Decisions, Decisions...

Guest author Dr. Armon Perry

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Recently, I was invited to a local all-male middle and high school in Louisville, Kentucky to serve as guest speaker. The school serves primarily boys of color and utilizes an Afrocentric curriculum designed to help students excel both academically and socially. Because of some of my community engagement work, I have established relationships with some of the schools, so I welcomed the invitation to engage the young men.

I admit that I struggled to come up with a topic that I thought would be compelling to a group of teenagers. Also, given that this was a school-based event, I also wrestled with exactly how real I could keep it. However, I decided to simply be authentic and transparent and tell them what I tell my own son. My message to them, therefore, was that as men, particularly Black men, decision making would be the most important skill they would ever develop. And to that point, I also shared that discipline would factor greatly in their decision making. To be specific, I shared that their ability to exhibit emotional discipline, financial discipline and sexual discipline would contribute to shaping their futures and who they would eventually become as men.

Emotional Discipline

With emotional discipline, the message centered on how difficult it is to be rational while we are emotional. As the old saying goes, the first casualty of emotion is reason. I tried to impress upon the young men that fair or not, as Black men, they would be expected to remain calm in pressure filled situations and that if they didn’t, the world would not give them much, if any, grace for ill-advised decisions made in the heat of the moment. Therefore, they needed to train themselves to pause long enough to weigh the likely outcomes of their decisions before making them so they could develop a habit of choosing with their minds and not their hearts. I made sure to let them know that this did not mean that they should seek to avoid or suppress their feelings. However, the truth was having the discipline to effectively manage their emotions would likely place them in more advantageous positions relative to the alternative.

Financial Discipline

When it came to financial discipline, I reminded the young men that a fool and his money will soon part. In other words, they needed to be wise with their money. I encouraged them to think long term about their finances and to strike a balance between the notion that you only live once (otherwise known as YOLO) and the reality that being frivolous with their economic resources would make it difficult to accumulate wealth in the long run. Key points here were that if their experiences were anything like mine, in five years, they would no longer be in regular communication with the people from middle and high school. Therefore, spending money trying to impress them would take on less and less significance over time. I also cautioned them against indulging in get rich quick schemes because if it really were that easy, the word would be out, and we would all be involved. Rather, when the time came, they would be much better served by living within their means, being serious about saving and doing their research to become financially literate so they could take advantage of smart investment opportunities.

Sexual Discipline

Finally, sexual discipline. Put frankly, I let them know that they were not under any obligation to have sex simply because it was offered to them or because it was possible. My goal was to make sure the young men knew that sex was a decision and that every decision has consequences. We spent some time brainstorming the range of potential consequences including those with possible health, social, and financial implications. Most importantly, the young men opened up about their relationships with their own fathers. Some expressed having solid, high-quality relationships with their dads while others lamented inconsistent or altogether disengaged dads. As the young men shared, it was clear that those with involved fathers wanted similar relationships with their own children whenever the time came while those with less than desirable relationships swore that they would not inflict that type of pain onto their children. I seized the obvious opportunity to share that as a fatherhood researcher, I have learned that responsible fatherhood means delaying fatherhood until men have the requisite emotional, economic and relational capacity to ensure healthy and sustained engagement.

By the end of the hour-long session, I was pleased that the young men were willing to share some of their experiences and were receptive to me sharing mine. I walked away with personal and professional reflections that I have been replaying in the weeks since I met with them. Personally, I have long believed that becoming a father is the most consequential decision that I have ever made, and my hope is to always approach it with the discipline to do what is right given the best information I have at the time. Professionally, connecting with this group of young men reinforced my commitment to working with families and the organizations that serve them to ensure that fathers are positioned to act on their intentions to play similar roles in the lives of their children.

COPYRIGHT 2024 BY DR. ALVIN THOMAS. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. THIS MATERIAL MAY NOT BE PUBLISHED, BROADCAST, REWRITTEN OR REDISTRIBUTED WITHOUT WRITTEN PERMISSION.

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