A new study seems to confirm our worst fears about our sons' lack ofemotional development

Teenage boys may have few friends and weak family ties, especially in single-sex schools, according to a new study from the University of Limerick. At the turn of the last millennium, the Department of Education invited primary and second-level students from across the country to put to paper their thoughts on life, love and everything. The result was 34,000 scripts containing first-hand accounts of what it means to be an adolescent in this State.

A team of researchers at the University of Limerick have been analysing this unique cache of primary research material. The first swathe of data has just been released, and according to professor of sociology and social policy at UL, Pat O'Connor, Irish boys are facing a "relatively bleak emotional landscape".

The data was collected from a sample of 4,100 sheets written by young people in fifth class (typically 10 to 12 years old) and Transition Year (typically aged 14 to 17 years).

"Family was referred to in 83 per cent of all these texts: so that clearly it remains a salient element in young people's accounts of their lives," says Pat O'Connor. "However, 14 to 17-year-old boys were much less likely than their female counterparts to refer to family (43 per cent of boys of this age referring to family as compared with 64 per cent of the girls).

Boys of this age were also less likely than girls to refer to extended family. Friendships were referred to in 64 per cent of all of the texts. Where it was possible to assess the number of friends they had, only 13 per cent of the 14 to 17-year-old boys had two or more friends as compared with 72 per cent of the girls. Female accounts of friendship in the texts were more intimate and more varied than the boys. Girls had intense confiding friendships as well as shared activity friendships. In so far as boys had friends, even best friends, they were of the shared activity type.

These activity based friendships, or "side-by-side" rather than "face-to-face" friendships, do not provide young men with the opportunity to confide in others, says researcher and sociology lecturer Dr Amanda Haynes. While heart-to-heart conversation is not everyone's idea of emotional release, it is important for teenagers to have an outlet, she maintains.

"In adolescence, the importance of opportunities to confide cannot be over-estimated. If we accept these texts as descriptions of their lives, the bleakness of young men's emotional landscapes in particular is striking."

Dr Haynes believes that concepts of masculinity have remained so limiting that young men find it hard to get beyond them, especially in single sex environments.

"There was a suggestion in the texts that attendance at single-sex boys' schools was associated with fewer references to extended family, fewer references to friends in general - and named friends and best friend(s), in particular."

Dr Haynes concedes that it is difficult to distinguish between cause and effect. "It may be that those parents who are interested in the relational development of boys are unlikely to send them to single-sex schools. However, recent research has pointed to a hidden curriculum of single-sex boys' schools that is effectively hostile to personal development."

Friendship has a role to play beyond emotional release. Research published in 2001 suggested that, for girls, friendship was one of the principal reasons for coming to school. This motivation might well be associated with girls' greater acceptance of, and performance in school.

The differing relationships of boys and girls only surfaced in the higher age bracket (14 to 17), suggesting that this is a uniquely adolescent phenomenon, although it has stark implications in adulthood. "How many of the social difficulties that are characteristic of young men in Irish society (public order, violence, alcoholconsumption, psychiatric vulnerability) could be located in the context of young men's relative lack of emotional connectedness?" asks Professor O'Connor.

"The fact that the patterns as regards boys' and girls' references to family and friends were broadly similar amongst the 10 to 12 year olds suggests that the difficulties as regards integrating such ties come to the fore in adolescence. We do not know to what extent this is related to a perception that strong emotional ties sit uneasily in Irish concepts of manhood."