The hidden struggles of American boyhood

"To Raise a Boy" by Emma Brown

Emma Brown saves one of the most extraordinary moments of the book for the end but it gives us a sense of the loving challenges that await her as a parent.
She gathers her two-and-a-half-year-old son into her arms early one morning and as they cuddle on the living room couch, she whispers endearments into his ear and contemplates what the future holds.
“I worry,” she writes, “that Gus will learn that he must be tough and lustful, that he will have to be hard in every way and all the time.”
Brown, an investigative reporter for the Washington Post who helped to break Christine Blasey Ford’s sexual assault allegations against Brett Kavanaugh, had assumed that raising her daughter Juniper would be more difficult, more perilous in a culture that still pushes back against confident, fearless girls. It was territory she knew, having made it through her own coming of age.
But when she had a son she put her reporting skills to work learning — as she puts it — “what my son is going to deal with as he grows up so I stand a better chance of understanding how to help him through it."

And what she found was harrowing but hopeful: Coaches who are countering the sexualized assault, harassment and hazing that goes on between boys; growing awareness of the messaging our culture sends to boys — including boys of color — that they deny their feelings of fear, uncertainty and sadness; and new research that guides parents into helping boys traverse the shoals of adolescence into self-assured, kind young men.

Brown writes: “More parents and teachers and coaches are starting to realize that we owe our sons the same message we are trying to give our daughters: you can become whoever you want and pursue whatever you dream.”
My Thread Must-Read is Emma Brown’s book, “To Raise A Boy.” Brown will join me on air for the hour Wednesday at 9 a.m.