Raising Feminist Boys: How to Talk with Your Child about Gender, Consent, and Empathy by Bobbi Wegner

Raising Feminist Boys: How to Talk with Your Child about Gender, Consent, and Empathy Reviews

• 
  Jerilyn

  This book isn't without it's problems, but overall this is an excellent starting point for any parent or caregiver who not only has boys and young men, but also wants to understand more about what feminism is and what it isn't.
  
  This book offers a lot of insight into what feminism means for families and how a feminist upbringing benefits everyone. It benefits women and girls, it benefits the community, and yes, it benefits men and boys in equal measure. Femism is about equality for all, respect for all, and choice for all. This book is great at laying that frame work. I feel that a person who is... let's say scared of the idea of feminism they've been sold, may be convinced by this book. At least the first few chapters.
  
  My main problem with the book is that it is written for upper middle class white people. Educated, Christian, American, Nerotypical, Cisgender, Suburban, privileged people. Am I missing one? The author calls herself out on it once or twice, but never corrects herself. She offers one way of doing things, one way of seeing things, and if you don't tick most of the boxes listed above you may be left feeling confused, helpless, or even frustrated.
  
  For example, the author advises introducing your child to more diverse populations and expanding their social circle. She suggests enrolling your child in a club or class on the other side of town where they can be with people who don't look like them and learn empathy.
  
  OK. Hold up. Wait a minute. There are a lot of assumptions there to unpack.
  
  First of all, and forgive me if I can't remember exactly how she phrased it, but she is assuming the reader is white. I am, but if I wasn't I might feel uncomfortable with this suggestion.
  
  Second, she's assuming the reader can enroll their child in a class. That takes time, transportation, and money.
  
  She's assuming that the reader has a choice in what class to send their child. Again, time and money and transportation are key. Also, what if you live in a town where there is only one option? Drive to another town?
  
  Spoiler alert, I live in such a town.
  
  Not only is there only a few options for any particular childhood interest, but there is no other side of town. My town has one side, ok. I have to work with what I got, and what I got is 99% white.
  
  She's also assuming that there aren't other barriers to just enrolling your boy in a class. What about accessibility for disabilities and neurodiversity? What about boys who may not have the easiest time expanding their social circle and would clam up if dropped off in a different part of town with kids they do not know?
  
  I wish she would have acknowledged how difficult it can be to parent with these ideals in mind when you lack certain privileges.
  
  Not to mention, anyone else feel like the suggestion is just... icky? I couldn't help but think of a cruise ship dumping a bunch of tourist on an island so they can "try on" the customs for a week and then leave and go back to their real lives. While I think seeking out diversity is good and the author does give some good advice on how to do that, I don't think finding a karate class in another zip code is the best model for that.
  
  Through parts of this book I wondered if I was too poor and too rural to be a feminist. That's nonsense of course, but it does help me realize why others in my demographic might shy away from a book like this.
  
  Discussing sex and learning how to be sex positive with your child is a large portion of this book, and again I was left questioning if I was truly qualified to raise a feminist boy. Sure, I nodded along in agreement with frank discussions about body parts and answering questions as they come up. Shame free, judgement free, completely open. Got it, all good. Consent? We've been working on that since day one. But then she says, and forgive me I don't remember the exact adjectives, but she says "Teach your son how to be a... something something... lover". It was something like giving and attentive (I was listening to an audio book so the exacting wording slips my mind).
  
  It does not matter what the adjectives were. I will not teach my son to be any kind of lover. I will teach him how to be an attentive and giving (or whatever) person. I will help him transition into being an attentive and giving friend and help him see how that relates to romantic relationships. I will model being an attentive and giving partner. I will answer any questions I can about sex and romance and help him relate it back to his attentive and giving qualities. I will make sure he understands consent and knows it is part of being attentive and giving, but the kind of lover he becomes is ultimately up to him.
  
  Look, I get it. I understand. I know when the author said that she intended I do all the things I mentioned above and did not mean that I should sit my 5 year old down with diagrams and pop quizzes about how to be an attentive lover. But it was off putting. I had to pause the book and talk myself through all of the above to ease the dissonance between my feminism and my cringe reaction to the word "lover".
  
  At another point she suggests I tell my son that I enjoy talking about his penis and find it fun! I'll save money on his future therapy and skip that, thank you. I will tell him I enjoy talking to him and answering his question. I will say I enjoy watching him grow up and that it's fun to share and learn together, but I think I can be a sex positive parent who creates a shame free zone without saying "I enjoy talking about your penis". That is to say, I can talk about a penis with care and without judgement without verbalizing enjoyment of said discussion about said penis.
  
