The Courage to Raise Good Men

Calling into question the necessity of "male role models," an experienced psychologist shows how our culture sanctions the emotional blighting of young males, offering advice for transforming mother-son relationships and gender roles. 35,000 first printing. $35,000 ad/promo. Tour.

Ever since the Industrial Revolution, the authors assert, our society has required men not only to break away from their mothers, but also from those qualities and emotions associated with "mother." Male offspring are expected to leave home, often before they are ready, and many mothers unconsciously distance their sons physically--by not hugging them, or by sending them away to school--or emotionally--by discouraging their "feminine" emotions or never becoming very close to them. Drawing on clinical case histories and images of men from popular and classic films and fiction, Silverstein, a therapist at the Ackerman Institute for Family Therapy in New York City, and freelance writer Rashbaum convincingly show how this forced gender split results in unhappy, unfulfilled men and perpetuates a patriarchal system that shortchanges men and women alike. Mothers of male offspring, stress the authors, can break through these emotional barriers, or avoid building them, by having the courage to discard cultural conventions of how to raise sons and instead become "agents of their own values."
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

What do men want? Not more wilderness weekends with Robert Bly but closer relationships with their mothers, according to this challenging and compelling study of mother/son relationships. Ever since the Greek goddess Thetis clung too tightly to her infant son, Achilles, and left him the unfortunate legacy of the Achilles heel, mothers have been warned to keep their hands off their sons. If you want your son to grow up to be manly and heroic, so the experts from Freud to Spock counsel, you must not hover, you must let go. But Silverstein, drawing from her 35-year practice as a family therapist as well as her own experiences as a mother, contends that this not-so-benign neglect is responsible for the lion's share of men's problems--for ``lost boys, lonely men, lousy marriages, midlife crises.'' While an expanding civilization may once have required men to separate from their mothers and wives and sail off alone in search of the Golden Fleece, the rules have changed. The frontiers men must cross are internal rather than external. We require men who are brainy rather than brawny, men in touch with the feminine, nurturing parts of themselves and who can protect us from environmental disaster and nuclear annihilation. But even though we no longer need men to slay dragons, we remain trapped in Robert Bly-esque mythologies of masculinity and heroism. Even today, when 25 percent of children under 18 are living in households headed by single women, many mothers, doubting their capacity to be role models, continue to search for father figures for their sons. If mothers trusted their abilities to nurture their sons, to help them become kinder, gentler people, the world would be a better place, Silverstein argues. Literate, perceptive, and provocative--sure to heat up the fires of the gender debate. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

A mover and shaker behind the family therapy movement, Silverstein here questions the way boys are raised to be men. The well-connected Silverstein plans a major author tour.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.