Parent Partnerships 

Masculinity — Surplus Value, Choose Hard, Moral Wisdom

ISSUE 10 | TERM 2 | 2026

By Dr Justin Coulson

Long before the gender police arrive – long before other boys start telling a boy what it means to be a man – we are already shaping the expectations we – and our sons and daughters have – about what it is to be male.

It starts here at this age, while your child is still not even at school.

There’s a cultural script about masculinity that we hand to our kids early. Sometimes it comes from peers. Sometimes it comes from well-meaning family members. “Boys don’t cry.” “Toughen up.” “Stop being so sensitive.” The message, delivered in a hundred small moments, is that strength means hardness. It tells our children that being a boy means not feeling too much, not needing too much, not showing too much.

I’d like to offer a different script.

In my new book, Boys: Building Strong Young Men From the Inside Out, I write about three things that separate boys who grow into healthy men from those who don’t. And what strikes me, every time I look at the research, is how early it all begins. The seeds of healthy masculinity are planted long before adolescence. They’re planted now – in the sandpit, at the lunch table, in the moment your boy decides whether to share or to grab.

The first is what I call the surplus value mindset. A healthy man is someone who helps the people around him feel safer and stronger. He shows up as a bonus. He adds to the room rather than taking from it. At four and five years old, that looks like offering the truck to the kid who doesn’t have one. It looks like noticing when a friend is upset and moving toward them rather than away. It looks like leaving a situation better than he found it. These small things are the foundation of everything.

The second is learning to walk the harder path. Everything in modern childhood nudges boys toward the easy option; the screen, the tantrum that gets the result, the path of least resistance. But boys who learn early that frustration is survivable – that they can wait, share, lose a game, and still be okay – develop something that can’t be downloaded or shortcut. They develop character. Teach boys that the hard feeling passes. Even at early ages, they should begin to understand that doing the right thing when it’s uncomfortable is exactly what strong people do.

The third is moral courage — in its earliest, simplest form. This is the boy who tells the truth about who broke the toy, who says sorry and actually means it, or who notices the child sitting alone at morning tea and goes to sit with them, even when his friends are playing somewhere else. These moments feel small. They are not small. They practice for a lifetime of choosing what’s right over what’s easy.

The reality is that these are the fundamentals of good character, whether your child is a boy or a girl. But we need to encourage these behaviours more in our boys because, well… we don’t see them as much in our boys. And when we do, we see the very best that boys can be. This is good for the boys, and it’s good for the girls.

None of this requires pressure. None of it requires a boy to grow up before he’s ready. In fact, the greatest gift you can give him right now is exactly the opposite – the freedom to be fully, joyfully, exuberantly a little boy, while the adults around him quietly model what a good man looks like.

Let him be loud and physical and messy and curious. Let him feel his feelings without shame. Let him practise kindness in small, clumsy, imperfect ways.

And when he shares without being asked? Name it. “That was kind.” When he tells the truth even though it was hard? Name it. “That took courage.” When he notices someone else’s need before his own? Name it. “That’s what strong people do.”

You are not waiting for your son to grow up. You are growing him. Right now. In this place.

And the man he becomes starts with what he learns here.