Has anyone read, 'Raising boys'? Shocked when i saw it!

[threecurrantbuns]

I walked by this book the other day and had to double take, didnt seem pc to me but after saying so to another mum she talked as if its a well known book.

I have two dds a one ds (my youngest) so maybe thats why ive never come across it until now.

I was shocked at first, thinking surely we should parent our children the same way whether they are boys or girls!??

But now im wondering whether to take a peek at it, i have become curious, i didnt grow up around boys, just had sisters, maybe there is something im missing!?

sorry three current buns... Didn't realise auto correct had done that.

Biddulph doesn't much like nursery care for anybody under about 3yo, but he thinks boys are especially bad at making their needs known at the pre-verbal stage, and yet esp. need close emotional bonds (more so than girls). Most of his book is about making little boys into emotionally balanced men, btw. He's not half as condemning of other forms of childcare. Tbh, his observations tally with my own experience (girl and boys), CMs have better potential for forming consistent relationships and secure environments.

wish I hadn't looked at those threads discussing other books on boy-girl diffs & feminism, reminds me why I avoid the feminist section on MN, my head hurts now!

I didnt look either but my immediate reaction was that Immaculada had wandered over from the feminism section! I'd never heard of her before and they rarely come out of their hideout unless it's to grind an axe about feminism on another thread where they spot a tenuous connection.

I wander everywhere, free-range Goblin.
So I like the idea of looking as a range of ideas, rather than rushing for dogma and holding true to one theory to the exclusion of all others. Parenting is more complicated than that.
There are some very good debates on the feminist boards, it really isn't just a group mind and one thought.
My thought on Immaculada was that according to her profile, she has one daughter who is very young still, so her opinions and experiences will be coloured by that. As mine are by being the person I am and with the children I have.

Absolutely right. And putting gender to one side for a moment, people with one very young child often have ideals and principles that they somehow manage to shake off and rethink as the years slip by and subsequent babies arrive - and the realisation dawns that parenting is not always about ideals, but about dealing with realities.

Interesting to watch isn't it?
Especially in those that were so very certain of how they would parent in all aspects of their lives.

But we were all the same, I'm sure.

Oh that's nice of you, fellatio

I regularly post on feminism but as I more regularly post elsewhere, I assume I am allowed to post on here with my views. Is that ok?

If you try not to be scathing and read what she says, Immaculada makes some good points and provides some equally as valid options for reading as Raising Boys. The science on boys and girls is not as clear cut as people think. There is an excellent chapter in Living Dolls by Natasha Waletr - excellent book, my not exactly militant feminist DH picked it up from my pile of books when bored on holiday and to his amazemebt read it right through, found it compelling and very insightful into how he wants to raise our children - about how scientific studies actually show that it is not as simple as boy babies doing one thing andgirlbabies doing another. Often the results are very mixed in studies which suggest that ut is individual children that differ rather than it being gender that determines it. But that gender differences do come to the fore quickly so that it is clearly social conditioning that has an effect, it also talks about how one or two studies showing clear differences are much more spoken about in the media than the many less conclusive ones - often becauase they are easier to report and create headlines from and more clearcut than the majority of studies showing no gender difference, or even showing that male babies often do the traditionally feminine things more.

So please don't discount immaculada's book suggestions just because they appear to be feminist. They do actually have some interesting things to say on raising children, at least as interesting as biddulph's book.
As for this book, I was given Raising Boys by my sil who loves it. I've read it. It is ok but not brilliant, but then I never had any intention of raiding my ds in a 'macho' way And he has good male role models so none of it was rocket science to me. But probably worth a browse, more than many parenting books.

I was heartily pissed off that he kept whining 'boys are different' as if 90% of children are girls and boys had been treated badly for centuries. I don't think as society that we are any worse at raising boys than girls so got a bit annoyed that the assumption was we all needed to eb told how to raise boys - and girls could be left for when they wanted to make a bit more money by rehashing their arguments in a clearly inferior book.

But it was an ok read so worth dipping into. Just not worth becoming your parenting bible, IMO

Many apologies for crap typing and grammar. On an iPad and not yet got to grips with it.

