How To Understand Teen Boys

What does it mean to "be a man" in today's world? This new project tries to find out.

Sep 19, 2024

Hi readers! I’m Christopher Pepper, an award-winning health educator and journalist. Every week in Teen Health Today I provide advice and information to support parents, teachers, coaches, and counselors in raising and educating young people. I’m so glad you found this community!

What’s Going On With Boys Today?

I’ve spent most of the last year writing the book Talk To Your Boys with

Joanna Schroeder

, and I’ve learned a lot about the many pressures boys face today and the assistance they need from caring adults. Our book will be out next year, and I can’t wait to share it with you!

In the meantime, I’m so grateful to be able to highlight some of the hard work people are doing to help the world better understand and support boys.

Today, I’m shining the spotlight on an AMAZING issue of the online magazine SheKnows called Inside The Lives Of Teen Boys. It’s packed with essays and interviews with experts, but I especially appreciated how much they let boys speak about their own eperiences in videos like these:

There’s a whole series of these videos, each of which could spark an interesting discussion:

Seeing The World Through A Boy’s Eyes

In addition to the videos, the magazine is packed with essays you won’t want to miss, like this look at boys under pressure by Elaine Roth.

Additional essays worth your time here:

What We Can Learn From Experts

There are some solid interviews with authors who have speaking and writing about boys, and challenging some stereotypes and assumptions in the process.

Check these out:

“Is Conservatism the New Counterculture for Teen Boys?” with
Richard V Reeves
“Patriarchy Benefits Boys — But It Hurts Them, Too” with
Ruth Whippman
“Teen Boys Are in Trouble — & Scott Galloway Has a Theory Why”

A Peek Behind The Scenes

Wondering how this whole project came together? The On Boys podcast with

Jennifer L.W. Fink

interviewed Erika Janes, a “boy mom” and SheKnows editor-in-chief, to get the scoop. Here’s a little preview of what they talk about:

Importantly, the project includes teen boys and gives them an opportunity to share their thoughts about manhood and masculinity. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the boys’ responses reflect our still-evolving understanding of gender. Crying, for instance, is still seen as a term with strongly feminine connotations, “but almost every boy we talked to said that they did cry,” Janes says. “They still feel like there’s a stigma to boys and men crying, but for the most part, almost of all of them said, ‘I cry at times.'”
Boys, she says, “still get so many messages about traditional masculinity — ‘don’t cry, be strong, be a man.’ But they need to be allowed to express healthy emotion, to express vulnerability, to be able to cry and express sadness. We need to understand and accept that teen boys have all the same emotions as teen girls and that it’s healthier if they have outlets to express them.”

LISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODE

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