Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys

This book is not quite what I expected. I was somewhat disappointed in the content.

This is the best book I've seen about raising boys. My husband and I both have read every single page -- it's the first parenting book we've ever really read together, and we've talked about all of it. My husband felt like he was reading about all the secret struggles he went through as a child too. This is the first book that's made me want to change the way I parent...

As I am looking back into my not-yet-gender-aware early childhood, I remember having been both fascinated and weary of boys. On one hand, they always attracted me with their spirit and honesty, on the other they scared me because I perceived them as impulsive and aggressive, not understanding what motivates them to do things they do. This book helped me fill in those long-forgotten gaps of knowledge -- just in time to better understand my rapidly growing son :) Even though this book does concentrate almost exclusively on a 'stereotypical boy' (i.e., a jock or an angry dropout), it is an invaluable resource for everyone, especially teachers and parents.

This book contains a lot of psycho babble. It seems to be written mostly for professional family counselors and psychologists and such. For them it might be useful, but if you're a "normal" parent (meaning not working in such a field) then there are better parenting books out there that are much less opaque.

This book helped me understand the boys and men in my life a bit better. It wasn't filled with too much technical jargon and had many stories from the authors than helped illustrate their points.