Not having a father early on, I've spent much of my life thinking about conventional notions of manhood and what it means to fit into that. I would imagine that all men think about this at some stage in their lives. For me it started young when I didn't feel comfortable joining other boys in the teasing of a socially awkward or unpopular classmate. When I returned to the United States at the age of 9 from living abroad in Hong Kong, the ire of the masses briefly turned on me when the bigger, “cooler” American kids teased me for my hair, my clothes, or just simply being Asian. Those tough times galvanized me into someone who figured out how to stand his ground—to learn that “might is right” on the playground (at least back in the 1970s); and when you smack a bully in the jaw, they stop bothering you.

I also learned that boys and girls were supposed to hate one another. “Girls germs no returns!” was a constant refrain among my new elementary school friends. “Throwing like a girl” was a new type of insult, unfamiliar to me as there was no equivalent phrase in Hong Kong. I liked playing with the girls at recess on occasion. They adopted me into their circle, and I never once heard a racist slur hurled at me from any of them. I liked being around their noncombative play style, until I was made to feel wrong for being there.

As my body grew tall and strong, eventually I learned that the formula for high school popularity was to simply play the right sports, drive a cool car, and not make too many mistakes with girls, and I would grow to be a popular scholar athlete who became a homecoming prince and student body president. The same year that my football team was going to state, I recall running off the field from finishing practice, pads, cleats, helmet and all, right into a waiting chess club match. I joined the chess club just that year as a sort of last‐minute act of subversion to celebrate geek power. Those early tough times being picked on in elementary school taught me the pain of being an “outsider” and “less than.” I appreciated the journey that I had endured and wanted others to know that they, too, can rise up. It's all in how you work the system; it's just a game that you play.

In college, I pledged a fraternity. Instant friends. They seemed like good guys, but I was encouraged to hate the guys next door and fight the ones across the street, who seemed pretty much just like us but with their hair parted on the other side. They were to be competed against…who had the best party…who drank the most…who got the most girls…who raged the hardest.

The pretty sorority women were sort of conquests. I had an amazing date with one of most popular upperclassman women…a coming of age moment worthy of John Hughes and Wilt Stillman…only to have it cheapened by the prying and incessant questions of other guys who wanted to know every private detail…women were not our partners, they were game, “the other side.” Enough of my female friends shared stories of misbehavior that I cofounded a group on campus called SASA, or Students Against Sexual Assault. With the full cooperation of the college, the educational programs we devised gave us a poignant and clear window into the harsh realities many young women face the moment they step foot onto a college campus.

Upon graduating and coming of age in the early 1990s, young men were often given mixed messages—imagery of male heroes in popular culture were still either Rambo or Richard Gere from Pretty Woman—you should either be muscular or rich. And before you knew it, you entered the workforce in earnest and found yourself amid “brogrammers” and alpha geeks.

Now with an 8‐year‐old boy of my own, I want to feel like we live in much more evolved times. I feel like we're almost there, but not quite. My son's classroom in an in‐city Seattle neighborhood is 50 percent nonwhite, many of whom are of mixed heritage. When I ask my son to describe a new friend, he does not lead with, “He is African American…” but, rather, “He loves Minecraft as much as me!” Boys and girls routinely play together with no hesitation. Never once have I heard “girls germs no returns!” on his playground. When I ask him who at his school is best in sports or math, the answers are Nora, Leah, and Beckett. Requests are frequent and common for cross‐gender playdates. When girls and boys play together, they do so collaboratively and with equal sharing of roles heroic or needing adventurous assist. When I asked my son who his best friend was, he said, “Nora.” And encouragingly, new science validates that we're on the right path. A recent Arizona State University study found that children who are encouraged to play with friends of the opposite sex developed much better problem solving and communication.

And while I know that as my son grows this might change, I also know that my wife and I have a shot at laying a better foundation. Like young bones and muscles that become stronger when training begins early, gender attitudes can be similarly strengthened at a young age. It is precisely this time when we have a shot at raising a better generation of men. To the best of my ability, we have tried to do the following.

