As the choirboy assumes his place on stage for a performance, his eyes invariably and unfailingly first look for the single most important person before him: his parent.  In most cases, that loving and concerned parent is why he is here to begin with.  He knows this.  Therefore, his eyes and his heart seek the primal audience for which he has performed all his life.But he, and everyone else, understands this is far different than the individual accomplishments of his life.  This performance combines the strength of this one little boy with the mutual force of his peers, guided by the masterful hand of his Director, and the genius of the music set before him.
 
The choirboy has just a glimpse of this concept.  But his parent fully understands its full, sweeping scope.  And as the boy looks out and connects with his parent’s eyes, each of them knows than an extraordinary moment has come for both of them.

Before the Director’s hand sweeps down on the first beat, the parent has already invested much in this enterprise.  Acting as the planner and initiator for the first audition, the parent follows up with the necessary and requisite paperwork, then assumes and fulfills the role of the choirboy’s taxi driver, schedule arranger, costume coordinator and general counsel.  In the choirboy’s perspective, this is the way it has always been for every event in his life.  But to the parent’s perspective, the decision to allow their boy to be part of the boy choir was not necessarily easy or routine.

The choirboy is a part of one of the oldest traditions and organized groups in human history.  To be a choirboy is to follow in the footsteps of boys from many cultures and ways of life from the ancient times through the 21st Century.  The parent is introduced to this long tradition either by past experience, other parents, through personal research or by a music teacher or the choir director.  But how they discovered the choir is not as important as why they encouraged their entrusted treasure of a son to embrace the challenge and commitment of participating in the organization.  Included in that profound decision were varied motivators, such as the introduction of their boy to the fine arts; his exposure to an atmosphere of controlled discipline; to achieving within him the clear understanding of true teamwork; and the process of competing with himself to achieve his full potential.

Such an important and complex decision does not come without intense levels of personal deliberation.  The boy choir is not considered by anyone to be a “mainstream” activity, and there are hundreds of popular, competing venues vying for the boy’s inclusion.   There is, most pointedly, the “sissy” factor that every parent must contend with when making the decision to place their son in a boy choir.  The sissy factor is typically easily dismissed by most parents as irrelevant, but only if the child himself is not sensitive to it.  If the child is sensitive, the boy choir is typically – and understandably – not selected by the parent as a viable alternative for their cherished son.
 
Fortunately for those parents who are able to slip around this sensitivity, the boy choir features an astonishing range of amazing opportunities, from international travel to career enhancing opportunities, a deep immersion in the fine arts and, best of all for many parents, the opportunity for them to become deeply involved with the choir and its service to their community and, actually, the world.

All boy choirs know that without their parents’ involvement, the choir could not survive and flourish.