Babette Smith’s enterprise is to tackle the profound problems for men and women created by fixed but destructive assumptions inherent in our masculinist interpretation of the world. When Turgenev turned the spotlight on Fathers and Sons in his eponymous novel the quality of his writing glazed over the substantial gender bias; Harold Bloom, currently causing a major stir with his canon of better books, models creative writing on a literary variant of Freudian theory in his Anxiety (the sons’) of Influence (the fathers’). Feminists of course have tried to reverse the emphasis by concentrating on exclusively female relationships. Smith’s compassionate, cross­gendered exploration of the mutual hurt done to each other by two groups of individuals, initially united by the closest of all possible ties – the umbilical cord – offers an astute and moving assessment of the conflicting roles of maternalism and masculinism in contemporary society.

The basic grid of Smith’s investigation, sampled in Britain and Australia, is both synchronic and diachronic, covering not only two sexes and two generations, but two separate and comparative sets of mothers and sons; the good news is that the sixties constituted a watershed between two recognisably different attitudes towards masculinity. But if there is, latterly, room for cautious optimism, it remains important to follow Smith’s unravelling of what went wrong early on; her points are complex and occasionally elusive even when linked by a compelling line of argument.

Before the 1960s things were at least clear. Lads had to be toughened up as early as possible; they must not cry or be too fond of their mothers, and they should learn with all speed to blacken the eye of the other boy. The effects of this ideology, though, ricocheted back on the very mothers who were doing their dutiful best to implement it. The ‘motherhood’ ideology that made a virtue of the female lack of self-esteem bred scorn for self-abnegating mums and biased boys’ expectations of relations with women. As adults they were uncomfortable, impatient, and justifiably bored with female company – as they had constructed it.

To what then can the visibly improved relationships in the post-1960s generation of sons and mothers be sheeted home? If there is any one cause, it is certainly not feminism as such – since Smith shows the ambiguity of its practices – but rather the widespread improvement in women’s self-esteem, due in the first place to better educational opportunities. The measure of this somewhat nebulous achievement is gauged less by the attitudes of the women themselves than by the testimony of their sons in their replies to Smith’s questionnaire. In tones unthinkable prior to the sea change, they now willingly admit to feelings of affection and respect for their mothers, whom they describe with gratitude as caring, and with admiration as intelligent. They are proud to tell the world that their mother has run a business, gone back to study, or taken up a vocation, and thereby become flexible, open-minded, tolerant, and capable of abstract thought and intellectual curiosity. They made it clear they were proud to have a working mother – so long as she continued to treat them as favourably as before. So long, that is, as they could condescend to offer this praise from their exalted pedestal, and provided they were not required to extend in any way the gamut of their own still limited emotional responses. Liberated, confident mothers now enjoyed a stimulating, fun relationship with their delightful male offspring, exuberant in its mutual admiration – and continued to tolerate in them attitudes they would not put up with in their daughters. Only a few fortunate sons could acknowledge in later life that they had been emotionally stretched by unsparing mothers; wiser for it, they even saw that this was something to be grateful for.

For the truth is that mothers and sons are in a real double bind. The very warmth of the relationship inside the home, where the boys now express their feelings, share the cooking, and discuss ‘almost’ everything, does not solve the problem of how to transfer the new guidelines into the playground or the office, where the old imperatives still obtain. Joyfully fostering qualities that suit her relationship with her son, the mother is wilfully ignorant of what it is like for him out there in the educational or corporate jungle. She abysmally underestimates the fundamental importance of physical and verbal dominance in a boy’s interaction with his peers – a process that still boils down to the survival of the fittest. If the fear of bringing up a ‘sook’ stunted the development of empathy in the sons of the earlier generation, the mothers of today equally fail their male children when they simply disparage the male perspectives that society continues to embody. Smith, along with other quoted sociologists, insists that boys must be confident of their own power before they can choose to abhor violence. She seriously recommends cultivation of the martial arts as a physical alternative to brute strength and fisticuffs. Anything less will seriously disadvantage young males, at least until society has left behind the tribal concept of a masculinity based on might.

Smith urges the men of today to take it on themselves to challenge societal assumptions about conventional masculinity, and begin to act with flexibility, empathy, and emotional responsibility not only in the parental home, but in the wider circles of their professional and conjugal life. And while society still needs a lesson or two, they should deliver it one elegant karate chop before meeting mother for an adult and civilised conversation.