ABSTRACT
I wondered about my neighbor’s struggles with masculinity one morning. I found his three-year-old son crying on the porch. It was about nine o’clock on a particularly cold October morning and I was walking past his house. There, curled up at the base of the front porch door was a little boy in his pajamas without shoes or socks, pounding on the (locked) front door. He was screaming, “ DADDY! DADDY!” When he saw me he cried, “ I want my daddy.” I walked up to him and attempted to calm him. Then I knocked on the door until his father arrived five minutes later. He had just stepped out of the shower, quickly sized up the situation, and said, “ I thought the house was too quiet-Billy, don’t go outside like this again.” That was it. He turned to me and made some comment about kids being unpredictable and then changed the conversation to the work he was getting ready to do. I reacted with surprise at his response. Had this happened to my child, I hope that I would have sensed his distress, picked him up and held him tightly until we both stopped crying, and asked him to tell me what he thought and felt.
