My Baby Sister

My mother has a story she likes to relate about a peculiar interaction I had as a young boy. Another kid approached me (at church of all places) and informed me that his big brother could beat me up. I am told that I responded unfazed, I responded: "well, I can take care of my little sister all by myself". How do you respond to that?

 
 

It was not at all obvious to my young Catholic friend that caring for family was an impressive feat, and that's telling. Although it's a silly story it reflects pretty well our modern model for masculinity, which seems to vacillate somewhere between caricature and near non-existence. The standard is either an exaggerated gun-toting action hero or else the bar is set so low that its definition is someone who can appropriately appreciate football and beer. In other words, our model for masculinity is that of an adolescent. And yet at some point we expect men to grow up and become "domesticated" and are somehow surprised when they fail to meet our expectations.

 
 

For someone stepping into the workplace and economic independence without my dad as a model, this void is particularly disappointing. There has been an attempt on the part of some to create a kind of alternative model. The Art of Manliness a blog I follow is an attempt to get back to a different conception of masculinity, relating more to personal strength and responsibility than swagger and bravado. The internet can be helpful in helping me find out what I have to learn on my own, from teaching myself to cook, jump a car and invest my money, to the bigger question of how to negotiate my own way towards manhood.

 
 

I differ from the standard American 22 year old pretty substantially to begin with. I live in my widowed mother's house with my two siblings, one in college and the other in high school. I have a job and pay my mom a little bit of money to help pay for utilities and I cook dinner most days. We have a "family meeting" every week to discuss who is responsible for various tasks that need doing, like putting out clothes for Easter Seals or removing that fallen tree from our backyard.

 
 

In the United States it isn't a widely accepted practice for an adult to live with his family during the period after graduating high school and before getting married. But in the developing world, like my father's side of the family in Guatemala, expectations are very different. Children very rarely move out of their parents' house before they are married and since universities tend to be clustered in the same urban centers as the demographics lucky enough to attend them, college kids tend to commute from home; my dad and I commuting to Case together was an oddity in the US, but is identical to how my cousins got to college in Guatemala City.

 
 

So while my family doesn't quite fit with the norm, we try to carve out some kind of system that functions and I try my best to be useful. With my dad gone, I have tried to take on some of the responsibilities associated with being, as the cliché goes, the "man of the house"…with mixed results. It can be difficult at times to straddle the lines between being a mature older brother and a support to my mother. There are challenges and I don't always know whether I am doing the right thing. But I try. Maybe I can't quite take care of my baby sister (who can almost drink legally) "all by myself" but I feel proud of pitching in how I can to support the people I love. Taking care of your own family is way manlier than beating up someone else's.