain of science but in the name of God, such
organisations can only serve to enhance gay men’s unhappiness with their
sexuality, and not in fact offer any real solution to it.At best all they can hope to achieve is an
asexual life where sex and relationships are sacrificed for a supposed ‘greater’
ideal of ‘what God wants’.I can’t see
this being beneficial to the individual, or, indeed, society.
Homosexuality
will continue to be a contentious issue, not least because it raises tensions
between individual behaviour and social and religious mores. All I can do as a
therapist is help everybody, gay or straight alike, to be more accepting of
homosexuality.It is in accepting others
how they really are, that we are best able to learn to accept ourselves as we really
are.Psychological health, after all,
starts by seeing the world as it really is, rather than how we think it should
be.
Changing our behaviour is difficult.If it were simply a matter of deciding to change, and following through
on that change, there would be no need for psychotherapists.
When working with clients I am often struck that they have an unrealistic
expectation of how change comes about in therapy or in life.For some clients, they expect a linear
relationship between number of sessions and incremental improvements in problem
behaviour.For other clients, they
expect that insight in therapy is a necessary and sufficient condition for the
change in behaviour they seek. Both are unrealistic.
In reality, change is hard won.There is a subtle interplay between insight in therapy and making
different choices in life.Both are necessary.Change is often slow, and comes about in
apparent leaps forward, followed by apparent slips back.The steps forward are experienced as
triumphs, and the slips back are experienced as disasters.
In reality steps forward and back are progress.My role as a therapist is to help the client
find the learning in both.
The process of change has been wonderfully captured in a short poem by Portia
Nelson.I often offer this poem to
clients to help them reflect on their “successes” and their “failures”.I offer it to you so you may do the same.
Autobiography In Five Short Chapters
by Portia Nelson
I
I walk down the street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk
I fall in.
I am lost ... I am helpless.
It isn't my fault.
It takes me forever to find a way out.
II
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I pretend I don't see it.
I fall in again.
I can't believe I am in the same place
but, it isn't my fault.
It still takes a long time to get out.
III
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I see it is there.
I still fall in ... it's a habit.
my eyes are open
I know where I am.
It is my fault.
I get out immediately.
IV
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I walk around it.
What
kind of dad are you?Research is
beginning to show that the kind of parent you are is to some extent controlled
by a number of key hormones.
In the
journal Hormones and Behaviour the anthropologist Alexandra Alvergne studied
the level of the hormone testosterone in men’s saliva, and how this correlated
with family behaviour.On average, the
higher the levels of testosterone in the saliva, the less time and money the
man invested in their wives and children.
Another
study, by Ruth Fieldman, reported to the Society for Research in Child
Development in Denver, Colorado, indicated that when men become fathers they
undergo biochemical changes which affect how they relate to their
children.The study looked at the hormone
Oxytocin, also called ‘the cuddle hormone’.Fieldman found that the levels of oxytocin raised after the birth of a
child in both fathers and mothers.Furthermore, the more oxytocin was present in the fathers, the more they
were seen to play, bond and attach to their children, then men who had low
levels of oxytocin.
What
both these studies appear to show is that your parenting style has something to
do with your biology.Indeed this makes
sense in terms of evolutionary theory, as “investment” in offspring could be
seen to be an evolutionary relevant trait, and therefore mediated by
biology.
Whether
it is better, from an evolutionary perspective, to father many children and
offer them poor support, or fewer children, and offer them more support, is an
interesting backdrop to understanding men’s parenting preferences.To reason from biology to morality, of
course, is an example of what philosophers call ‘the naturalistic fallacy’.However, some men, or so it might seem, are
going to have to fight against their biology in order to become ‘responsible’
parents.
One thing has struck me over the years in my practice with
men, they don’t cry very often.For sure
I always have a box of (man sized) tissues strategically placed so that, should
my client wish to cry, he can.
When I was training I was told that crying is a good
thing.It releases tension, helps you to
connect with your feeling, and the crying process itself serves to rid the body
of unhelpful toxins.In fact we were
trained in how to spot when someone was about to cry, and how to help them do
so.
So if crying is so good for us, why don’t the men I see cry
more often?For a while I thought that
maybe I was to blame.Perhaps, so I
thought, I was not creating the right atmosphere where the client felt safe
enough with me to cry.Then, I thought,
it was because I was a man, if my client was seeing a female therapist, then
perhaps he might feel more able to cry.
Of course sometimes men do cry.My experience is that when the men I see do
cry it is usually for deep existential pain: death, abandonment, loss.For sure women cry for these reasons too, but
women also cry to express other feelings, like frustration or
disappointment.Women, it seems to me,
also cry as a means or aid to communication, rather than simply an expression
of inner pain.
The ‘standard’ explanation for the differences between men’s
and women’s crying is that men have crying ‘socialised’ out of us.We learn as boys, so the ‘standard’ theory
goes, that our crying is not acceptable to others.According to this view men are both capable
of crying more, and if it wasn’t for our dysfunctional emotional upbringing, we
would cry as much, and as often as women.
I have come to reject this idea.I don’t believe the socialisation hypothesis
anymore.Not least because it forces men
to apologise for the emotionality they do express (“I know I should cry more”
etc).It seems to me now that men not
crying as much as women is not so much a problem for men, but a problem for the
women in our lives.They would feel
better if our emotionality were the same as theirs.The fact of the matter is they are not.My experience of working with men is that our
emotional worlds are different to women’s.Not better, not worse, but different.I now hold the view that if a man cries in therapy that’s fine, but if
he doesn’t cry, then this is not a problem with him, or indeed, with me.