  It's a lot of that. While I appreciated her modeling her way of talking about things, and it certainly gave my husband and I a few things to talk about and get on the same page, I wish she had offered more than one way to be sex positive. I did some soul searching and while yes, I have some of my own shame and hang ups to work on, I think there is more than one way to discuss sex with kids that honors the needs and preferences of the child and parent.
  
  That brings me to the crux of the issue. My family is neurodiverse. What works for a typical family won't usually work for us, and it goes by it's own time line. While she did offer some guidelines for ages and developmental milestones, she did not acknowledge families like mine, and that made sections of this book confusing, frustrating, and even lonely.
  
  I know parenting books can't devote a paragraph or even a sentence to every kind of family that can exist. I'm used to reading parenting books and picking it apart in my brain and reassembling it in a way that works for my family. That's okay, it's part of the joy my family gives me. That being said, when I already feel too poor and too Appalachian for this book, feeling too different is the final blow. I didn't feel inspired or empowered after reading this. I felt invisible and alone.
  
  I gave this book 4 stars because it's still damn good. There's a lot of information and ideas here that every parent or caregiver of a boy needs to have. It's not perfectly accessible for everyone, it can be offputting and divisive, but the whole point is affecting social change through parenting and this book lays out the tools.
  
  Sure, there is a lot of preaching to the choir. A person who isn't already a feminist and isn't already trying to raise a feminist boy will probably not pick up this book. If I wasn't already 100% on board I probably would have been scared away by all the things I mentioned above.
  
  I said I would recommend this book to anyone and I meant that. I will. It's not perfect, I hope another edition comes out that expands and offers more ideas for more types of people and types of families, but until then this is a good place to start.
• 
  Colleen Woods

  Having three boys, I am open to advice on how to talk to them about a variety of topics. With the "Me too" movement, it is relevant to reflect as a parent on if we are doing the right thing to develop good people who respect and are empathetic to others. This book offers advice and insights on communicating with children at all ages about empathy and consent that I found very helpful. The format is easy to read and offers helpful summaries, action items and activities that help you take the content easily into action items that will help with your communications with your kids. Also it gives you helpful entry points no matter the age of your boys. This is a helpful tool for parents of kids of any age.
• 
  Ana

  I received a free e-ARC from the author/publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
  
  I want to start by saying that I am not a parent. I hope to be one day, but it hasn't happened for me yet. But one of the things I worry about (among a host of others) is raising a child in this modern world - a world of social media, and terrorism, and anti-feminist misogynistic men's groups. While posting updates on my Twitter account while reading this book, I was contacted by one of these men about the author and a TED talk she did on the subject that had 28K dislikes. And it made me scared for a while. And then I felt angry that some arrogant misogynistic nobody made me feel unsafe. So here I am, posting this review in spite of them.
  
  In my opinion, this book is an excellent roadmap for parents (particularly of boys) who are wanting to raise healthy, happy, well-adjusted human beings who stand up for their beliefs. While many may think of feminism as just being about equality between men and women, this book is more about the broadest definition of feminism - equality and equity for all regardless of sex, gender, race, culture, religion, sexuality, disability etc.
  
  It covers a range of topics ranging from exploring implicit and explicit bias, to gender, consent, and sexuality. It starts with developing an open, supportive relationship with your child, so they feel secure enough to talk with you about anything. A lot is really just sound parenting advice, laid out in a very accessible, straight forward manner. The idea is that if you build a strong foundation, you can continue to build on that.
  
  For each topic the author provides a guide for age-appropriate conversations and activities, with plenty of examples throughout. Sometimes I found these to be a little on the clinical side (the author is a psychologist) and they weren't things I would naturally say. However, I feel like the idea is to personalise it to you and your child, so it was only a minor quibble.
  
