Celia Lashlie

Celia Lashlie

If adolescent boys could tell their mothers one thing, what would it be? Chill out and stop asking so many questions, says Celia Lashlie.

She posed the question to large groups of boys for her "Good Man" schools project about what makes a good man in the 21st century.

Boys want their mothers to understand they know she's there, that she cares and that they will talk to her if something big happens in their lives, but they also need some space from her on their journey to manhood.

That's not to say our young men should be left to their own devices. Quite the contrary, says Ms Lashlie.

What they do need is a lot less mollycoddling from mum and significantly more time spent with the good men in their lives.

That discovery is one of many to come from conversations held in the course of the Good Man project - itself the result of an energetic discussion at a Head of Boys Schools Conference in Nelson in 2001.

The outspoken and straight-shooting Ms Lashlie visited the last of the 25 schools in the project in March last year.

A former prison guard in male prisons, she is no stranger to the devastating consequences facing too many young men, for whom prison is a rite of passage, a place where they go to prove they are men.

The validity of being male appears to have been undermined. This is seen in male suicide rates, imprisonment rates and the road toll. The project tried to tap the potential of schools to identify more positive rites of passage, those that celebrate manhood and maleness.

Ms Lashlie hopes her report, It's About Boys, will influence the direction taken by boys' schools in the education of their students.

"While I will continue to work on projects in schools, I think it is men's business to take the findings of the Good Man project forward.

"I don't want to be seen as a woman telling men how to do it. As a woman I have had the privilege to observe and comment on what a man's world looks like."

The impact of the study will reach further than the education system. It will also provide much-needed information for parents as they negotiate adolescence with their sons.

"A theme that emerged very quickly during my visits to the schools was that a great many mothers are over-involved in their sons' lives, while many students said they lack a real relationship with their father.

"We witnessed the importance of mothers withdrawing and fathers becoming more involved at this critical stage in their sons' development."

Easier said than done for many mothers, who struggle as their little boy grows into a young man they don't recognise, and with whom communication may become more difficult.