Do parenting advice books help or harm? Critiquing ‘common-sense’ advice for mothers raising boys (original) (raw)
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Over the past decade a rapidly growing number of books have been published on fathering and raising boys. Whilst these books purport to simply describe boyhood, this paper suggests that in fact they are actively engaged in constructing boyhood, and in particular the gender and sexual identities of boys. Through an analysis of ten such books, this paper demonstrates how they are informed by a range of heteronormative and homophobic assumptions about boys and masculinity. Particular focus is given to 1) constructions of the ‘average boy’, 2) the assumption that such boys are ‘naturally’ attracted to girls, 3) discourses of the ‘sissy’ boy, and 4) accounts of gay boys. The analysis provided suggests that constructions of the first two are reliant upon negative constructions of the latter two. Implications for the ways in which we understand boys, parenting and families are drawn from the findings, and recommendations are made for research agendas that not only respect and include gay boys and their parents, but which celebrate the experiences of non-gender normative, non-heterosexual boys.
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While paternal figures, particularly of the sterner and more tyrannical sort, loom large in the Western literary canon, the genre of 'dads' lit, is a far more recent phenomenon. Emerging in the late 1990s/early 2000s, British male-authored novels that focus on child-rearing and family dynamics were aligned to a growing state and media preoccupation with judging and evaluating parenting and specifically mothering practices. As many sociologists and cultural critics have observed, the culture of performative and competitive parenting has flourished within the context of the triumph of a neo-liberal doxa of choice, self-governance, and economic and social individualism (McRobbie 119-137; Gillies 70-93; Quiney 19-40).
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