We know how powerful our mother was when we were little, but is our wife that powerful to us now? Must we relive our great deed of escape from Mama with every other woman in our life?

We long for our father. We wear his clothes, and actually try to fill his shoes. . . . We hang on to him, begging him to teach ushow to do whatever is masculine, to throw balls or be in the woods or go see where he works. . . . We want our fathers to protect us from coming too completely under the control of our mothers. . . . We want to be seen with Dad, hanging out with men and doing men things.

Mothers who are strong people, who can pursue a life of their own when it is time to let their children go, empower their childrenof either gender to feel free and whole. But weak women, women who feel and act like victims of something or other, may make their children feel responsible for taking care of them, and they can carry their children down with them.

It's not that we have too much mother, but too little father. We can't forgive our mothers for taking the place of our fathers until we are ready to see that the point of a man's life is to be a father and a mentor, and we can't do that because we don't know how we would be a father or a mentor when we never had one.

Parents offer an open womb. More than anyone else in your life, mothers, and sometimes fathers, can kiss it, and make it well whentheir grown children need to regress and repair. More than anyone else in your life, mothers, and sometimes fathers, can catch you when you start to fall. When you are in disgrace, defeat, and despair, home may be the safest place to hide.

At the heart of male bonding is this experience of boys in early puberty: they know they must break free from their mothers and the civilized world of women, but they are not ready yet for the world of men, so they are only at home with other boys, equally outcast, equally frightened, and equally involved in posturing what they believe to be manhood.