My son has benefited tremendously from my husband’s soft, nurturing, caring, patient, empathic way of being. This is a much better way of seeing that a man can have feelings and be caring, and still be a man. I feel the author is writing as if we are still living in the 50’s. Didn’t finish the book. As one other reviewer said, too repetitive and I got tired of the mother/father split.

Even as a gay man with a lot of so-called "feminine" qualities and who never tried to butch himself up, I found a lot of interesting insights into my own personality here. A great, if a tad repetitive, look at how boys deal with emotions and feelings.

A thoughtful book on the problems faced by boys in a culture that praises them on one hand while chastising them on the other. The author reminds us that we need to provide youth the time and space to grow into men, not force then before their time into that state.

Chapter 6 was really great. It detailed how a strong and compassionate father makes for a balanced son, who will grow up with tools to be whole, not fractured by the challenges of modern life and pervasive stereotypes.

Dealing with both boys and girls in school can be problematic. As a 40-plus year educator whose career focused on secondary school, I have deal with the myths that are prevalent in American society. This is an excellent book to help educators, parents, and others understand the pressures that our boys have. It is not enough, however, to just understand the issues of boys. Girls issues must be understood as well. Consequently, in addition to recommending this book, I recommend reading something about girl issues. Reviving Ophelia would be an excellent choice. Incidentally, the author of Reviving Ophelia wrote the forward for Real Boys.

I think that this book is great. Heartbreaking, but great. At this point it's a bit dated and new research has come out that looks at boys in not so much of a black-and-white way, but the information is still relevant for the most part and good from a historical perspective. Very interesting. Definitely worth the time.

It's been years since I read this one! So, I can't remember the specifics but I remember that I loved it. It's still on my shelf so I can re-read it someday. Anyway, if you have a son or work closely with young boys, you should read it. It is very eye-opening.

Gah! It seemed to take forever to finish this book. There were some good parts, some parts I didn’t agree with; overall, I wish I’d have saved myself the time.

I'm not really sure how to rate this book. It was recommended to me by several people, and I did think there was a lot of good stuff in it. Happily, in my little corner of the world (my neighborhood and school) a lot has changed since 1998. I think that the Myths of Boyhood that he describes are less pernicious than they were then. I do think this probably varies widely, and so the book is definitely still relevant. It is a very long book, and I ended up skimming big parts of it. A big chunk is devoted to helping adolescent boys who are struggling emotionally, and that wasn't useful stuff for my own situation.

If you're in a fairly progressive little world with your boy, I'd suggest books by Leonard Sax, instead. They're more recent and I think a little more practical. "Why Gender Matters" and "Boys Adrift" are both excellent.

I LOVE this book. I've read it before and I'm reading it again so I can absorb new lessons about my growing son. It's the best perspective on "boy world" I've ever read (learned a few things about my husband, too!)

This is an essential read for anyone who knows boys and men.

This book covers an incredibly important topic that needs to be read and understood. Unfortunately, the execution of this book does a disservice to this importance as a result of very cumbersome chapter sections that are broken down into numerous subsections (some only a paragraph long). Thus, each chapter alone can feel like a slog, particularly with how disjointing it is for the mind to have selective attention to one topic and then startled by the appearance of a case study and then another topic somewhat related, and then another, and another, all in the same chapter.

Do not misunderstand, this book has an in-depth analysis of some very important, meaningful, and alarming research that needs to be understood if we are to be an active participant in shaping positive mental health in our boys. It is just a slog, plain and simple.

I'm unlikely to read this whole thing but youneverknow. Right now I'm skipping around and browsing. The generic/cultural failings of my boy-to-man upbringing were doubled down on by the serious dysfunction and chaos of growing up with a father who was low-bottom alcoholic. At the age of 68 I can only look back(and not stare), tell it like it was and try to get better one day at a time.

I've decided that I'm not going back to finish this. There's too much of it and I've got other literary fish to fry, as it were.