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I feel that to some extent boys should be able to cry. It is true that it is bad to pent up your emotions and hold it all in but if you're going to be crying over stubbing your toe or getting a paper cut I'd say put up with it. It's never right to cry too much but if you cry when things are just too much, it's perfectly acceptable. Crying is a desplay of emotion and without it some people wouldn't be able to smile, it also can be a call for help as people become curiouse or worried why the person is crying. This makes it perfectly acceptable because everyone needs a little help now and then.

Very good...

now let me spice it up a little bit, we all know children should be allowed to cry, and some teenage boys are aloud to cry, but Hypothically, What if you are in charge of a situation that demands that you show no emotion, like a father trying to raise 4 children motherless, or a son taking charge of the father role un willingly?

would you breakdown at one point?

Try your best to hold it together until the end?

Do what you feel its right?

p.s. these situations happen every day int eh world.

in my opinion ninja : technically speaking, those situations u portray there don't exactly DEMAND it, but yes, i acknowledge that we, OURSELVES, would impose that demand, that need and obligation. there would, i think, most certainly b a point in which we would break-down. for example, [it's long, so u can jump it if u don't wanna read much]: i didn't take the role of father [or mother for that matter], but at the age of 11 my father developed a mental illness [yesh, just that, bcs not even docs can say what he says. let's round it up in " a little bit of several things". symptoms of this and that, but not enough to say this OR that.] my point being, we owned a bike shop, and of course, mother worked [as a proffessor]. shortening the story here, i was forced, AT THE AGE OF 11, to assume the role of a grown-up, basically enough guiding my father thru the whole accounting stuff, the basics of a bike mechanic, selling, and such. i'd get out of school, cross the street, and it'd b like going to work, staying helping around [guiding my father with the help of my sister, age 10, and my bro's when they could as they got out of their own work and/or college] 'til 5:30pm, when we'd close up and head home. only then could i get my time for studies. . so, yeah, the point of the story is: there would, undoubtedly, be a moment in which we break down, cry before or not, thru the problem, or not. fact is, i still breakdown, and father no longer lives with us [parents divorcing] and we no longer own the bike shop. so, in such situations, no matter how much u cry, there will b creakdowns: those ARE the breakdowns. however, the more u hold it in, the worse they'll b. our nature, as i have observed in others as well as me, is to try and hold it together 'til the end, the problem is, doing that, there will b no end, bcs it'll keep eating at us. doing this, holding it together [or trying to] 'til the end is what we feel would b right. for some, only for those that it works, it IS the right thing. but if u r one that u notice it doesn't work, it's wrong, and maybe u should try a new strategy, a different approach to the situation.... that's what i think, anyway. but yeah, i know it's long xd , but it's what i think, evry single word! whee

that's a very good point. Men, since the damn of history, have been precived as people who MUST be tough, a civil standard to the way things work. How has history turnned this theory into a stereotype of what a real man is today?
i wonder where everything went wrong... confused

ditto! 3nodding

that is a very good point. crying doesn't fix the problem....but it is a way of "letting it all out" before trying to make sense of anything while feeling bad

Men should always feel free to express themselves, even if their form of expression happens to be crying, there is nothing wrong with that. and if i saw a guy crying, i would gladly try and help him out and give him my shoulder to cry on if he needed or wanted it!