One Man's Story: A Boy Raised Not to Be a Woman

By Dr. Steven D. Bagley

Women make up 58.4% of the US labor force today, but they only represent 10% of CEOs leading Fortune 500 companies. Now that working remotely has been proven effective, that number is expected to change quickly. Gender roles in business are disappearing, like they have in the area of education. Divorce has had a similar impact on increasing the number of single-parent families.

“My parents divorced when I was a child so I was raised by a single parent, my mom. All my teachers were women and even my little league team had an assistant coach who really ran everything who was one of the mothers of my teammate.

In my college psychology class the professor asked who were the three key gender role models we had learned from. It was then I realized I hadn’t had any male role models in my life. I had been raised by women and what I had learned was I wasn’t one of them. I had learned how not to be a woman, but never had asked the questions about how to become a man. I wasn’t close enough to any man for me to ask that type of question. I found myself on an island surrounded by females without a brother in sight. Completely isolated and alone.

If women have been your only role models because of a divorce or a death or another circumstance you may not feel other men would recognize you as part of the tribe of male warriors. You haven’t been taught to hunt, track your prey, tune up an engine, or through a manly punch. In the female world some of those skills are taboo.

Never being told you can do it, you’ve got this, you’re enough, you can handle it, go for it, leave one doubting himself. Women don’t know what it takes to be a man, to stand up to the school yard bully, to earn the respect of your teammates for running toward the fight on the field, to learn to protect those smaller than you and serve those less capable than you are.

Men learn about their masculinity from being with other men. Talking about it only is beneficial after you have seen men acting as men in real time. Risk is required for men to turn a challenge into a lesson in manhood or an adventure into a test of personal responsibility and character. Men need to know what they are made of and they need other men to witness the male rituals that prove we are real warriors who can be trusted to protect the tribe.

Power of 4 groups are about men supporting each other as life challenges us to show up, stand up and rise from our failures to show up and stand up again. Four men are the number of a fighting unit so everyones protects each other's backs in the middle of the battle. Don’t be blindsided, train as a unit, commit to your brotherhood of warriors, then fight with boldness and courage. Let us know if we can be of help.