Importance Of Male Figures To Boys

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Importance of Male figures to boys
Introduction
Children take after their parents, and the lack of any of the two parents in a child’s life affects them psychologically. In the two stories authored by Brinkley; I Happy Am and No More Than a bubble, the author brings out different types of family setups and the role played by the parents shapes the character of the children. In the I Happy Am, the lead character Freddy is from a single parented household. He lives with his mother, and the only man who has ever come to their house was a technician who can to fix some broken appliance in the house. Freddy seems to hate his life, and it has affected his social life. Whenever he is nervous, he pretends to be a robot. His imagination has become his refuge to escape the harsh realities he faces at home and in school.
Conversely, we meet Ben in the No More Than a Bubble. Ben lived with both his parents until they divorced when e was twelve and he chose to stay with his father. He always knew that the divorce affected his father adversely, but he could not help it CITATION Bri19 \l 1033 (Brinkley, No More Than a Bubble, 2019). He grew distant from his mother and even blatantly refused to meet his mother’s new husband or even attend their wedding because he deeply believed that his mother had betrayed his father. Through flashbacks and memories, Ben reflects on how his father had given him fatherly advice on the kind of women he should marry and how to deal with the wild ones. All these memories are narrated in the setting of a party he had attended with his friend Claudius to in New York CITATION Bri19 \l 1033 (Brinkley, No More Than a Bubble, 2019). In the party, they meet two girls who they end up escorting to their homes.
Importance of male figures in the lives of young boys
Both lead characters in the two stories come from single-headed families though they exhibit different mannerisms. Freddy and Ben learn how to treat women from their parents. Their approach to friendly, distressed or unfamiliar women around them is very different, and it can be attributed to their upbringing. For example, Freddy who has been brought up by his mother seems nervous when in the company of other women because the women in her family seem weak and helpless CITATION Bri191 \l 1033 (Brinkley, I Happy Am, 2019). When the two men encounter other women other than those in their family, they exhibit different mannerisms. Freddy is so nervous around Arlene such that he finds solace in his imaginations that he is a robot. He is speechless when the seemingly motherly woman Arlene tries to make him blurt out his feelings of whether the unborn child is a boy or a girl CITATION Bri191 \l 1033 (Brinkley, I Happy Am, 2019). He is also nervous around Sister Pamela when he gets to the van later than the other children. He is also not well mannered since he knocks a lady on his way to school and he doesn’t stop to help the senior women he accidentally knocks down when is running to school CITATION Bri191 \l 1033 (Brinkley, I Happy Am, 2019). On the other hand, Ben who has been brought up by his father seems to understand that he needs to treat women with more affection and respect. Ben l...