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A. I don't think there are any hard statistics on that, but my guess is there has been an increase. There has been an enormous increase in violent crime in this country in the past 30 years. Homicide rates have doubled and continue to soar. There is such a culture of violence now that surrounds young people that I would suspect violent rates in all areas would be going up.
Boys are constantly being subjected to so-called adventure films, which are really nonstop violence films with Arnold Schwarzenegger as the Terminator and Jean-Claude Van Damme doing blood sport, and slasher films in which people are dismembered, burned alive, skinned. By the time American kids are 18 years old they have watched 26,000 murders on television alone. Heavy-metal and rap lyrics often encourage rape and bigotry. It is contrary to common sense and research to think you can create such a culture and not have any effects.
Q. Recently, several members of the lacrosse team at St. John's University in New York were accused and then found innocent of sexually assaulting a woman. If, as they claim, the woman freely consented, why are their actions still so disturbing?
A. I find it disturbing that these young men want to do this kind of thing -- that they think it is fun to have group sex with an inebriated young woman. No one denies that she was drunk. The definition of rape in most states includes having sex with someone who is not in the position to give consent. But even if they thought she was somehow consenting to this, why do they think it is fun to slap her face with their penises?
Why do a bunch of boys in Glen Ridge, N.J., all of them on the high school football team, think it is fun to shove baseball bats and broom handles into the vagina of a retarded girl, a girl with an I.Q. of 64? This isn't sex. It is violence. The Glen Ridge case hasn't been decided yet, but it doesn't really matter what is ultimately decided. What bothers me is why they think that is fun.
Q. In your book, Boys Will Be Boys: Breaking the Link Between Masculinity and Violence, you argue that parents should be more forceful about insisting that society help rather than hinder them in the overall raising of children.
A. Both parents and educators can start to pressure their schools to introduce conflict-resolution programs so young people from the earliest age can begin to realize that there are alternatives to violent behavior. In these programs, children act out scenarios in which they learn to defuse confrontation; for example, boys might be taught how not using insulting language can help resolve a dispute over the ownership of a basketball. For many boys who go through these programs, violence goes from being a first reaction to a last resort. Parents should also urge schools to conduct child-rearing classes. While schools teach almost every complex skill that people need to know, we omit what is the most important one -- how to be a good parent.
Q. Won't child-rearing classes just encourage pregnancies?