And I have a ds and dd so I am very interested in whether I should parent differently or not etc. It's not just theory to me...

I've read the books and I have 2 DS's. Read the Raising Boys book when DS1 was younger and thought it was wrong. None of the things that it mentioned applied or related to DS1. It left me wondering how could a book be so wrong but be so popular then along came DS2 with his need for rough and tumble, playfighting, getting dirty and risk taking and then I knew why he book was popular. Boys are all different and lets face it there is no book written that covers everything you will encounter as a parent. Some are jolly good reads though, especially if you need a laugh!

There are plenty of people who dip in and out of all sorts of topics, but equally there is a group of posters who rarely post on anything unless they can find a feminist angle on it to hammer home. I've nver heard of Immaculada so I have no idea which camp she falls into.

I'm quite sure she has many interesting things to say on many subjects, but given the way she challenged my post I was just making the point that I my hunch was that she would be someone who hangs out in Feminism. And I see from her links that I was right.

You don't need to be Sherlock Holmes to guess that someone who posts in Feminism would come onto a thread about parenting boys to say that, basically, there is no difference in the make-up of a male brain and a female brain, and that any gender differences other than physical ones are purely as a result of imposed social and cultural constructs.

However, IMVHO it's just not true.

Thanks for your support for my post, tortilla!

I'm sorry other posters on here felt the need to patronise me because I am a comparatively inexperienced mother and of a DD at that. I appreciate that I have a lot to learn and I'm not setting myself up as an expert. But I don't think there's any harm in offering an alternative point of view and suggesting other areas of reading that the OP (or anyone else reading the thread) might find helpful or at the very least, interesting.

I don't actually believe nurture is solely responsible for creating a child's attitudes and responses. I believe every baby is born with its own unique personality and set of characteristics. Which is why I think it can be potentially limiting to either gender to make assumptions about their behaviour based on their sex. Girls and boys alike.

But clearly, the way we interact with our babies/toddlers/children has a huge influence on the way they behave and the attitudes they adopt. And IMO it's helpful to be aware that we are not parenting in a vacuum - our DC soak up influences and copy behaviour from whoever they come into contact with. Hence why your DS, fellatio, started gun play, despite your own efforts to encourage him to play with toys not necessarily associated with boys (and good for you for doing that!)

Anyway, I won't go on because I realise I'm in danger of derailing this thread, which is about a book which gives specifics about parenting boys.

One thing I would add is that while I only have one very young DD (thus far) I'm also aunt to 10 nieces and nephews and while it's not the same as being their mother, it's been interesting watching them grow up from babies. One sister, for example, has 5 DC, two of which are DSs. But two of her three DDs had far more "boistrous" personalities when they were younger than her DSs. I'm not sure what kind of hard-wiring was involved there...

boys and girls are different

big shock

I wasn't intending to sound patronising, and I agree that wide reading of different materials is a good thing.
I just meant that everyone works from their own experiences, as a parent and as a person who has been parented.
I certainly went into it with a mental list of things my parents did that I was going to do, and a much longer list of things that I was never going to do.
Both of which have changed over the years.

Yes could not agree more. Boys and girls are different!!! I've read this book and loved it, having come from a family of 4 girls and no brothers I had very little experience of exactly how different boys could be from a parenting perspective.

I now have 1 DS and this book helped make sense out of a lot of those wonderful differences. Its beautifully written, and I loved it, parts of it actually reduced me to tears! Cannot for the life of me understand how this book could be "not PC" !!!

Children do have some 'hard-wiring' but it doesn't just come in two varieties, pink and blue. So one small boy might be 'naturally' interested in traditional boy toys despite their parents trying to raise them in a more gender-neutral way, and another might be not interested in them particularly, even though their parents always encourage him to play with cars etc.

And of course, there is massive external pressure as they grow up from advertising, friends etc. to conform, which produces its own differences. For example, small girls going through a 'pink stage'. No way is that genetic.

With regard to the question the OP asked, I guess that you have to parent every child a bit differently but also you might have to encourage boys and girls in different ways - e.g. as they grow older boys probably face more peer pressure not to work hard at school and girls around looks, weight issues etc. The book Pink 'Brain, Blue Brain' which someone else mentioned is an interesting read.

