On Boys Podcast

Photo by Linda Severson via Flickr   Traditional societies had many (often elaborate) rites of passage for boys and girls. On the South Pacific island of Vanuatu, boys become men after diving off rickety 40 foot platforms -- toward the ground. (You may have seen or heard about this tradition on National Geographic.) In the Sioux culture, young boys were raised predominantly by their mothers; as they became men, their fathers took over their training. And in some traditional African tribes, a boy's passage to manhood is marked by time alone in nature and circumcision. Here in the United States (and in most developed countries), there aren't really any well-recognized rites of passage to adulthood. Sure, many Jewish boys still have a Bar Mitzvah at age 13 and many Christians become full adult members in their churches after undergoing Confirmation, but neither ritual is well-recognized in the larger world as a marker of adulthood. Instead, the line between childhood, adolescence and adulthood remain