Show That Mom Is Incredible and Strong

Dads, for many of us it goes without saying that we should all break from what we grew up with and get our domestic game on. This is really many things that include not splitting housework along traditional gender lines, as well as division of decision making. If the boy sees only mom cooking and doing laundry while dad chops wood and tunes the car, narrower gender definitions become calcified in the child's mind. And there is much we can do daily to reinforce that:

• Mom is equal. Kids overhear a lot and understand much. I was struck by one conversation with my son where he picked up on that I somehow was often the one with final signoff on major purchase decisions. This diminished the sense of equality between us in my son's eyes and caused me to make sure that I consulted my wife on major financial decisions for her approval from that point forward. Yes, I admit that I made a bit of a show of it at first in front of my son, but it was important to demonstrate this overtly.
• Mom can have a career, too (if she wants). This can actually benefit your children down the line. In an article from Oxford University Press's Quarterly Journal of Economics titled “Mothers and Sons: Preference Formation and Female Labor Force Dynamics,”¹ a growing presence of a new type of man is cited. The article presents evidence, accumulated over the years, that shows a powerful correlation between mothers who work and their sons; wives of men whose mothers worked are themselves significantly more likely to work and be supported in their careers. It also found that sons of women who work for any amount of time before age 14 spend more time on housework and child care as adults.² This is what I call a high‐leverage situation that we harness for continual improvement for future generations. So let's also foster mom's career, for both its immediate benefits and for its value for future generations.

Communicate Differently at Home

What if we applied the knowledge from “Listen Louder” to practice at home? What if cross‐gender‐style verbal communication was not just limited to the men raised by single mothers? We know that men and women have different speaking styles. If we continue to maintain the male style as the norm even at home, we are then committing to continue penalizing women. If men put to practice the concepts of active and empathetic listening, cooperative dialogue, catching bids and “turning toward” in the home sphere, sons and daughters would have adequate modeling for the future, and we might begin to reset the norm.

In Man Made Language, Australian feminist scholar Dale Spender speaks of how in patriarchal societies men control language to sustain norms in their favor regardless of context: “Language helps form the limits of our reality. It is our means of ordering, classifying and manipulating the world.”³

And if men are responsible for an unfair system where men are the norm and women are “less than,” then Spender, like me, objects to women having to do all the changing. If men currently own the right of way, men must also own its dismantling. As I've argued, women shouldn't be doing all the changing. Let's teach our sons how to speak with inclusion and empathetically so that they in turn value it when others do the same. Again, men must be the change. Let's show our sons how to be great listeners at home as well as the office.

Break Out of the Man Box and Call Out Bro Behavior

We need to teach our boys to speak up when others are wrong. When VC Justin Caldbeck was cited for bad behavior by Niniane Wang, much was discovered about others around him who were willing to look the other way. And while I value loyalty and friendship as much as most, we need to teach our boys to understand the threshold past in which the greater good is compromised. This is a difficult problem that begins with young men's inherent longing to “stay in the box.” In a landmark 2017 international study called “The Man Box,” researchers Brian Heilman, Gary Barker, and Alexander Harrison define the Man Box as a set of beliefs that place pressure on men to conform to a standard and behave in a certain way while protecting normative male behaviors.⁴ Generalized across several cultures (United States, United Kingdom, and Mexico) by a study of 1,000 young men between the ages of 18 and 30, these beliefs are things like self‐sufficiency, acting tough, sexual aggressiveness, physical prowess, and the use of physical force as a way to resolve conflict. What is accepted behavior for young men is collectively defined by those in the box. To be a man is to always remain in this box. Going outside the box is stressful and reviled. Protect the box at all costs.

But more tellingly, life in the Man Box can often breed “negative repercussions for young men themselves, for young women, and for others in their lives…. In the United States and U.K., men in the Man Box are six times more likely to report perpetrating sexual harassment.”

In fact, three of the seven pillars of the Man Box are about aggression and control, sexual dominance, and factors accretive to aggression towards women.

But there is hope. Not every young man needs to be trapped inside. There are those emergent young men observed in the study who are “outside the Man Box,” and have broken out to embrace more positive, equitable ideas and attitudes about how “real men” should behave, demonstrating that it is possible to reject these rigid ideas about manhood. They openly decry sexism. They speak out against inequality. They call bullsh*t on harassment. But it is not easy for them. These same young men are much more likely to report exclusion, self doubt, and social isolation. Thus, Heilman, Barker, and Harrison call on all of us:

All of us, as young men and young women, parents, educators, the media, teachers, romantic partners, and members of society, need to be part of the process of reinforcing positive, equitable, unrestrictive ideas of manhood—in other words, of breaking the Man Box. It is time for all of us to work to break this destructive cycle and to break the Man Box.

