Throughout human history and across virtually every culture that has been studied, societies maintained structured rites of passage that marked the transition from boyhood to manhood through deliberate ordeals, testing, instruction, and formal recognition of new status by the community of adult men. These rites varied tremendously in their specific content, duration, and severity, but they shared essential structural features that served critical psychological and social functions. Boys were separated from mothers and childhood, placed in situations requiring courage and endurance, taught sacred or secret knowledge reserved for men, often marked physically through circumcision or scarification, and welcomed into the...