Rating: 
Summary: Coddling is not the answer
Review: This was a book I was assigned to read for a graduate level diversity class. In a group consistng of myself and three women, our opinions on specific topics in the book varied. However, we all felt that the author was telling us that we need to coddle our boys.
In "Teachers as Cultural Workers"(1998), Paulo Freire discusses the differences between authoritative, authoritarian, and passive teaching, with the passive approach caused by parents and teachers "coddling" the child. Boys do need to be expressive, but not to the extent that Pollack would have.
The other issue I have with the book is his noted studies. Not only is the reader left not knowing which study belongs to which statement, but also some of the studies are extremely outdated. For example, Pollack notes results of a study linking gay boys to being hereditary through a report from 1953! ...
Rating: 
Summary: Questionable theories in a feminist and PC world
Review: Try "Bringing up Boys" by Dr. James Dobson
Rating: 
Summary: interesting and helpful
Review: very helpful and insightful. The first few chapters are very interesting, the others cover so many different topics it is hard to believe the author did them justice.
Rating: 
Summary: a very important book
Review: Very thought-provoking. To be a fully functioning human being, one must be able to express all emotions without shame or fear of ridicule. Released from the emotional straight jacket imposed by the boyhood myth of what a real man is, men are less threatened, more secure in who they are and all of us benefit.
Rating:
Summary: This kind of thinking is part of the problem not the cure
Review: While there are kernels of truth in this book -- boys relative to girls are doing worse in school, the path to manhood is more perilous than the path to womanhood -- the underlying premise is pure bunk,and merely reflects today's cultural hatred of all things male. Who says men have historically been without feeling or vulnerablility and ability to express their feelings? This is nonsense. You would have to live in an utter vacuum without any awareness of history or literature or art or religion or anything to believe that the ideal of manhood implies lack of emotion or lack of caring or sensitivity. Yes some men have been hardened and some men and women have used shame to raise children - but this reflects the fallibility of human nature not some historical failure of the culture to understand what men are or should be. The book's premises are questionable in several salient respects. It suggests that boys need to express their feelings more and then indicates that boys typically express their feelings through action not talk. It equates enforcing behavior codes with shaming and rejection. It suggests the answer to the problem is to give even greater authority to public institutions to raise our children by assigning one-on-one mentors to each child in the public schools. As if the public schools weren't already trying to do more than they are capable of or even should be attempting. The author derides traditional notions of masculinity and then emphasizes the importance of sports to healthy development of masculine identity. Come on folks. Boys are in trouble today because our institutions and the cultural elite despise maleness and are hostile to all things male. Boys are being asked to conform to unrealistic expectations, and they are in frightening numbers being asked to do it without fathers.
Rating:
Summary: Our Boys Need Our Help
Review: William Pollack has called us all to action to save our boys. He has researched and captured the problems that our boys face today. Read this book and hear our boys cry for help. Share these insights with your friends and family, and make a difference to help save our boys.
Rating:
Summary: Our Boys Need Our Help
Review: William Pollack has called us all to action to save our boys. He has researched and captured the problems that our boys face today. Read this book and hear our boys cry for help. Share these insights with your friends and family, and make a difference to help save our boys.
Rating:
Summary: Don't Send A Boy To Do A Man's Job
Review: You thought from the title I was going to diss this book, right? Wrong. Pollack, one of the Cambridge/Boston group of men working on issues of boys' transition to manhood, has written a fascinating account of the effects of U.S. "boys'/men's culture" on real live boys. Note the geographic specific. Because growing up male in other countries/cultures can be quite different from boys' experience here. The United States can be seen as not only a genetic melting pot, but a cultural mix of attitudes toward maleness, some of which are downright unhealthy. Take, for example, the "can't admit it" attitude toward pain (which unfortunately is now seeping over into girls' culture), and where in the world did that come from, anyway? Try Native American cultures (North and South American)...try the Norse and Germans (anyone in Minnesota or Illinois recognize this?)...try the Celtic stiff upper lip that persists in England. What Pollack brings to his work is a conviction that just because things have been one way doesn't mean we can't make them healthier. Recall that the root word of "healthy" and "holy" is the very same...then listen to Pollack as he describes the pain in boys' lives. We all need to grow. Growing as a society in ways that produce healthier boys is something we needed as of yesterday! For those who believe that boys' spending more time with their dads is THE one answer -- doesn't it depend on the dad? I know some great ones, you probably do, too. On the other hand, I know some terrible ones, dads who tear their sons apart, sometimes merely through their words and toss-away attitudes. As "The Courage To Raise Good Men" points out, young and adolescent boys need moms, too -- sometimes as an antidote to dads' doses of "men's culture", which often includes the misunderstood application of "spare the rod and spoil the child". (This advice was written for men, not for women; at that time, mothers had responsibility for disciplining all girls, and boys up to 13; the rod -- as anyone who shepherds knows -- is used not to punish or abuse lambs/sheep, but to guide them from danger, and save them when they've fallen somewhere they can't get out of.) Anger is now nearly the only emotion most boys and men allow themselves to express. What Pollack aims for is a society that allows boys and men to acknowledge all their feelings and seek help to express them in healthy ways. To acknowledge responsibility for actions they've taken that have hurt themselves or others -- and correct them (something at issue in the current presidential campaign). Result? Less sarcasm/fighting/abuse/addiction/suicide. In other words, less pain. So what's wrong with that?
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