What Toilets Can Teach Us About Men (and Shame)

Who knew that a decade spent thinking about toilets would lead to reflections on how boys and men cope with shame and doubt?

19 November is both International Men’s Day and World Toilet Day — an unlikely coincidence, unless you’ve spent as much time thinking about toilets as I once did. For ten years I worked on a UN campaign for World Toilet Day with a small team of clever, caring and slightly mischievous people. We used a blend of seriousness and humour to communicate a very unfunny truth: 3.4 billion people still don’t have access to a safe toilet.

A decade in sanitation and then psychology can only end one way: sooner or later, Freud shows up.

Early autonomy and the roots of shame

Sigmund Freud’s psychosexual theory outlines the anal stage (roughly 18 months to 3 years) where toilet training is central and the child becomes more sensitive to being reprimanded or negatively evaluated by caregivers. Fixation at this stage, Freud suggested, can influence a person’s tendency to over-control or disorganization.

50 years later, child psychoanalyst Erik Erikson expanded this idea and included a social lens. He called this stage the psychosocial crisis of autonomy versus shame and doubt. Instead of focusing on bowel control, Erikson widened the lens to the toddler’s emerging will. This is the age of “I do it!” — walking, feeding, dressing, exploring, testing limits and using the toilet.

When caregivers encourage these efforts with patience and boundaries, children develop a sense of autonomy. When they respond with ridicule, over-control, or punishment they may internalize two unwelcome companions: Shame and Doubt. The child learns that mistakes must be hidden, trying is dangerous and their abilities can always be questioned.

Freud and Erikson didn’t get everything right, and of course, a causal relationship can and probably should always be questioned, but they understood something vital: how caregivers respond to early attempts at independence leaves an impression in the psyche.

Which brings us to International Men’s Day

Unlike International Women’s Day, International Men’s Day isn’t a UN day, and it often sparks irritation: Isn’t every day International Men’s Day in a patriarchal society?

But that reaction misses the point. Many boys and men are struggling quietly, invisibly and often alone. According to a regional WHO report and national data from countries like the UK and Australia, men experience higher rates of suicide, addiction, homelessness, violence, and social isolation. These struggles don’t invalidate women’s challenges but it simply shows that gendered suffering cuts more than one way.

Where this connects: Shame, autonomy and modern masculinity

In many countries that have become more gender-equal, girls are now doing better on average than boys in school performance, emotional literacy and social integration. This is not a competition but perhaps a signal. Something about the way we raise, socialise, and emotionally support boys is not working as well as we believe it is.

Through Erikson’s lens, it’s obvious: many men grew up without the emotional equivalent of a safe and supportive place to experiment and fail. And we — yes, we, in our families, in our communities, in our culture — often tell boys and men to be strong, controlled, calm and never, ever vulnerable.

The same ingredients that lead to early shame and doubt can reappear in adulthood as: difficulty asking for help, fear of failure, emotional shutdown and a belief that pain must be hidden and not expressed.

And somehow all of this loops back to toilets.

A toilet is a place where a person is at their most vulnerable and where dignity matters. Billions of people still lack that physical dignity. But many boys grow into men who lack the emotional version of it: a safe, private, shame-free space where they can express need, fear or ask for support without humiliation.

International Men’s Day isn’t about celebrating dominance. It’s about asking, sincerely and without defensiveness: How are boys and men doing? And are we supporting their early autonomy, or cultivating lasting shame and doubt?

If we can offer boys the psychological equivalent of safe sanitation — places to express and release — and if we are willing to look in the mirror at how we respond, choosing care rather than rigid expectations of outdated masculine ideals, we may finally begin to shift the cultural patterns that leave so many men isolated.

Sometimes the path to understanding adult suffering starts with something as simple, as universal, and as symbolic as learning to use the toilet.