This Friday is the annual International Day of the Boy Child, one of the lesser known international days. It should be better known. It is important. It is an attempt to elevate the status of boys, especially boys without fathers, who go on to become fathers without sons because they are not present. It’s also important because this particular day was started here in T&T in 2018 by Dr Jerome Teelucksingh, senior lecturer in history at UWI and son of the Rev Daniel Teelucksingh, former moderator of the Presbyterian Church, and his wife, Joycelyn.
From a little beginning here in T&T, it is now commemorated in 38 other nations, including Jamaica, Guyana and Barbados, South Africa, Nigeria, India, Pakistan, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Mexico and the USA. In Europe, the UK, France, Spain and even the Ukraine.
Dr Teelucksingh’s press release this year states that, “Somewhere along the journey from boyhood to manhood, boys are socialised not to express the natural and spontaneous reactions to spiritual, physical, emotional, and psychological pain, disappointment, and rejection. They are socialised to equate strength and masculinity with suppressing their natural and spontaneous reaction to pain, disappointment, and rejection; not asking for help; and shunning vulnerability. In actuality, vulnerability is about strength—it is about standing in front of another soul spiritually, psychologically, and emotionally naked. Some of these boys are suicidal, slowly descending into the deep dark abyss of depression, consumed by low self-esteem and repressed emotions.”
A major problem in the life of young boys is the absence of a father or a father figure, whether that is a grandfather or an uncle or an older person to serve as a guide, a mentor, to young boys. Hence this year’s theme, Building Self-esteem in Boys: Stand Up, Be Heard, Be Seen. Adolescent males are in such desperate need for guidance and role models that anyone and everyone should feel motivated to lend a hand no matter how small, to boys in need.
There’s a myth that men are the stronger of the sexes. This is not true. Females are the superior sex, both in the physical as well as the psychological and statistics bear that out.
In general, a birth can only end in two types of sex: male or female. If you had 100 pregnancies, half should end with a female birth and half with a male, with occasionally some fluctuation. 100 girls, 100 boys. This doesn’t happen.
There are always more boys born than girls. It’s more like 101 boys to every 100 girls. This could be chance, except it always happens. Everywhere, in every group of peoples, primitive or developed, in every part of the world. Studies of history show it’s always been so.
Here are some relevant stats on T&T:
Between 2012 and 2018, 125,849 babies were born. About 64,000 were boys. Around 61,000 were girls. There were in fact, 2,643 more boy children.
This means: For every 1,000 girls born, 1,080 boys were born.
Why? Well, we don’t really know. What we know is that male babies die more than female babies.
It happens with stillbirths. For every 1,000 female stillbirths, 1,250 males die.
It happens with newborns. In 2018, 103 newborn babies died, 60 male, 43 female.
And 172 infants (under one year of age) died in T&T. Ninety-four were male, 78 female.
Year after year, male babies die more than females.
If you look at the other end of the life cycle: life expectancy. For women in T&T, it’s 78 years. For our men, it’s 71.
What about the psychological? Women are traditionally three times more likely than men to experience mental health problems but mental health problems are rising faster in men than women.
Difficulty sleeping, alcohol and substance use, and suicides are increasing more rapidly for men than women.
In T&T in 2022, there were 142 suicides, with 123 males and 19 females. In 2023, the total number of suicides dropped to 104, but 81 of the deceased were men.
These days, four out of every five suicides in T&T are male.
It’s against this background that the boy child enters our world, biologically inferior and psychologically at increasing risk. He now faces life in an increasingly scary world. And while he may or may not be protected for the first nine or ten years of life by a loving mother, something seems to happen around this age which changes his life dramatically. Adolescence begins to kick in and he’s now perceived as a threat to the family and society and, without a father, left alone to fend for himself.
How does this play out? Without help he is lost. It is not easy being a boy today. Stand up and help our boy children.