  I would wholeheartedly recommend this book to parents, grandparents, carers and even to-be parents who want to raise respectful, feminist children, and who want to have a strong and lasting bond with their child.
• 
  Chelsea

  Straight up advice on how to talk to boys about sex, culture, porn, gender, the opposite sex, consent and navigating big feelings. I loved the age-appropriate conversation starters for each topic covered. It’s never too early to begin talking openly about not only sex, but all issues faced by children because if they learn to come to parents with small issues, this translates into honesty and openness as they grow and have bigger problems. Great!
• 
  Lauren Salisbury

  There weren't any unique insights here. Unfortunately, this book was a regurgitation of material that can be found more effectively presented elsewhere. I had a hard time understanding who the audience was for this book: it explained basic concepts of feminism and sexism but presumably to pick up this book you would already be familiar with at least those most basic ideas.
• 
  Rodrigo

  This book contains good practical suggestions overall, and I’m glad I read it. The social activist aspects of it don’t resonate with me. And the microaggressions chapter is pretty annoying. You can be a good parent without encouraging your son to change the world. He’ll do it if he feels like it.
• 
  Amal Dhouib

  I don't know when or why reading parenting books has become a thing for me these days but I consider myself lucky to be able to lay my hands on a copy of this book and for that I like to thank NetGalley.
  I am sure that the fear of becoming a parent is a common feeling among us because we don't want to bring kids to life to see them struggle with the discrimination we were once a victim of or worse, to see them be a part of this discrimination against other people. I always thought that what parents can do to change the world is so small compared to society's regular efforts to put the new generations in the same old boxes through media and social messaging. This book crushed that thought, took that fear and turned it into a challenge. My favorite thing about it is that it starts off by validating the parent and reminding them that the goal is not to be perfect but to actually accept that you will make mistakes and to create a healthy environment within the family to discuss that mistake, learn from it and grow together. My second favorite thing is that this book shows how raising a feminist boy does not only lead to having a future feminist man but a better human too. I also really appreciate all the ideas the author presented and can clearly see how impactful they can be. I love the format this book comes in and how all the activities, approaches of topics and pieces of advice are sorted according to the child's age. It's necessary to say too that I am grateful for all the other resources mentioned in this book as I am impatient to discover more about this topic.
  I feel like I will sleep a bit more peacefully tonight knowing that this book exists, that I can go back to it if I ever choose to be a mom and that some parents will read it and make iis words their quest. I genuinely recommend this.
• 
  Michelle

  This is an excellent resources for teachers, parents, counselors and anyone who works with young people. I had to hurry through the last chapters to get it back to the library on time, and in the car I was grilling my son about his knowledge and perception, making sure we'd be able to continue our conversations on feminism, compassion, consent and what his role as a young man in relation to the complex and confusing messages we all receive through media, culture, family and school.
  
  It is a confusing world, folks, but if you could boil down why we're here, its one thought... everyone deserves to feel -- and be -- safe, loved and heard. Everyone deserves an equal playing field. That's the message. Now, through both subtle and profound actions, go do the work.
• 
  Vanessa

  This was a great read. It really helps simplify the topics at hand and dissects it to make these topics easier to discuss. I find it useful that in includes recommendations for children in all age groups to help facilitate conversations in an age appropriate manner.
  
  The only reason I did not give it a 5 star review is that I am not it's target audience.
  It seems to be written for an upper-middle to upper class, Caucasian audience. This becomes evident during the empathy chapter when the author suggests befriending people of different "parts of town". This includes the suggestion of making your social circle larger in order to be exposed to different types of people that may not look like them. It is always great to be open to there types of people perspectives, since we all have different life experiences. As a person of color, I am already aware of socio-economic and race dynamics.
  
  I also felt that some topics were discussed in very basic terms. This is great for people with limited knowledge in the subject but I am someone that is already very well versed in topics of inter-sectional feminism.
  
  Overall this is a great book that offers solutions in an easy to understand manner. It was great to review certain topics and I highly recommend this book.
  
  
• 
  Mike

  With a PhD, a Harvard lecturer and supervising clinical psychologist at Boston Behavioural Medicine, Bobbi Wegner is the author of Raising Feminist Boys. Subtitled -How to Talk to Your Child About Gender, Consent, and Empathy, this is a self-help book for Parents, Families, Educators and Child Carers. Based on developmental stages, it provides strategies and resources to cultivate empathy and promote justice and equity. Based on equality for all, it challenges us to explore our personal operative internal compasses. Don’t let the term feminist put you off, or think it’s just about raising boys – this is ‘subject human decency 101’ in a clear, readable and helpful manner for all. A powerful educative volume on raising our children to be compassionate, emotionally intelligent and reasonable adults with a five-star must read rating. With much thanks to New Harbinger Publications, Inc. and the author for an uncorrected proof for review purposes.
• 
  Amanda

  Great book for parents of boys. In addition to covering gender, consent, and empathy, the author discusses talking to your son's about sex and their changing bodies, implicit and explicit biases, privilege, and addressing microaggressions. This book really wasn't just about being a "feminist boy" but rather one who recognized differences and would do his best to be a good citizen not just to women but to everyone.
  I especially enjoyed the areas where the author had sample questions/conversation starters, and where she broke things out by age groups. Lots of helpful info in here, and the main message to communicate and not be embarrassed yourself about discussing anything with your sons.
• 
  Amity Miller

