Oh my God, I finally finished it.

This took me forever to read, and not necessarily because it was bad. It's just a lot of facts thrown at you and doesn't make for the most entertaining nighttime reading. I think it has value, even though it's about 15 years old at this point and thus slightly outdated. There is at least a chapter about homosexual boys, something I didn't think the author was going to include.

I read this for work and I feel as though it has helped me to understand boys a bit better. I've always been very pro-female and not focused on problems that boys or men may be having. Ultimately, I think it will help me to relate to the boys I work with a bit better and to hopefully in turn help me to help them. I'm also not as terrified at the idea of having a son now. So that's a plus.

I decided to read this because my son is having a hard time emotionally right now, and I wanted to better understand the pressures we put on boys in our culture. I really liked this book (other than it being a little repetitive and long winded)and ,it did a great job of putting voice to those niggling worries that there is something off in the way we as a culture treat our boys, and clearly lays out all the pressures boys feel to perform their boyness (he calls it the boy code) in very specific way, and the shame that is heaped upon any boys who does not strictly adhere to the boy code.

there are chapters for mothers, for fathers, about depression in boys and the different ways this can manifest, about growing up gay, and really good information on how to help our sons navigate this mine field. I'd recommend it to anyone who has a boy or loves one.

We are doing a great disservice to our sons with some of the cultural expectations we place on them. This book compassionately explains many of the problems boys face in our society and what we can do to help. I grew up with all sisters and didn't have a lot of experience with boys and men until I married. This book has helped me understand my husband and son better. I especially liked the explanation of active love and how boys and girls express closeness differently at times. I hope it's helped me be more understanding and able to connect with the guys in my life. I guess my son and husband would have to be the judge of that.

Again, I read this book for an Adolescent Male Development course and I really didn't connect with the way the author spoke about male development as much as I did with Raising Cain. I felt he was-I can't even pinpoint a word. I guess the book just rubbed me the wrong way and even though it has been endorsed by theorists I respect I couldn't cave and "go with" his theories.
But, to each his own.

I just started this book and it seems really good and informative as a mom of an onlie boy

A strong candidate for 2.5 stars. Published in 1998, when I myself was a small boy, this book is now *very* dated. It spends a lot of time deconstructing gender stereotypes, but in places seems very stereotyped to today's reader. I'm sure that a book written today would have at least something to say about trans children, and probably would have integrated gay boys more completely into the main volume (instead, they are weirdly isolated in their own chapter). It probably also would have given more attention to a wider range of parents. Pollack writes deliberately about boys who grow up with a mother and father, those who grow up with divorced parents who share custody, and those who grow up with a single father or single mother as a result of death or divorce. He does not discuss those who grow up with two mothers or two fathers, and only briefly alludes to the epidemic of boys who grow up with one parent (usually the father) in prison. The language can also be hilariously dated: Pollack must be the last person to unironically use the phrase "sensitive 'new man'."

So some things have definitely changed. One thing that sadly has not changed all that much is the extent to which men and boys are held in what Pollack calls the "gender straitjacket" and shamed for failing to fulfill certain roles that are coded as masculine. Two of the toxic myths of boyhood Pollack identifies are also still sadly going strong: "boys will be boys" (when used to excuse or even predict violence, lack of interest in school, or various other less than adaptive behaviors) and "boys should be boys" (used to shame boys of any age who rebel against the "gender straitjacket"). The less catchy but more accurate and ethical reality is that we must raise children of all genders to become well-adjusted human beings.

Another useful element that's only grown more relevant since 1998 is Pollack's argument that it's not enough to denounce toxic manifestations of masculinity. Indeed, done alone, this will often be counterproductive, as it can become a self-fulfilling prophecy for boys and young men who come to see themselves as toxic. Instead, adults must model and encourage diverse and positive masculinities, and ones which are not defined in opposition to femininity. Pollack implies (but stops short of saying outright) that there are no "masculine" and "feminine" virtues, but instead virtuous and well-adaptive behaviors that have been coded as one or the other. This coding becomes deeply harmful when children learn that boys are strong and honorable and girls are gentle and caring — when a functioning and moral person of any gender must be all of these things.


One interesting thing to note from 2020. We now spend a lot of time worrying that children aren't encouraged or allowed to develop their independence. In the 1990s (and in the 70s and 80s, when some of the research was done) there was instead a concern that children, and boys especially, were forced into an unnatural early independence. Both can actually be true — childhood and adolescence are about developing an independent sense of self. This development needs to be nurtured and allowed to grow over time, not stifled (as by "helicopter parenting") or forced at an unnatural rate (which engenders the sense of abandonment that Pollack saw in a lot of boys).

Interesting topic, exploring how we as a society raise boys in a way that's largely damaging and how we can fix that for healthier boys in the future. I'd be interested in reading a more recently written version of this book, as this was written in the late 90s. Some points seemed rather essentialist and others were out of touch (at one point teachers are told to tell history from the point of view of a man to get boys interested--what history is ever told otherwise outside special classes?), but overall a good book tackling a hard topic and social ill.

I really wanted to like this book, and maybe I will when my boys are older (they are currently 1 and 3), but I felt like it was unproductively guilt-inducing, repetitive, and unnecessarily long. The basic gist is that boys disconnect emotionally from parents, teachers, etc. because they are forced to separate from their mothers when they are not ready, are forced to take on responsibility before they are ready, and are never allowed to voice deep emotion. I can agree with all of those things, but I felt like the examples that the author gave were examples of obvious, and egregious parental oversight. I know not to call my boys sissies, not to leave them in new places when they are vomiting from fear and anxiety, etc. Maybe some parents do need to know these things, and maybe this book is more for them. The author also kept saying that he'd go more in depth on certain topics later, but never seemed to. His points could have been made in a 75 page books equally well.

Anyone who is interested in the physical, psychological, or educational progress of young men in our society needs to read this book. Dr. Pollack very expertly explores the "myths of boyhood" in a way that makes men look back on their own lives, examining their own childhoods in the process; and allows women a glimpse in to what it means to grow up as an American male.

As a mother of an adolescent 13 year old boy this book helped add insight into some of the recent moments in my household. It did help me understand the pressures young men face and how those pressures (e.g. to be macho) affect their whole lives.

I thought that the thesis was good, solid and rich, then it took 400 pages to essentially say the same thing. I know I've been tainted by self-help books that tell you it all in 100 pages, but this really could have been a 200 page book rather than a 400 page book. That being said, the thesis and treatment of the subject was well done, mixed with theory, suggestions and cases.

My ex-husbabnd and I decided to wait for birth to know the gender of our child. If I were to have given birth to a girl, I figured I would know how to raise an enlightened daughter. And when I gave birth to a son, I most definately knew I was not prepared.

This book brought up so many good points about the challenges facing boys growing up in the USA. I had no idea of the tests and travails that awaited me in trying to raise a son with a full emotion vocabulary, and the ability to express these feelings clearly. Reading this book was a good preparation for this task.