ABSTRACT
This chapter considers how discourses on parenting and on male sexuality contribute to links between violence and masculinity by positioning boys to reject their mothers, to romanticise their fathers, and to fear emotional intimacy. The home becomes a site within which boys have the opportunity to practise gender. For many feminist women, the question of how to raise sons, and how to approach child-raising so that boys and men do not take up patriarchal and distanced relationships from women, has been exceedingly challenging. To grow into a healthy man, a boy must develop a close bond with his mother, so he can learn about his own humanity; and then he must be taken by his father to discover what it means to be a man. The danger of the Manhood-style discourses is the image of male sexuality that they implicitly endorse and value. The intensely sexual presence of masculinity, femininity and heterosexuality in the school provide for uncomfortable presences.
