Boys come into the world with a broad range of emotional expression, and when that intensity makes adults uncomfortable, boys learn to shut parts of themselves down.
– Glora K. Vanderhorst
Teachers are exhausted. Parents are overwhelmed. And many boys, especially in early childhood, are increasingly described as “too much,” “difficult,” or “the problem,” rather than understood.
Clinical psychologist Gloria K. Vanderhorst reflects on decades of work with children, adults, couples, and families, with particular focus on boys’ emotional development. Her core argument is uncomfortable precisely because it’s so ordinary: we are often unintentionally shutting boys down emotionally—at home, in early learning environments, and later in relationships—because their emotional expression can be intense, and intensity makes adults recoil.
What she’s asking for isn’t permissiveness or ideology. It’s a more accurate reading of what boys are showing us, and a more grounded response from the adults around them.
“They are actually different.”
When asked why boys are so often the ones labeled as difficult, Vanderhorst doesn’t hedge. “They are actually different,” she says—specifically in the breadth and intensity of emotional expression.
She describes boys as coming into the world with a “broader range of emotional expression,” which includes both ends of the spectrum: more exuberance, louder excitement, more intensity on the positive side—and also deeper distress, louder protest, more visible sadness or agitation on the negative side.
That broader range, she suggests, is not commonly recognized by caregivers, including mothers who may not be prepared for it. When an infant’s emotional expression escalates—more noise, more intensity—many adults experience a natural stress response. Vanderhorst gives a familiar analogy: in a stadium, when someone next to you is screaming at full volume, you instinctively shift away. She argues that something similar can happen in caregiving: a mother may turn her head, lean back, or subtly withdraw—not out of lack of love, but out of reflex.
To an infant, however, reflex becomes feedback.
The moment boys learn: “Don’t.”
Vanderhorst distinguishes infancy and what comes next. She suggests that early patterns can “shut down” the extremes, but the larger damage begins when boys are on their feet—walking, expressing preferences, colliding with limits, falling, getting frustrated.
That’s when cultural rules arrive with force.
She describes a familiar set of messages: boys “shouldn’t cry,” boys shouldn’t play with certain toys, boys don’t belong in the kitchen corner or the doll corner. She points out the inconsistency in those assumptions using examples from the interview: many chefs are men; some boys will grow up to care for children; yet the play environments that build those capacities are often treated as off-limits for boys.
The pattern, in her telling, is less about any single prohibition and more about the cumulative effect: boys are repeatedly steered away from “the softer end” of emotion, and adults are especially uncomfortable when boys cry.
The result isn’t that boys don’t feel. It’s that they learn which feelings are welcome and which are punished.
A story that captures the pattern
One of the most arresting moments in the interview comes when Vanderhorst shares a personal anecdote: visiting friends whose three-year-old boy is playing with her three-year-old daughter. The children are fine until the girl takes the boy’s favorite toy, and he can’t retrieve it. He becomes distressed, whimpers, moves toward his parents, and begins to cry. His father responds by hitting him in the chest and telling him to stop crying.
Vanderhorst uses the story to make a broader point: “We treat boys that way,” she says, describing it as common for adults to tell boys to stop crying and for men to shame one another if they move toward tenderness.
Her emphasis is not on sensationalizing one parent’s behavior, but on what it represents: the quickness with which many adults try to eliminate boys’ distress rather than meet it.
The relationship paradox: we say we want feelings, then we recoil
The interviewer offers a rare, honest admission: many women say they want men to show more emotion, but when a man actually does, it can feel uncomfortable—almost alarming—because women have also been trained to expect stoicism.
Vanderhorst agrees and expands the point into adult partnership dynamics. She describes a common scene: a man comes home from work, visibly disappointed—didn’t get a promotion, didn’t make a sale, something went wrong. A partner asks what happened. He answers in one sentence: “It was a really bad day.” And the conversation stops there.
In her framing, the woman doesn’t pursue, doesn’t sit down and invite more detail, partly because the culture has taught her not to. She may feel “satisfied with the announcement,” and also reluctant to “dig in.” Vanderhorst calls this a “real disservice” to men and a contributing factor to men’s struggles in relationships.
When emotion has no relational pathway, it doesn’t vanish. It accumulates. Vanderhorst connects this buildup to what she calls “explosions” or to numbing through other means. Her larger claim is simple: if there’s no safe way to talk through hurt, disappointment, fear, or shame, those experiences stack up—and eventually surface in ways that harm the individual and the relationship.
“Boys don’t chat.”
A key theme in the interview is the changing structure of childhood. Vanderhorst argues that today’s children are “programmed to the hilt”—moved from organized activity to organized activity, and when they aren’t scheduled, they’re often on devices.
She contrasts this with her own childhood, where kids went outside, found others, and built social experiences through informal play and shared adventure. She suggests that this unstructured social life helped children learn how to entertain themselves, negotiate conflicts, and relate to each other naturally.
Technology, in her view, reduces the number of opportunities for real-time problem-solving with other kids. She flags this as “particularly difficult” for boys because, as she puts it, “Girls… tend to be able to have more social interaction and spend more time with each other chatting. Boys don’t chat.”
