Michael Gurian - Saving Our Sons: A New Path for Raising Healthy and Resilient Boys

A New Path for Raising Healthy and Resilient Boys

Dr. Michael Gurian

The New York Times Bestselling Author of The Wonderof Boys and The Minds of Boys

With Special Sections on Motivating Boys and ManagingTheir Technology Use

Copyright 2017 Michael Gurian. All rightsreserved.

Published by Gurian Institute Press / Published atSmashwords

The Gurian Institute, LLC

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Readers should be aware that Internet websitesoffered as citations and/or sources for further information mayhave changed or disappeared between the time this was written andwhen it was read. Readers should be aware that some of theanecdotes in this book, including some gathered from media reports,are composites of two or more comments or stories that needed to beshortened for narrative flow. In no cases have meanings beenchanged, nor were there any changes of statistics. In case studiesin this book, names have been changed, as well as details thatmight invade the confidentiality of the person or family.

Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: The adviceand strategies contained herein may not be suitable for yoursituation. This publication is sold with the understanding that theauthor and publisher are not engaged in rendering medical, health,or any other kind of personal professional services in the book.The reader should consult his or her medical, health, or othercompetent professional before adopting any of the suggestions inthis book or drawing inferences from it. The author and publisherspecifically disclaim all responsibility for any liability, loss orrisk, personal or otherwise, which is incurred as a consequence,directly or indirectly, of the use and application of any of thecontents of this book.

Books and other materials by Michael Gurian and theGurian Institute can be accessed through most brick-and-mortarstores, most online outlets, and the websites:www.michaelgurian.com and www.gurianinstitute.com.

Soft Cover ISBN-10: 0-9839959-4-X

Soft Cover ISBN-13: 978-0-9839959-4-4

For my father, Dr. Jay P. Gurian

In the memory of my mother, Julia Gurian

and

For my beloved family: Gail, Gabrielle, andDavita

In thirty yearsof working with children, I have never been more worried than I amright now for our sons. Some boys are doing very well but millionsare disappearing into violence, imprisonment, social withdrawal,listlessness, virtual worlds, and real life self-destruction. If wedont end this national pattern, our boys and young men will becomeincreasingly destructive, both to others and themselves becausenearly every social problem we face in our civilization today unemployment, income equality, incarceration rates, religiousextremism, domestic abuse, mental illness, health care inequities,and painful violence against women intersects in some way withthe state of boyhood in America.

This book provides a professional andpersonal blueprint for social revolution on behalf of our sons.Specifically, I have written this book to assist you in deployingthese ideas and strategies in your home, school, neighborhood, andin our larger culture.

1. Many of the social systems within which we raiseand care for our children schools, neighborhoods, socialprograms, and families have changed in the last fifty years suchthat males in general face systematic neglect despite ourpublic presentation of males as inherently privileged.

2. To help boys survive and thrive we must alter ourthinking to include all three parts of gender nature, nurture,and culture. Our public, academic, and media attention tomasculine norms and gender stereotypes is no longer enough helpfor boys (or girls) because these stereotypes and norms are not theprimary causes of the problems our children face today.

3. As we look at all aspects of boyhood, we mustmake nature our starting point and baseline. There is a natural boywe can understand, assist, and protect, one boy at a time. Amongthe elements that assault this boy today are hidden neurotoxinsthat attack male genetics and socialization and, thus, can utterlyderail male development yet often go unrecognized in our everydaylives. In this book I will help you find these neuro-toxins andconstruct family plans to protect your boys from them.

4. A non-malicious but also not-benign DominantGender Paradigm has emerged in the last fifty years in TheBig Three (our academic institutions, governmental/legislativeagencies, and media) that deploys a number of superficial ideasabout males that keep male life underserved, under-funded, andunder-nurtured. I will show you ways to understand and confrontthis paradigm in your daily life and local community.

5. Ensuring gender equality for girls and women doesnot require gender sameness. In the new millennium, neuroscienceshows us that males and females are not the same, though theirbrains overlap a great deal across a wide gender spectrum. We cannow build equality without the false premise of sameness, and wemust do so in order to help all children.

6. Its been difficult to revolutionize the lives ofour boys, and thus our men, in part because we confuse the ordinarylives of the majority of males with the lives of alpha and criminalmales. Hyper-focused on the 10 percent (the leader/alpha malesand frightening/pathological males), we neglect the deep needs ofthe majority of our sons, which makes the boy crisis worse, andputs females in greater danger.

7. Now is the right time for revolution becausethere are now significant child development institutions already inexistence around our nation and our world that show specificsuccess-data for saving our sons. Ill provide examples of theseproactive and revolutionary communities and schools throughout thisbook.

8. What we do now to help boys will help girls andwomen, because their needs are interdependent. The oppressor/enemyapproach to womens rights popularized over the last fifty yearshas created a false impression of separation between womens andmens needs in order to uplift women. Now, however, the situationof our sons has become so dire we will not be able to advance thecause of girls and womens equity any further without ending thecruelties and neglect our culture perpetrates on our males.

The social revolution I will ask you toadvance involves some politics and a lot of practical strategies,both at home and in our communities. Thus this book will help youas parents, educators, and caregivers to take to the next levelyour efforts to raise your sons to become the good men you wantthem to be. I believe an advanced kind of parenting is essential inour complex technological world so this book provides you withscience-based best practices for ensuring male maturity anddevelopmental milestones from birth to 25 that fit our newmillenniums technological and social revolutions.

If youve read any of my other books, youknow that my work is multi-cultural. This book will not be a repeatof my previous books except that, like them, it includes currentand new research from more than two dozen different countries andcultures.