  This was an incredibly in-depth and well-explained book to read. The language was accessible and translated a lot of complex psychological underpinnings. I loved the examples and tips given under each subcategory. This is definitely a manual to help raise your children. I don't have my own children myself, but I think that this is going to be a valuable resource for all parents and parents-to-be.
  This isn't a quick read, it's something you will take a little from every day, something that will sit with you and change the way you look at raising your little ones.
• 
  Ellen

  Very sensible & thought provoking. It’s a primer on parenting boys, not really about feminism as in women’s rights but more about raising sons to be men who have empathy for others, are confident men who can recognise injustices and stick up for others. But also about encouraging healthy masculinity and self-awareness so they can be “good” men and have a successful, happy life. I thought it was a really positive read. I’d definitely recommend it.
• 
  Cari

  I grabbed this book from the Cleveland library, but I'm going to order a copy for my library's parenting collection too. Wegner writes with honesty, compassion, and practicality about sensitive topics. Parents of boys who are willing to be open-minded about developing empathy in their children should read this book and take a look at the scripts Wegner provides for fostering conversation.
• 
  Mary Beth

  I read this book on the recommendation of my daughter who is raising two young boys, and who I have the great pleasure of helping. Well, actually I listened to this as an audio book but it really lends itself to an entire course where you read, process, research and discuss each chapter as a separate topic. So many good points here - I learned a lot!
• 
  Anneka

  I didn’t agree with everything, and I started off feeling very defensive. But I gradually became more open minded.
  The website reading wasn’t helpful and contributed to a more disjointed experience; I don’t really know how to mitigate that in an audiobook short of having a digital supplement.
• 
  Amanda Swindell

  I was excited to read this book, but just didn't feel like there was a lot of new or particularly insightful information.
• 
  Kira Stahly

  This book did a wonderful job of breaking down definitions, giving examples, and providing advice for teaching boys how to be a feminist.
• 
  Sweta Agrawal

  okay okay I'm actually only 50% of the way through. I'm enjoying it but I think it is a bit early to be reading it, given that my son is 6 months old. Some good ideas.
• 
  Mariah

  This book is a great resource for expectant parents, though I’d argue it’s best for white parents specifically. A lot of it seems like common sense if you consider yourself a liberal or leftist or even just a generally open-minded individual, but being over confident is what leads to problems down the line. I'd say actively taking pains to research as well as re-examine potential holes in knowledge is essential to rearing a feminist boy or rather a boy who doesn't retreat into the white cisgender male privilege. It takes actual work to be inclusive to all women and gender identities.
  
  It offers specific questions and advice that can be used as a helpful guideline to branch off of. Starting the conversation is massively important. It's just as important to have a good conversation. Opening the door is only half the battle. If you don't properly cultivate an environment where you seem to actually know what you're talking about or at the very least are willing to look into it then you may lose the opportunity forever because they might never ask again. No matter what you will be caught off guard by certain inquiries or topics. But having the skills to transition from shock to engagement is critical.
  
  The book is intersectional in the sense that it highlights disparities between races, sexualities, and gender identities. However, it is very pointedly directed at white people. While I feel a lot of the advice given is very much still useful for boys of color, the book is clearly not overly concerned with them. That's not a bad thing. In fact, I think it's a good thing that Wegner carved out a specific demographic to pay attention to as it keeps the book focused thematically. And looking at how much of this country is controlled by white men who run it based on their own parochial worldview, the information in this book is most applicable to white parents raising white boys as white boys are the most primed to perpetuate the harmful, prejudiced rhetoric of their predecessors on a widespread scale. I appreciate that Wegner recognizes her audience. I only point this out because if you decide to read this it is intended for white parents which might affect your enjoyment.
  
  Everyone carries the weight of gendered messaging they've been socialized into accepting their entire life. The important thing is to analyze your beliefs so as not to allow implicit and explicit bias to flourish. Open up a dialogue with your kid to let them know that even when you do follow gendered activities - such as a woman being the primary chef in the household - it's because of an agreement between you and your partner (or you and you if you're single) not because cooking is inherently 'women's work'.
  
  I don’t have kids nor will I be having kids in the near future. Still this book gave me a lot to think about in the intervening years as preparation. And honestly, I think it has some great insight into combating overly gendered thinking regardless. It’s a high recommendation either way.