How Can We Do a Better Job Raising Boys?
I was excited to read To Raise a Boy for many reasons. Because it's a well-researched tour of the current landscape of American masculinity. And because its the masterful work of Washington Post investigative reporter, Emma Brown, who broke Christine Blasey Fords sexual assault allegations against Brett Kavanaugh, which were central in driving the essential and ongoing #MeToo discussion. (And because that conversation seems to have gone too quiet lately.) But mostly I wanted to read To Raise a Boy because Im currently raising twomy son and myself. And because I had come to believe that after decades as a journalist for so-called mens magazines and thirteen years as a father to a son, that no matter how old I get, I still have a lot to learn. That to raise someone else really just means to grow up yourself. And that if Ive learned anything about parenting my son its that Im best as a father when Im best as a personwhen Im open, honest, accepting, and a good listener, allowing him to become who he is and not just who I want or think he should be. To Raise a Boy: Classrooms, Locker Rooms, Bedrooms, and the Hidden Struggles of American Boyhood $17 Amazon Buy Now  Emma Brown had a son shortly before the world began discussing her reporting on Blasey Ford and attempting to reckon with Kavanaughs confirmation. She quickly connected that moment to the complexity and difficulty of raising anyonebut especially of raising a boyat a time when it seems both possible to push ahead with progressive, enlightened ideas and ideals about masculinity, but that was also shadowed by the fear that some things will never change. So she did what great reporters do, speaking to hundreds of peoplecoaches, teachers, parents, academics, researchers across the country and across the sociological, economic, and geographic spectrum, about what it is to be male today and how that might evolve in the future, as the boys were raising become the men they should be. Read the book that resulted, and youll discover sobering statisticsmen are killing themselves in disproportionate numbers; as many as 1 in 4 boys are sexually assaulted in America. But youll also see how coaches and educators and parents are learning and teaching and modeling better behaviors and models for young men that present the potential for real change and growth. Brown: I think my first moment of realization that I had no idea what it was like to be a boy was when I had my son and was home on maternity leave when the first Harvey Weinstein stories broke. He was about six weeks old so I was home nursing him, and reading those stories and just thinking, "Wow, what does it mean to be the mom of a boy?" Then I went back to work, and I ended up writing a story where Christine Blasey Ford told her story for the first time, and then there was all the political upheaval that came after that. But there was also I think just a lot of personal reckoning that went on for people in the aftermath of that, and many of them wrote to me and wrote about their experiences with sexual violence as children, as teenagers or even younger. And I thought about how we had this so-called national conversation about sexual violence as a workplace issue, as a college campus issue, but we had never really talked about sexual violence in children.