Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys
by Dan Kindlon, Michael Thompson
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Book Summary Information
Author: Dan Kindlon, Michael ThompsonBrand: PBS
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2000-04-04
ISBN: 0345434854
Number of pages: 298
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Product features:
- ISBN13: 9780345434852
- Condition: New
- Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!
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Book Reviews of Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys
Book Review: A good mind opener
Summary: 4 Stars
I am a father of two boys and I came across this book by searching on Amazon for books that could help me improve my parenting skills. I love my boys and I consider my parenting as a full time job. I read other readers comments and I did some research before I purchased a couple of books, Raising Cain being one of them. My main motivation in buying these books is derived from the frustration that I experience when I know I fail to understand my son on some issues and also from my worry that I do not understand what is going on in a life of a young man in today's world.
Raising Cain opened my eyes in many aspects. It is written well and it makes no assumptions about the level of knowledge of the reader. It talks about the relationship between the boy and the father and between the boy and the mather, then it talks about general attitude of society on boys with short comparisons with the girls world. The books continues in discussing boys' psychology explaining how their inner world is built, what factors influence it most and consequences of their influence. It talks about drinking, drugs, sex and violence.
There are some very good positive points that I took with me and there are some points that are missing from the book despite the fact that they are quite important.
I can summarise the book by saying that it does a very good job explaining the need of talking to our sons and helping them to see their feelings as a way of diffusing tension, but it fails (in my view) in providing the tools that parent can use in implementing this concept.
The books showed clearly that the lack of fathers' positive involvment in sons education causes a lot of damage in the long term. The boys have an anger that is internalised over the years and it vents, for some, through violent and aggressive behavior. That is why most of the violent crimes are committed by males. I liked the chapter that talks about relationship between fathers and sons (I am a father and I was interested in that). However, the books stops there, by limitting this part to a description that is most of the time negative, without much practical outcome. Although the book observes the fact that the studies show how critical this interaction is, and that the education system lacks male teachers and that all this compounded with the huge impact of high rate of divorce that leaves sons without male models, puts the boys at an enormous disadvantage at the start of their adult life, the book offers only 20 pages dedicated to this subject (father-son relationship). Mothers get 37 pages and the rest is dedicated to drinking, drugs, violence and sex. The authors talk almost as much about masturbation as they talk about father-son relationship.
It is good that the authors talk about the big problems the boys have; I felt however they insist too much on the negatives by using stories, their personal recount of sessions they conducted as school psychologists (consultants). I was looking for some advice that I could use as a tool for parenting, but I haven't found much support from that point of view. For instance, the book has a chapter called Anger and Violence that dedicates 21 pages to describe various experiences and discuss some general observations on this topic. At the end, it concludes with Strategies and Circuit Breakers: Teaching Boys do Defuse Anger. That section spreads across one page (!) and it has no strategy. The last sentence says it all, and I have the impression that it is representative for the entire book in showing how advice is provided by the authors: "If you can get a boy to figure out what it is he's mad about, then he's in a position to begin to change the destructive pattern of responses in his life". It sounds logical, I agree with that, but I feel it would have been helpful to get more concrete advise about how you do it.
Overall, the book is very good, I recommend it to anyone who wants to understand their sons. It does a very good job in showing that their education is more than instilling discipline and it is very important to handle their pride with care. I followed this book with reading "The Good Son: Shaping the Moral Development of Our Boys and Young Men" by Michael Gurian. I found this book extremely useful and complementing Rasing Cain very well. I gave me what I was missing from the first book: more practical parenting advice and uptodate information from research in neurology and psychology. I would strongly recommend the purchase of both books. For me it was a very good investment.
Summary of Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys
In Raising Cain, Dan Kindlon, Ph.D., and Michael Thompson, Ph.D., two of the country's leading child psychologists, share what they have learned in more than thirty-five years of combined experience working with boys and their families. They reveal a nation of boys who are hurting--sad, afraid, angry, and silent. Kindlon and Thompson set out to answer this basic, crucial question: What do boys need that they're not getting? They illuminate the forces that threaten our boys, teaching them to believe that "cool" equals macho strength and stoicism. Cutting through outdated theories of "mother blame," "boy biology," and "testosterone," the authors shed light on the destructive emotional training our boys receive--the emotional miseducation of boys.Kindlon and Thompson make a compelling case that emotional literacy is the most valuable gift we can offer our sons, urging parents to recognize the price boys pay when we hold them to an impossible standard of manhood. They identify the social and emotional challenges that boys encounter in school and show how parents can help boys cultivate emotional awareness and empathy--giving them the vital connections and support they need to navigate the social pressures of youth.
Reviving Ophelia, Mary Pipher's groundbreaking book, exposed the toxic environment faced by adolescent girls in our society. Now, from the same publisher, comes Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys by Dan Kindlon and Michael Thompson, which does the same for adolescent boys. Boys suffer from a too-narrow definition of masculinity, the authors assert as they expose and discuss the relationship between vulnerability and developing sexuality, the "culture of cruelty" boys live in, the "tyranny of toughness," the disadvantages of being a boy in elementary school, how boys' emotional lives are squelched, and what we, as a society, can do about all this without turning "boys into girls." "Our premise is that boys will be better off if boys are better understood--and if they are encouraged to become more emotionally literate," the authors assert. As a tool for change, Kindlon and Thompsom present the well-developed "What Boys Need," seven points that reach far beyond the ordinary psychobabble checklist and slogan list. Kindlon (researcher and psychology professor at Harvard and practicing psychotherapist specializing in boys) and Thompson (child psychologist, workshop leader, and staff psychologist of an all-boys school) have created a chilling portrait of male adolescence in America. Through personal stories and theoretical discussion, this well-needed book plumbs the well of sadness, anger, and fear in America's teenage sons. --Ericka Lutz
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