How To Parent Boys: How Hugging Boys Improves Their Future Relationships

“And he took them up in his arms, put his hands upon them, and blessed them.” — Mark 10:16 (KJV)

Somewhere around age seven or eight, most boys stop being held.

Nobody announces it. He is simply carried less, hugged more briefly, kissed on the head instead of the face, and gradually moved to a handshake or a pat on the shoulder. Meanwhile his sister keeps getting held. He notices. He does not have words for what he lost, and neither do we.

By the end of this, you will know what the research says physical affection actually does for a boy, why it gets withdrawn so early, and specific ways to give it back at every age — including the ones where he pretends he does not want it.

THE PROBLEM

Affection is not a soft extra in a boy’s development. It is foundational.

The research on touch is extensive and remarkably consistent. Physical affection lowers stress hormones and calms the body, releasing oxytocin — the bonding chemical — which builds attachment and a felt sense of safety. Children who receive consistent warmth from parents show measurably better emotional regulation, higher self-esteem, and lower rates of anxiety, depression, and aggression. The classic research on warmth and rejection has found across dozens of cultures that when children experience a parent as cold or rejecting, the outcomes are strikingly similar everywhere: hostility, emotional instability, low self-worth, and a negative view of the world.

Here is what matters most for boys specifically. A boy who is regularly held learns, in his body rather than his head, that he is wanted. That physical certainty becomes the floor his confidence stands on. Studies of father involvement in particular link warm, affectionate fathering to greater emotional regulation, better peer relationships, and higher self-esteem in sons.

Now consider what happens without it. A boy who stops being touched at eight still needs it at eighteen — he simply learns to seek it in the only places a young man is permitted to find it. He looks for it in sex he is not ready for, in violence where physical contact is finally allowed, or he shuts the need down entirely and becomes a man who cannot hug his own children. The need never disappears. Only the acceptable outlets do.

WHY WE STOP

If you have felt awkward about this, hear me clearly: it is not your fault, and it is not indifference.

Some of you were never held yourselves. Your father shook your hand at ten and never touched you again. You cannot easily give what was never modeled for you, and reaching for your son can feel strange in your own body.

Some of you absorbed the message that affection makes a boy soft. You were told holding him too much would ruin him, so you pulled back out of love, believing you were preparing him for a hard world.

Some of you pulled away when he became a teenager, because he got taller than you and started grunting, and you read that as rejection. Usually it was not.

Some of you, especially fathers, feel a discomfort you cannot name about physical closeness with a growing son. That discomfort is cultural, not natural. Almost every other culture on earth would find it puzzling.

Whatever the reason, the result is the same: a boy who is loved deeply and rarely feels it in his body.

WHAT SCRIPTURE SAYS

Watch what Jesus did when children were brought to Him. The disciples tried to send them away — He had important work, after all. Scripture says He was “much displeased” by that, and then records what He did: “he took them up in his arms, put his hands upon them, and blessed them.”

He did not merely speak a blessing from a distance. He picked them up. He put His hands on them. The Son of God, on the most consequential mission in history, stopped and physically held children — and Mark thought the detail was important enough to preserve.

Consider also how the father in the parable greeted his returning son. That boy had squandered everything and rehearsed a speech about being unworthy. Scripture says the father “fell on his neck, and kissed him” before the son could finish a sentence. The embrace came before the explanation. Touch was the first language of the welcome.

Then there is the greatest tragedy of touch in all of Scripture. Isaac, old and blind, said to his son: “Come near now, and kiss me, my son.” Esau later cried out, “Bless me, even me also, O my father” — and Scripture says he lifted up his voice, and wept. A grown man weeping for his father’s blessing and his father’s embrace. That ache does not disappear with age. It just goes quiet.

THREE THINGS TO DO THIS WEEK

1. Anchor affection to daily routines — this is habit stacking, and it removes the awkwardness. The reason affection fades is that it becomes a decision, and decisions get skipped. So attach it to something that already happens: a hug every morning before school, a hand on his shoulder every night at bedtime, a squeeze when he gets in the car. Attached to a routine, it stops requiring courage and simply becomes what your family does.

2. Use the language your son’s age allows. With little boys, be generous and physical — carry them, wrestle, hold them in your lap, kiss them. With elementary-age boys, keep the roughhousing (it is affection in a form he readily accepts) and add the arm around the shoulder while watching TV, the hand on his back as he walks through a door. With teenagers, expect the eye-roll and do it anyway — the shoulder squeeze passing in the kitchen, the hand on his head, the hug at the door that lasts one second longer than he expects. Side-by-side contact works best at this age: sitting close on the couch, a hand on his shoulder in the car. He will not thank you. He will remember.

3. Break your own inheritance by naming it out loud. If nobody held you, that pattern is not going to change through good intentions alone. Say it plainly to your son: “My dad never hugged me, and I decided that stops with me.” Naming it does two things — it gives you permission to do something unfamiliar, and it teaches him that a man can be aware of his own wounds and choose differently. That single sentence may be the most fathering you ever do.

LET’S TALK ABOUT IT

When was the last time you hugged your son? Not passed him, not praised him — held him.

Were you held as a child? Answer honestly, because what you received is shaping what you give.

Which routine will you anchor affection to this week? Name it here, then start tonight.

Your son is going to be a man who either knows in his body that he was wanted, or spends his life looking for that answer somewhere else. Jesus stopped the most important work in history to pick children up and put His hands on them. Go put your hands on your son — and if nobody ever did it for you, let it stop with you.

The Transforming Circle builds believers for better dating, stronger marriages, and healthier minds — beyond Sundays. Let’s build your better life together at transformingcircle.com. God never intended for you to stay the same.