Customer Reviews

Manhood

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I'm no sociologist - but I know that Steve Biddulph strikes a deep chord. He gives an enlightened view on men and our relatively poor understanding of our role in life, sexuality and our relationships.

As a father with a son of my own, the issues he raises about growing up and coming of age have been very valuable to me in understanding what's happening with my son (and myself). The book encouraged me to think about my father, my brothers, my good friends in a very positive and constructive light. The writing has good strong humour yet it pulls no punches.

There's too little good literature on fatherhood to miss this one.

This is the most important book I have ever read on being a man, fathers and sons. Iron John: A Book About Men comes a close second and really inspired me to eventually read this one.

If you like me come from a divorced family where you had very little exposure to your dad, read this book immediately. So many of the feelings I could never described have been brilliantly articulated by Steve Biddulph. It's great that I have done The Breakthrough Experience: A Revolutionary New Approach to Personal Transformation on my dad about 2 years ago and now these books confirm the path that I have been on since then. My dad has not been in the best health in the last few years with a few mild heart attacks to many. It's important for me to get to know him on a deeper level. And that's the next challenge for me now.

This book is such a worthwhile book. It gives men an understanding of themselves, it gives women an understanding of why men find it so hard to relate, be it in a relationship or in life in general. If men could use this book to help heal themselves of their historical baggage they would surely feel liberated and be able to engage in deep and meaningful relationships that would enrich their lives as well as their loved ones.
Dr Gunta Krumins-Caldwell author of On Silver Wings

I've been given this book to read by a woman. Perhaps that would be the first sign that this book does not really teach or help anyone become a "man". There are some interesting points regarding the overdue social revolution of men, something similar to that of women in the 60s & 70s....
The book does touch on some common traits of younger men (teens to early twenties) and gives relatively decent direction. That's the good...

The bad:
There is this constant impression that somehow men have lost their nature and that they need to regain it. As if we are all a generation of men raised by women. It is quite possible that male involvement in raising children today is more pronounced than ever before, but that is a different story...

Often the book gives a fond reflection of the past being better. But the truth is that in the past cruelty to children was significantly worse.

Allegedly, fathers in the (historical) past had a better and closer relationships with their children...it would be all too easy to find faults with this line of thinking, an assumption at best, gross error at its worst.

The book also makes some basics assumptions towards the nature of people & men. As if our basic nature is good, or bad. What makes a "man" be a "man"? in this case, the obvious question is answered subtly by the author's preconcieved notion of manhood.
Supposedly there might be something wrong with a man the does not cry, or that is less sensitive. Perhaps this man is not connected with his "nature" or feelings. As if it's impossible to be quite healthy, normal & simply less sensitive.


In short, no one can tell you you are a man. You either know it or you don't. If you need to prove it, you're not.

If you are a younger man, (say under 25) you might find some helpful insights in this book. Remember that this is not an absolute truth to being a man, it is simply one person's opinion on the matter.

This book is ultimately a disappointment, and takes far too long to expound the limited number of worthwhile ideas. In addition, SB has harvested (and acknowledged) huge tracts of text from 3 or 4 other books, most notably "Iron John" by Robert Bly, in what could most charitably be called a homage to Bly.

The author is most assured in the chapters on relations between men and women, and on the needs of boys in an increasingly feminized educational environment (at least in Australia). The assumption that most men hate their fathers presumably represents a selection bias from his clinical practice. At worst he descends into very sincere nonsense invoking the (flawed) myth of the Noble Savage, the salvation of men lying with re-introduction of 'initiations'. Regrettably he chooses to advocate the local model of the Australian Aboriginal population as inspiration: a sadder and more wretched example of the failure to meld the old with the new would be hard to find, and the example is further sullied by the recent revelations that the initiation ceremonies have sometimes been nothing more than unassailable opportunities for the depravity of child sexual abuse. He also wears his politics on his sleeve, with the exhortation to men everywhere to find eco-friendly employment; the risible nonsense that lists a parliamentary oxygen thief such as Bob Brown with the likes of Churchill, Gandhi and the Dalai Lama brings him little credibility (Brown was most memorably described by the late Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin as needing to be "taken outside and given a good belting").

This is a flabby book with pretensions (unfulfilled) to be more than a self-help book. There are some points that resonate, and some worthwhile strategies, but by the end of the book, rather than a re-invigorated male, what he has really crafted is a Sensitive New Age Wildman, uttering all the standard pieties and observing all the appropriate 'correctness'. It doesn't work.

Though this is well intentioned and the goals seem good it is too 'New Agey', fanciful and probably unappealing to most men.

Biddulph makes the mistake of thinking our original human nature is all good when it is a mixture of good and bad - as all nature is. He does half-acknowledge that certain tribal rituals can be cruel and violent but does not fully acknowledge how much war, conflict, competition and hierarchy there has been throughout our past.

The bonding and security males experience within a tribe are from their relatives - tribes are mostly made up of close male relatives. Females, of course, are sold or exchanged at puberty so their experience is very different. Polygyny is common in more traditional societies and it is only simple logic that many males would be losers in reproductive competition - either controlled within the group by the elders or being killed in tribal warfare which was largely about stealing resources including young females.

Women today are not as 'sorted' as SB presumes. The main reason life is different for females is that they are at their peak reproductive status from puberty till about 30 whereas males are then only just achieving theirs. Competition between males for these females is what makes life difficult for males - as it does throughout most of nature.

It is ancestral masculinity that brought us to where we are today - the human world today has obviously been created by human behaviour through time and not by some mysterious outside force. It can only be human ancestral traits that led to industrialization and our modern world.

It is quite possible that those traits are today maladaptive - such as modern weaponry and warfare being more suicidal than spears were.

There are interesting points in this book and the goals for male behaviour are certainly attractive but to think the answer is about getting back to some ancestral maleness that did not exist (and whatever did exist only spawned the modern world anyway)demolishes the argument.