Instead, boys connect through physical proximity and action—“boys bump each other and tease each other”—which makes the loss of face-to-face, activity-based social time especially costly. Without those experiences, boys lose a major channel for social and emotional development.
Reframing “healthy” emotional development in boys
When asked what healthy emotional development looks like, Vanderhorst’s answer is not sentimental. It’s specific: access to tenderness, and permission to occupy the full emotional range without shame.
She notes a trend she views as healthy: more men staying home with children. In her telling, this benefits fathers and children—and she adds a provocative observation: fathers may have a larger tolerance for emotional intensity than mothers.
She illustrates this with the example of two boys wrestling in the living room. A mother’s tolerance may shorten quickly; a father’s may extend longer. The point is not that mothers are deficient. It’s that many women’s nervous systems and expectations have been shaped to interpret boys’ intensity as something that must be curtailed fast.
For Vanderhorst, the work begins with self-awareness: a mother noticing her own impulse to shut it down, and asking, Do I really need to shorten this right now? They’re intense—but are they hurting each other? Are they enjoying their physical energy? Can I tolerate it a little longer?
That question—Can I tolerate it?—is one of the article’s quiet through-lines.
Go toward boys emotionally, not away
Vanderhorst draws a sharp contrast between how many adults respond to girls’ distress versus boys’ distress.
If a girl comes home from school, goes to her room, and slams the door, a mother will often follow—knocking, sitting down, inviting disclosure: What happened? What’s wrong?
With boys, Vanderhorst argues, adults are more likely to wait. They let the boy sit longer. Sometimes they don’t go at all. They wait for him to come back into the shared space once he’s “handled it.”
She is direct about what this teaches: that boys’ emotions “aren’t that important,” or that they must take care of distress alone and only discuss it later—if at all. She also connects this pattern to how adult women often respond to men: letting them “go away, stew in their own juices,” and waiting for them to return rather than offering support and acknowledgement in the moment.
In her language, the essential need is connection: “They need support. They need acknowledgement. They need a connection.”
When men finally open up, the task is not to fix it
The interview also addresses what happens when a man begins therapy and starts accessing long-suppressed feelings—what the interviewer calls “Pandora’s box.” Vanderhorst doesn’t romanticize this phase. She acknowledges it can be scary, disorienting, and unfamiliar for partners.
Her guidance is almost deceptively simple: permit yourself not to know what to do.
If you can admit “I don’t know what’s happening,” she says, you can relax. And if you relax, you can do the one thing that matters most: be present.
She emphasizes that presence is different from problem-solving. Many women, she notes, are trained to manage, oversee, track, direct, and fix. But when a partner is learning to speak emotionally, “fix-it mode” can become another form of shutdown. Instead, she suggests becoming a receptacle: a “big bucket” that can hold what’s being shared without immediate defense, solution, apology, or counterargument.
It’s okay, she says, to be in limbo—to let things be unsorted for a while. The female partner’s work, in her framing, is to tolerate that limbo without rushing to control it.
What emotional disconnection does to family life
When boys grow into men without access to the full range of feelings, Vanderhorst argues, family functioning suffers. It becomes harder for men to engage in “family problem solving” because problem-solving in intimate life requires identifying internal states and communicating them in a way others can receive.
When feelings come out only at high volume, she says, they intimidate. When they don’t come out at all, they don’t disappear—they can harm the self. She mentions physical consequences in the interview—how holding everything in can “damage your physiology.”
But her focus remains relational: intimacy can be built, she says, but it must happen in “baby steps.” The goal is not instant transparency. The goal is gradually expanding what’s allowed—vulnerability included—without demanding a perfect process.
Five practices parents should begin now
Near the end of the conversation, Vanderhorst offers a set of practical starting points for parents raising boys. Reframed as editorial guidance, her recommendations include:
- Educate yourself intentionally.
Seek out literature about raising boys that helps you rethink old assumptions and gives you language for what you’re observing. - Update expectations about boys’ emotional capacity.
Treat the idea that boys have a broader emotional range as real, and let that change what you expect from boys—and from men in relationships. - Pay attention to your nonverbal reactions in infancy.
When an infant boy gets louder, noisier, or fussier, notice the reflex to withdraw or shut it down. Stay purposeful. Stay present. - Let boys cry—especially once they’re mobile.
If he falls, it hurts. Pick him up. Comfort him. Don’t make care contingent on the “right” explanation or performance. - Stay curious—and talk about it.
Curiosity is not passive. It means watching closely, asking different questions, and engaging other adults in conversations that expand boys’ emotional permission.
The deeper shift: from managing behavior to guiding emotion
The interview ends with a reframing that changes the temperature of the whole topic. Parenting boys, Vanderhorst suggests, isn’t primarily about managing behavior. It’s about guiding emotional development: allowing boys to feel what they feel, and giving them relational tools to move through it.
That shift matters because it removes the central misunderstanding.
Boys are not “less emotional.” They may be more intense, more expressive, and more vulnerable than we assume—especially early on. The cultural problem is not their feelings. The cultural problem is our reaction to them.
And reactions, unlike biology, can change.
