The Boys We Raise Become the Men We Fear

The most chilling thing about The Polygamist wasn’t Jonasi’s death. It was what he left behind.

Judging by the conversations online, most people finished The Polygamist thinking about Jonasi Gomora. I finished it thinking about his son.

Like most people, I watched the fallout unfold. I followed the lies, met the wives and watched the double lives play out. By the time the final episode arrived, there was no shortage of opinions about who was right, who was wrong and who deserved what. Yet when the credits rolled, I could not stop thinking about Menzi.

Throughout the series, Jonasi’s disappointment in his son is difficult to miss. He seems unable to recognise much value in the qualities that make Menzi different from him. His sensitivity, emotional awareness and reluctance to lead with aggression are treated as shortcomings rather than strengths. Jonasi is not simply trying to raise his son; he is trying to reshape him into a version of masculinity he recognises and understands.

It is a familiar dynamic, not because most fathers are polygamists, but because many boys grow up receiving some version of that same message. They are told to toughen up, stop crying, man up, “be a man”, and get on with it. The words vary from family to family, but the lesson is often the same. Watching Menzi’s relationship with his father unfold, I found myself increasingly aware that many of the qualities Jonasi seemed determined to remove were not weaknesses at all. They were treated as obstacles to becoming a man, even though they may have been some of the very qualities worth protecting.

By the end of the series, there is a suggestion that Jonasi may finally have succeeded in reshaping him. Whether that interpretation is fair is open to debate, but what is harder to dismiss is the unease many viewers seemed to feel watching it unfold. Jonasi spends much of the series frustrated that his son is not enough like him. By the end, there is a lingering sense that he may finally have got his wish, and I suspect that possibility is what made the ending so unsettling.

What stayed with me was the possibility that some of the qualities Jonasi criticised were precisely the qualities worth protecting. Watching him repeatedly push against those parts of his son, I found myself wondering how often boys are taught to abandon parts of themselves in pursuit of a version of masculinity that is narrower than the one they started with. I was reminded of something bell hooks writes in The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love about the “mask of patriarchal masculinity”. It is an image that has stayed with me because a mask does not change who a person is; it conceals who they have always been. Watching Menzi, I couldn’t help wondering whether I was witnessing a boy becoming a man, or a boy slowly learning which parts of himself he was no longer allowed to show. That thought stayed with me because it extends far beyond a television drama.

In recent years, there has been growing concern about boys and young men. Depending on who is speaking, the concern might be loneliness, violence, online radicalisation, mental health, misogyny or social disengagement. The proposed causes and solutions vary wildly, but beneath many of those conversations sits a question that feels both simple and surprisingly difficult to answer: what exactly are we asking boys to become? Conversations about masculinity are never only about men. They also shape what boys learn to expect from women, how they come to understand relationships and what they believe they are entitled to. A boy learning what it means to be a man is, consciously or otherwise, also learning what it means to be a woman. Every lesson about masculinity quietly becomes a lesson about femininity too, because boys don’t learn what men are in isolation. They also learn what women are for at the same time.

What exactly are we teaching boys about what it means to be a man? I keep coming back to that question because so many of the messages they receive feel confused. We encourage strength, but are often far less clear about what strength actually looks like. Too often it becomes associated with emotional restraint, certainty or dominance, while empathy, vulnerability and gentleness are treated as qualities to outgrow. Somewhere along the way, becoming a man can start to feel less like growing into yourself and more like learning which parts of yourself need to disappear.

I keep coming back to the word “raise”. It reminds us that boys are rarely shaped by one person or one conversation. Raising is not only what we deliberately teach our children. It is also what we model, what we reward, what we excuse and what we leave unchallenged. Boys are shaped by the words they hear, but also by the relationships they witness, the behaviours they see repeated and the silences that tell them something is simply the way things are.

Working alongside survivors has made me think differently about the question of fathers. One of the conversations I return to most often is what it means to protect your children. Anyone who has spent time listening to survivors understands how painfully complex those decisions can be. Love, fear, finances, faith, family, safety and hope rarely fit into neat categories, and it serves nobody to pretend otherwise. Yet I do sometimes wonder whether we have become so accustomed to asking whether children need their fathers that we spend less time asking what kind of fathers they need. Presence matters, but so does example, because children are shaped not only by who is there, but by what they see, hear and come to accept as normal.

That is why the ending of The Polygamist has stayed with me. Jonasi dies, but the story refuses to end with him. Instead, it quietly shifts our attention to the young man who has spent years watching, listening and learning. We do not know whether the softness Jonasi spent so long trying to remove has disappeared or simply gone into hiding beneath the mask he spent years teaching him to wear. By the end of the series, Jonasi’s story was complete. Menzi’s was only just beginning.

Filed under: Unlearning Myths

A space for questioning what we think we know. Challenging assumptions, examining stereotypes, and exploring the stories we accept as truth. From culture and identity to politics, power and everyday life, these reflections explore what happens when we look beyond the narratives we’ve been taught to believe.