Gender Roles In Biddulph's 'Raising Boys'

The book Raising Boys caught my eye, because I have always wondered what life, as a parent would be to raise a boy. The information in this book will help me in life, and be ready to answer questions of any sort that my son will ask me. In Biddulph’s world, men are men and women are women. Women stack the dishwasher while the men reads the paper. Biddulph goes so far as to suggest that boys need to be rescued from their mothers. He talks approvingly of how boys were prevented from “falling” into the world of women by being prevented from speaking to their mothers for two years. Mothers are the problem with boys, he suggests, leaving them “uninitiated”, “immature” and “dependent.” Biddulph has a unique thinking style as to how boys should be rescued from their mothers, because he thinks that it is the father’s job to teach him what he needs to know and not his mothers. The rhetoric and science of sex difference has an exceptionally dark past, but one that is rarely acknowledged in Biddulph, is that he reminds us “there are more male geniuses, in an anti-male era it’s important to remember that men built the planes, fought the wars, laid the railroad tracks, invented the cars, built the hospitals, invented the …show more content…
In the early years, it's the bond with the Mother that counts. Then, around the age of six, a boy discovers he's male instinct and he looks to his Dad; or the nearest approximation in order to study for the part. Nonetheless, he doesn't discard his mother. Finally, by the time a boy is 14, the hormones have arrived, and there has been a staggering 800 per cent increase in testosterone levels and they will be facing the challenge of becoming a man. Becoming a man is the dream of little boys as they grow. They learn all the manly mannerisms from their father figure growing up, and are anxious to grow up and make their father overjoyed with the way they have grown and matured over the