From the Guidelines
Young teenage boys often don't share their feelings with their mothers due to a combination of developmental, social, and psychological factors, and parents should encourage them to keep in touch with their peers and communicate with them about their feelings and common problems they face, as this may lead to appropriate problem-solving 1. As boys enter adolescence, they typically begin seeking independence and forming their own identities separate from their parents. This natural developmental stage coincides with increased peer influence and societal expectations about masculinity that may discourage emotional expression. Many teenage boys feel pressure to appear strong and self-reliant, viewing vulnerability as weakness. Some key factors to consider include:
- Developmental factors: Boys entering adolescence seek independence and form their own identities separate from their parents.
- Social factors: Increased peer influence and societal expectations about masculinity may discourage emotional expression.
- Psychological factors: Hormonal changes during puberty can intensify emotions while making them more difficult to process and articulate. Parents can help by:
- Creating non-judgmental spaces for communication
- Respecting privacy
- Engaging in shared activities
- Modeling emotional expression
- Remaining patient and available when their sons are ready to talk, and also by supporting their teenagers’ health and ensuring they have private, confidential time during their health care encounters 1.
From the Research
Emotion Regulation and Parent-Teen Relationships
- The study 2 found that mothers' emotion dysregulation has a significant impact on fathers' and adolescents' emotion dysregulation over time, which can lead to internalizing problems in adolescents.
- Another study 3 investigated the predictive utility of interparental and parent-teen relationships during adolescence for predicting youths' development of intra- and interpersonal emotion regulation in young adulthood.
- The results of 3 suggest that qualities of interparental relationships in early adolescence and behaviors in interparental and parent-teen relationships in late adolescence are significant predictors of young adult interpersonal emotion regulation.
Barriers to Sharing Feelings
- There is no direct evidence from the provided studies to explain why young teenager boys do not share their feelings with their mothers.
- However, the study 2 found that adolescents' emotion dysregulation is related to their subsequent internalizing problems, which may indicate that teenagers, including boys, may struggle to express their emotions due to difficulties in regulating them.
- The study 3 also found that father-reported relationship predictors during late adolescence had unexpected relations with later intrapersonal emotion regulation, which may suggest that the relationship between parents and teenagers plays a role in the development of emotion regulation skills.
Treatment of Anxiety and Depression
- The studies 4, 5, and 6 focus on the treatment of anxiety and depression disorders, but do not provide direct insights into why young teenager boys do not share their feelings with their mothers.
- However, these studies suggest that psychotherapy and pharmacotherapy can be effective in treating depressive and anxiety disorders, and that combined treatment may be more effective than monotherapy 6.