Customer Reviews

Why Boys Don't Talk--and Why It Matters

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We heard the authors on a radio talk show and immediately bought the book. We needed help in communicating with our teenage son and the strategies and insights in this book profoundly altered our perspective. We have since bought the book for friends who also have teenage sons and everyone has had the same positive experience. This is a terrific book and it can really make a difference.

I really enjoyed the helpful suggestions and strategies that I read in Why Boys Don't Talk. The authors make it very clear, that boys don't need to be like girls in order to become more connected to family and friends. I agree that by focusing on boys, we are not forgetting girls. Teaching both boys and girls to be emotionally intelligent is a win win for both. I initially heard the authors being interviewed on the radio. I enjoyed hearing them talk about the subject and found that they write as well as they speak.I must admit that I have referred back to my copy many times since the first time I read it.

One of the authors is "a nationally acclaimed gender equity specialist" and the other has a masters degree from an ed school. Yikes! Those credentials are enough to raise doubts as to whether the book will actually celebrate boys, or join in the popular boy-bashing trend. Indeed, goodly chunks of the book suggest how to get boys to "connect" emotionally, in other words, to be more like girls. But a major clue is the book's treatment of school. A handful of pages are devoted to reciting the now well-known litany of the facts concerning awful performance of boys in schools: poor reading records, grades below those of girls in every subject but math and science, worse graduate rates, the vanishing occurrence of boys on college campuses, and the massive amount of Ritalin dispensed to boys. The authors respond to this list with the usual groundless claims, things like boys are more active and therefore need more activity in schools. But as when delivered by many other authors as well, such "explanations" fail to note that the performance of boys has collapsed over time -- it did not used to be this bad! The clear implication is that we cannot simply suffice with explanations blaming supposed inherent defects in boys (as feminist die-hards would prefer). Instead, we must look for exogenous causes for what has happened to our boys -- in other words, what has changed in the environment that is hurting boys? The obvious nexis of the problem is schools, where in the last few decades progressivist/constructivist theories have devasted traditional instructional approaches. Instead of immersing children in a basis of a solid, fact-based understanding of the world, we now ask them for touchie-feelie essays on how they feel about obscure topics they've been taught nothing about. By emphasizing chattiness (a clear advantage for girls), we've sent our boys into a tailspin. You won't find a word about this in this book. For the real story, look for sources such as the Illinois Loop website, in discussing gender bias issues.