And then they’re launched into the world without the tools and self-awareness they need to do some good - or, at the very least, to do no harm. Our boys get awkward and quiet we parents get awkwarder and quieter.
We’ve left their sex education to pornography we’re clueless about their hormones (turns out, puberty happens long before the first fuzz of a mustache) and we underestimate their vulnerabilities and desire for connection. Both realize that, in our efforts to protect and raise up our daughters, we have neglected our sons’ emotional and physical development. Instead, Orenstein relies on the revealing and sometimes painfully intimate interviews she conducted over the course of two years with boys aged 16 to 22, and Natterson draws from years of practical experience as a pediatrician, and her ability to boil down complicated scientific studies to their tablespoon of curative parental medicine.īut the personal stakes for both authors are clear, and urgent.
BOYS & SEX Young Men on Hookups, Love, Porn, Consent & Navigating the New Masculinity By Peggy OrensteinĭECODING BOYS New Science Behind the Subtle Art of Raising Sons By Cara Nattersonīoth Peggy Orenstein and Cara Natterson have children who - deliberately, I assume - are mentioned only occasionally in their excellent books about raising better boys.
