| Description: |
|
Amazon.com Review
Building on the success of his guide to raising healthy young boys (The Wonder of Boys, Michael Gurian has written the next chapter--a book focusing on the much-maligned adolescent male. Gurian asserts, "We do not understand adolescent-male development, and therefore are unable to give our adolescent males the kind of love they need to become fully responsible, loving, and wise men." Adolescent boys may appear to be self-sufficient, but Gurian asserts that they actually need their parents and elders desperately. The author carefully illustrates what we--as parents, mentors, and educators--need to know about male adolescents, and what we can do to aid them on their journey to adulthood. In the face of many sociologists and scholars who strongly declare the contrary, Gurian claims a biological basis for many male behavioral traits. In A Fine Young Man, he employs convincing data from scientific studies on neurological development to assert that female and male brains have significant differences, and that testosterone plays an important role in male development and behavior. But A Fine Young Man offers far more than theory. Gurian's arguments are firmly rooted in reality, and he offers specific suggestions for typical family dilemmas. He breaks down the stages of development into preadolescence, early, middle, and late adolescence; discusses education and the role of the media; and suggests ways to keep aggression (caused in part by the testosterone flooding the adolescent male brain) from becoming violence. In a social sense, Gurian says, adolescent boys are our most undernourished population, and A Fine Young Man encapsulates his hope that our neglected young men receive the nurturing they need. --Ericka Lutz
Product Description
As boys enter the second decade of their lives, they are confronted with tremendous challenges at home, at school, and in personal relationships. In a phenomenon long overlooked by the media and policy makers, adolescent boys are the most at-risk group in our society today, facing the highest incidence of addiction, violence, mental illness, and emotional neglect. Building on his pioneering work in The Wonder of Boys, Michael Gurian now explores the misunderstood life of the '90s male adolescent, providing parents and mentors with eye-opening and practical wisdom. Gurian answers tough questions about the changes boys face, focusing on new understandings of the hidden biology of the adolescent male; the development of emotional structure and social adaptation; the changing emotional safety within the family unit; necessary rites of passage; and the critical shifting in the attitude of society, educators, and the media in order to nurture adolescent boys into loving, wise, and responsible men. Giving us the tools to better nurture, discipline, and cultivate our adolescent males, Gurian delivers the most responsible and enlightening assessment of young manhood in our time.
|
