Good grades are not enough. Boys also need to learn responsibility, judgement and how to handle adult life.
Independence has to be practised. Boys need real responsibilities, practical skills and room to make mistakes.
Fathers have a central role. Sons need men who show them what mature manhood looks like and expect it from them.
Character must be formed early. Boys who know what they stand for are better prepared for pressure from friends, screens and wider culture.
A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyse a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.
Robert A Heinlein
Effective strategies for raising boys in Singapore must move beyond simplistic labels like “toxic masculinity” to address the deeper moral and emotional formation of young men. This grows ever more important as they face the pressures of school, screens, relationships, work, National Service, and adult responsibility.
In a timely commentary on the contradictory narratives shaping teenage boys today, writer June Yong identifies an urgent challenge in how young men mature. Besides the daily stresses of school and life, boys grow up receiving mixed messages about strength, emotion, authority, and true maturity.
What kind of man should emerge from a society built upon discipline, multiracial coexistence, service ,and a constant awareness that survival depends on citizens doing their part?
A boy may know bullying is wrong or that sexist language is ugly. He may sympathise with a friend who is being isolated unfairly. Yet, he often lacks the language, courage, or standing to act. He disapproves inwardly while learning to live alongside what he knows is corrupt.
This is more than a problem of online content or trendy buzzwords. It is a fundamental challenge of moral formation.
Into this role must step their father—the first, most accountable man in their lives—alongside other key male figures across our schools, sports fields, and places of worship.
What Drives the Challenge of Raising Boys in Singapore Today?
The challenge of raising boys in Singapore begins with intense achievement pressure. Boys learn from primary school onward that their worth is measured by performance.
This might mean examination scores, school placement, CCA achievement, leadership appointments, and later university or career prospects. They become excellent at meeting externally defined benchmarks. However, what happens when adulthood and its complete lack of any marking scheme comes along?
At that point, a young man must decide whom to trust, how to use money, speak under pressure, handle conflict, and care for family. He will make his share of bad decisions and must learn how to bear their consequences. All these are capacities that are not automatically produced by academic success.
Furthermore, over-management weakens independence. A boy whose transport, schedule, meals, administrative tasks, and social conflicts are continually handled by adults may be secure, but he is not necessarily being prepared.
This means he may come of age able to write an excellent essay yet remain unable to cook a meal, resolve a disagreement, manage a budget, plan his own day, or look after someone else.
Online life can teach about those things, but it also offers distraction without effort, status without accomplishment, sexual content without responsibility, and belonging without obligation.
Fathers are best placed to ensure their sons’ screen time serves real life. They must anchor screen use around stronger relationships with friends and family, physical training, and the fulfillment of real-world duties.
What Do Singapore’s Boys Really Need Beyond Cultural Buzzwords?
To move past reductive debates about “toxic masculinity” when raising boys in Singapore, fathers must anchor their instruction in foundational principles long before their sons step into society as adults:
Self-command: The difference between a boy and a man is maturity. A man is not one who never feels anger, fear, desire, or grief. He is one who does not surrender the steering wheel to them. His emotions are real, but they are ordered towards duty and action.
Responsibility: A man takes ownership of what is his to carry: his word, his work, his money, his body, his commitments, and the effects of his choices upon others. He does not resort to excuses, blame, or disappearance.
Courage: Doing what is right regardless of fear, embarrassment, or social cost. It can mean confronting a bully, refusing to join in inappropriate laughter at others’ expense, or even just admitting you were wrong.
Competence: Boys need to become able to do things: cook, clean, navigate, repair, budget, train, speak clearly, manage time, make decisions, and care for others. Competence builds legitimate confidence, and beats bravado any day of the week.
Respect and protection toward women: A man does not treat women as trophies, threats, servants, or abstractions. He speaks without contempt. He accepts rejection without revenge. He uses strength to create safety, not fear, thus refusing to exploit vulnerability. He is ready to bear the cost needed to keep those in his care safe.
Service: Boys learn here that strength exists for something beyond the self: family, friends, neighbours, team, nation, and those who cannot repay them.
Repentance and reconstruction: Every man fails. The dividing line is whether he turns failure into an identity, an excuse or a lesson. Repentance means truthfully naming the damage. Reconstruction means building better habits, restoring trust where possible, and becoming more reliable than before.
How Should Fathers Prepare Sons Across Key Developmental Stages?
A father should prepare his son deliberately, long before enlistment:
Before O-Levels, a boy should be learning basic discipline: sleep properly, train his body, keep commitments, regulate screen use, do household work and face small discomforts. He should know that study matters, but that even the best grades do not exempt him from character.
After O-Levels, he should be given greater room to act—this is where working a temporary job, managing a modest budget, and planning travel or logistics comes in. Give him opportunities and guide him through them; let him experience the dignity of earning, serving, and being accountable to people who are not his parents.
Through JC, polytechnic or ITE, the task is not merely to secure the next credential but to develop judgement. He should learn to choose friends carefully, manage freedom, handle attraction and rejection honourably, discern online rubbish, and become a steady presence in a group. This is also the time to learn practical competence: first aid, cooking, finances, fitness, maintenance, and communication.
How Does National Service Test Character Formation in Young Men?
National Service (NS) does not make men; it reveals them. Prepare him to arrive ready to learn.
Teach him to obey lawful authority without grovelling, to ask sensible questions, to look after his buddy, to endure inconvenience, to care for his gear, and to keep his word. The recruit who can already govern himself can actually benefit from military discipline instead of merely being shocked by it.
Young men will be tested by pressure, dependence upon others, and situations that expose weaknesses comfort can conceal—forcing them to grow and learn alongside their peers.
While NS may deepen discipline, courage, competence and solidarity, it cannot fully supply the moral foundations that should have been laid at home: respect for women, truthfulness, self-command, responsibility, service, and the capacity to rebuild after failure.
We seek not to produce simple aggression or compliance, but uprightness. Such a man is capable, restrained, courageous, useful, and ready to bear responsibility—when his family, community or nation needs him.
We have only begun to cover the principles for raising boys in Singapore. Future articles will examine the narratives competing for boys’ loyalty, the practical methods by which fathers form sons, preparation for National Service, and the habits through which boys become dependable men.
True manhood is found in ordinary faithfulness and stewardship, and that is the deeper answer to boys as well. They need someone who can see a problem, help them overcome it, and call them to action.
They need principles, examples… and a leader who says plainly: “Stand up, do your duty, and live out your role.”