And in the same way that I support more research on non traditional leadership styles, I would love to see more research on practical strategies for how we cultivate and support more “out of Man Box” culture in our society.

Show Him That Things That Are Traditionally “Feminine” Are Not “Less Than,” or Off‐Limits

When my son was 5, he became entranced with a particular box in the garage of our house. It was not a box of my old robot action figures nor old comic books. It was a box from my wife's own childhood, containing a vast array of Barbies, troll dolls, and at least one Donny and Marie Osmond pair. As my wife gingerly laid out the very pink contents of the box on the living room floor, we were acutely aware of our own unspoken biases and apprehensions. But she also committed to the notion that he should never be told that there is anything wrong or “less than” about any of his mother's old toys. She wanted him to normalize to many of the accoutrements of 1970s' girl play, to pretend bake with the toy oven, to style Mr. Troll's hair, and (my personal favorite), to make Donnie Osmond wear a decidedly more fierce outfit. In doing so, we intended to show him that “girl activities” were never off‐limits or, worse, “less than” for a boy.

As it turns out, mixing it up is a good idea. In fact, don't even begin to ascribe gender to toys at all. Washington and Lee University professor of psychology Megan Fulcher says,

“Play with masculine toys is associated with large motor development and spatial skills and play with feminine toys is associated with fine motor development, language development and social skills. Children may then extend this perspective from toys and clothes into future roles, occupations, and characteristics.”

It would seem that in addition to intrinsic language differences that begin to bifurcate girls and boys in early development as cited earlier by Carol Gilligan, we may be further segregating girls and boys into gender stereotypical job occupations by simply making toys gender specific. In 2008, Fulcher's research also found that children with gender‐stereotyped decorations in their bedrooms held more stereotypical attitudes towards boys and girls. Let's put an end to gender barriers in play. Let him play with “girl toys.” And also let sis play with “boy” ones.⁵

Show Him New Heroes, Stories That Include Women and Girls

I believe it is time our sons start reading and seeing more media with female and non white heroes. We need a preponderance of films, books, and especially video games that pass the Bechdel‐Wallace test, where female characters carry forth the narrative without the need for men or talking about men. Let's show our sons that women are just as capable as leaders, heads of states, CEOs, and superheroes.

And I can offer a great economic argument. In one of the most encouraging studies in recent years commissioned by a talent agency, CAA, it was found that there is a much stronger correlation than previously believed between diverse casting and box office success at the highest levels. As recently as 2016, the Oscars and by extension all of Hollywood was considered laggards on gender equality and diversity. For decades films with women and blacks as leads were considered “risky” and not worthy of higher‐tier budgets. But this highly data‐driven CAA study showed that in fact, at every budget level, a film with a cast that is at least 30 percent nonwhite—that was CAA's definition of a “truly diverse” film—outperforms a release that is not diverse in opening weekend box office. And as a matter of fact, the very best‐performing movie of the films evaluated, which had an approximately 40 percent diverse cast and a 38 percent diverse audience, was Star Wars: The Force Awakens, starring a strong female Daisy Ridley as the central protagonist. And on track to be one of the highest‐grossing films of 2017, Wonder Woman has already broken several records including best second weekend box office of any modern superhero movie. A female lead is now the leading box office superhero movie. Let's make more.

We have before us a captive audience in the current generation of boys. For the first time, parents of girls and boys are more engaged than ever. We care deeply that the world becomes better for them than it was for us. Women's issues are not just front and center in media but civic demonstrations and public marches are at historic highs. If we take this opportunity to show that women are incredible, that they are to be valued as equals not conquered, we may have a shot. If we teach our boys to break out of the box, listen better to women, and create more expansive definitions of leadership that recognize women's unique qualities, then we may have a shot. If we never use the phrase “you throw like a girl” as an insult, but instead as a compliment, then we may have a shot. And finally, if we celebrate women's long‐deserved status of being capable badass Jedis and world saving superheroes, then yes indeed, I become hopeful that we have a fantastic shot at the next generation being truly “better together.”

Straight Talk: “I believe it to be true that you find your family at work. Whatever dynamics you experienced growing up, you will bring into the work place so it behooves everyone in the work place, particularly women, to have done their psychological work so that nobody else is able to take advantage of them in ways they aren't aware of. Often women learn to diminish themselves if they grow up in a family where they were diminished and so it's hard to step out beyond one's comfort zone if they didn't do it in the family.”