There’s lots of talk these days about the “masculinity crisis” and building boys into men. From best-selling writer Jordan Peterson to David Goggins and his motivational videos to Brett and Kate McKay’s website, The Art of Manliness, our culture annually produces countless words of encouragement and often worthwhile advice regarding the formation of men.
In seeking out some insights on this male metamorphosis, however, I decided to look closer to home for my maharishi of manhood, someone who hadn’t profited by a bestseller or attracted millions of online followers, someone familiar to me whose adult sons were living proof that their parents, particularly their father, had done something right and well.
One man sprang instantly to mind.
Men at Work
“Faith can be the most important thing for boys, and a work ethic, learning how to work and being part of something, responsible for something,” my longtime physician and friend Dr. Tom Rennard told me.
Rennard, 61, has been married to Jeanne for 34 years, a marriage that produced four boys and two girls. The girls are still in school, but the boys have become men, professionals, married, and fathers themselves. And all of them learned the value of work early on.
“They have to learn how to work,” Rennard said. “And I don’t think that comes at age 22 or even when you’re ready to graduate from high school. It really starts at eight, nine, 10, or even sooner. Jeanne and I would always paint rooms in our house, and the five-year-old wanted to help. I learned to get a plastic plate, put a little paint on it, give them a small sponge brush, and give them a little space on the wall to paint. For them, it was the most thrilling thing in the world. They’d drip a little bit here and there, but then I’d come by and just zip right over it. So they were a part of it.”
As they grew into adolescence, the boys began helping him, particularly with the yard work, sometimes for pay, sometimes not.
“As a young man, you need to come alongside other men, whether it be your father or other people,” he said.
Then the two older boys, Will and Nathan, decided to start a lawn mowing business, which they passed along to their younger brothers. They soon expanded, buying a used Toro mower, with Dad chipping in for a trailer to haul their equipment. This enterprise filled their summer days and provided an education in the costs and demands of operating a business.
“They learned to work, and to make money and save money,” Rennard said.
The Half-and-Half Plan
The money all four boys saved helped pay for college.
Before Rennard himself had set off for college, his father, a Detroit executive at the Ford Motor Company, explained to him that he could go anywhere he chose for his higher education but that he’d be footing half the bill. Consequently, Rennard worked during his years at Stanford, an expensive university even then.
“I did what they called hashing, which was setting up and cleaning up afterwards at a dining club at Stanford,” he said. “And I worked as an RA and worked summers at other jobs, and earned enough money to pay my half.”
Rennard followed suit with his sons.
“My wife didn’t agree with this,” Rennard said, “but I told my boys, ‘You can go where you want, but you have to pay half.’” Although they might have preferred Duke University, where their father had interned and performed his residency, they instead chose less expensive options such as North Carolina State and Clemson.
“So they all worked and paid their half,” he said. “They came out with money saved in the end.”
Connect
When his oldest boys were toddlers, Rennard took up playing golf.
“But I realized that spending five hours on the golf course away from my family wasn’t smart, and training them to love golf wasn’t smart, because then they’d be spending five hours playing golf,” Rennard said. “So we did vacations together, we hiked and did sports together. Spending time with them was a joy, a priority.”
Even today, although the boys are now grown, they love getting together and “are incredibly close.”
Rennard also credits his wife, Jeanne, her years spent as a homeschooling mom, and their marriage as vital to his sons’ development.
“It’s about giving to others, and that’s much of what makes Jeanne who she is,” he said. “It comes from her mother and from her faith. We’re supposed to pour into others, not into ourselves. A successful marriage is the most important thing in your kids’ development.”
We often hear that idea expressed, but Rennard goes a step beyond and notes the importance of the family’s functioning together as a unit.
“I think one-on-one time with parents is incredibly valuable, but I also think that time spent as a group and realizing these relationships is also important,” he said. “We want children to see the value of having children, of finding something attractive in their childhood and upbringing and journey.”
Wisdom Talks
When Rennard coached the Asheville Trailblazers, a homeschool basketball team for which all his sons played, as did one of mine, he often brought up current events with the team as he drove them to out-of-town games. Sometimes these conversations turned to more personal subjects, such as what makes for a good marriage and what qualities a man should look for in a wife. The boys riding in Rennard’s van learned more than just basketball.
Will, an engineer and Rennard’s oldest son, recently married into a family with eight brothers.
“The dad still gets his sons together three or four times a year for what he calls porch talks, or wisdom talks,” Rennard said. “They talk about some topic—it might be money, it might be kids or discipline or faith or sex. It’s basically a time of sharing things that men should think about and focus on.”
Although Rennard hasn’t replicated these wisdom talks with his own sons, he said he understands and admires the motivation behind them.
“We need to be more intentional about our lives, what’s working, what’s not working, what’s important in the mentoring role and what’s not,” he said.
It’s Not Over When They Leave Home
Rennard addressed a belief common in today’s culture, that the goal is “to get them to 18, to launch them, and then say, ‘I’m done parenting.’”
He suggests that we instead delay that release date until around the age of 25, when our sons are more fully men, while continuing to ask ourselves questions about them: “Have they finished their education? Do they have a job? Are they able to enter into a relationship with someone of the opposite sex, and care for and support a family?”
He is also leery about some goals encouraged by our society.
“What do I want for them at age 25?” he said. “I would say that they’re living life as I hoped for them—not necessarily as a doctor or a high-powered investment banker doing all those things that make for great money and success, all that eye candy that you get with a bigger house, bigger car, fancier wife. Do those things satisfy? We all know they don’t.”
To do worthwhile work, to be worthy of marriage, to have the wherewithal to raise and support a family, to be a good father, to live by a faith—these, for Rennard, are the proper marks of manhood, the goals for any parent raising sons.