I understand what you are saying Immac and I am agreeing with much of it - I did say in my first post that I don't mean to lump all people of the same gender into on stereotype. But living in a house with four males who are all very comfortable around women, very emotionally intelligent and very 'evolved', I can vouch for the fact that I spend most of my evenings in my room on MN because the TV is full of loud high-octane 'action' films that do nothing at all for me, but they seem to hold a huge amount of fascination for eveyone else. No amount of my telling them how much they would love Pride And Prejudice if only they'd give it a try, makes any difference!

Of course not all males are made the same. But the point is, most are. Trying to ignore this and 'train' your boy children out of behaviours that may be seen as undesirable to most women is short-sighted and naive. Better to embrace the reality of excesses of testosterone in growing boys and focus on channelling it effectively and intelligently. And that doesn't mean I think we should throw all our sons in the army or the nearest boxing ring!

But as MrsWeasley says, it's not so much that boys and girls are different but that children are different. I think, and a lot of the science backs this up, that the genetic differences between individual children are not gendered, but are individual, and the generalised boy-girl differences that we see are actually more nurture than nature.

My DS at age 3 loves mud and worms and getting filthy (currently soaking wet in the garden watering plants and hunting spiders), and loves trains and cars. People always say to me 'he's such a boy'. It pisses me off because they ignore the fact that he is very sensitive to and nurturing of his baby sister (often when they are telling me how boyish he is), enjoys reading, is incredibly articulate, loves nothing more than a cuddle on my lap and enjoys cooking more than practically anything else. So while we as his parents see and work hard to parent the whole child, other people less close to him emphasise his 'boyish' traits, and then add him as another 'yes' on their inner checklist about how boys are different to girls. And as he becomes older and becomes more influenced by people outside the family, the boyish traits will no doubt become more emphasised. It makes me want to cry, or holler with frustration - I don't want society to beat out the wonderfully soft, thoughtful side of my beautiful boy. So my job as a parent is to never make him feel he needs to drop the other traits that make him who he is, and to respect and nurture those as much, if not more than, the more 'boyish' traits. Raising Boys does help a little because it makes the point that boys need nurturing etc, but I think anything that says or implies that you can/should raise one gender one way and another gender another is on dodgy ground because it can end up somehow making gender a more important determinant than the individual.

A friend has just offered to lend me this book so I'll reserve judgement until I read it. DS is 21 months and for ages already people have been pointing out 'boy' traits in him, which, like tortilla, I find intensely annoying. That and telling me his gorgeous long eyelashes are 'wasted on a boy'.

I have an acquaintence with a DS the same age who is obsessed with making him into a 'proper boy'. She stays away from our playgroup because there aren't enough boys (my DS is frequently the only one and I don't care!). Her DS already has a season ticket for football. From quite an early age she refused to comfort her DS when he fell or got pushed by another child, saying he needed to 'toughen up'.

Obviously we have quite different ideas and this has led to my backing away from her (she's also racist and homophobic so I've plenty of reasons).

Yankncock i feel sorry for your friends ds.

oh and fwiw i have seen imaculada post on many parenting threads that are not about gender.

Just ordered the book from Amazon, have a brand new ds and am now intrigued!

Of course not all males are made the same. But the point is, most are.
I think you and I will just have to agree to differ on that one, fellatio!
Unless when you said "made" you were talking about socially constructed roles and expectations, in which case, I can agree there's a lot of truth in that assertion....

Thanks for vouching for me, MFM .
I do indeed post a lot in Feminism because it is an area that fascinates me and yes, now and again, feminist viewpoints are mentioned in my posts in other areas. But I'm not a one-trick pony by any means, I'll poke my nose into any subject where I think I can interfere help.

...well whatever you do, just make sure your DS(s) know how to cook and do housework.

It'll make them extremely popular with their future girlfriends (or boyfriends) and stop them coming round with bags of laundry after they've left home...

nothing better than coming back to a thread to find so many responses, love it!

Thanks all for posting and i now have a big wish list on amazon and cant wait for some of my purchases to arrive