Adolescence, a new 4-episode series on Netflix, has been making waves, and rightly so. Aside from the technical marvel of having each episode done in one single take, it’s also brought important conversations around boyhood and masculinity back to the forefront of our conversations. With my training in media studies, I’m going to fight every urge to dive deep into the formal and filmmaking qualities of the show. Instead, I want to focus on some of the issues it brings to light, and share details about a 50-page guide I’ve created to help adults navigate these issues with the boy(s) in their lives.

In my nearly 10 years in education – across a variety of roles like faculty, administrator, school counselor, and of course, principal – I have seen the distinct struggles and challenges faced by young boys and men again and again. I’ve run weekly conversations on the subject of masculinity for high school boys, given numerous talks on the subject, held individual counseling sessions, led a number of workshops, and written about the subject extensively. It feels like there is always even more to say about it, and it’s hard to really hone in on the main ideas.

But, with my latest work, I decided to try and do just that.

I’m excited to share my ebook: Raising Better Men: A Parent’s Guide to Masculinity, Empathy, and Accountability. Raising Better Boys is a practical, compassionate guide for parents, caregivers, and educators who want to help boys grow into emotionally intelligent, empathetic, and accountable men. Grounded in research and real-world experience, this guide offers tools, examples, and language that empower adults to talk to boys about masculinity, media, emotions, and relationships — without shame or judgment.

The book is divided into five sections:

1. Defining the Terms

In this brief section, I’ve compiled a glossary of sorts from the vocabulary that exists out there in the often problematic world of masculinity. It’s important to make sure we’re all talking about the same things in the same ways, so I start with some definitions to set up the stage. This feels especially important for certain words and phrases like toxic masculinity and feminism, which are so often twisted and warped into grotesque caricatures of themselves.

2. What does it mean to “be a man?”

There are specific ways in which boys and men are socialized into ideas of what it means to “be a man.” The nature of socialization is such that it kind of works silently, slowly impacting our thoughts and points of view throughout our lifetime. If we don’t take the time to interrogate our own thinking, and how we’ve come to certain ideas and conclusions, it’s likely we’ll just hold on to the same ideas — no matter how problematic they may be. In this section, I take the reader through an activity I’ve run dozens of times with people of all ages that really helps break down how exactly we’ve come to our understand of what it means to “be a man.”

Some of these ideas are closely tied to boys’ and men’s emotional health and wellbeing. For example, if anger is one of the few emotions that a man is allowed to express, it is more likely that he will misinterpret other negative emotions – such as disappointment, grief, resentment, guilt, etc – as anger, and express it in harmful ways. I suggest some specific ways to start breaking out some of the patterns that socialized ideas of masculinity have boxed many of our boys in.

3. Problems and Solutions

In this section, I identify and explain a few problematic patterns in particular and suggest some strategies and clear language to use with boys to start addressing the issues. The specific problems I address are:

Desensitization to Language and Content

The culture around memes and other viral content has made it so that images and other content are shared with great rapidity with huge numbers of people around the world. One of the most insidious ways that misogyny, hate speech, and toxic masculinity take root is through “jokes” that can be all-too-easily dismissed as harmless and “no big deal.” But it’s important to see just how dangerous these jokes can be in slowly but surely desensitizing people to more and more extreme content.

Supervision and Protection in Online Spaces

I’ve previously written at length about the work of Jonathan Haidt in The Anxious Generation, and how a major claim in that book is that children are increasingly overprotected in the real world, and underprotected in the virtual world. The latter also plays an important role in what’s happening to our boys. As they continue to be underprotected online, they are potentially exposed to all kinds of extreme content whether they get there accidentally, someone they’ve connected with online shares it with them, or if the algorithm of whatever website he’s on gradually gets him there. At this point, it’s not a question of if our boys will be exposed to problematic content. It’s a question of when. And when they do, will they be ready to navigate it critically?

Emotional Intelligence

Generally speaking, boys are not encouraged to be in touch with their emotions. Many boys and men have stories about a time in their childhood when they were shamed or shut down by an adult for expressing an emotion that wasn’t considered “manly.” This kind of shame response can have long-term consequences on young boys who learn that it is not okay to express certain emotions. Instead, they channel those feelings and energies into the emotions they’ve been taught they can express – usually anger. To devastating results – murder, rape, domestic violence, abuse, etc.

Boys need some positive modeling and clear guidance to help develop their emotional intelligence, including the ability to more accurately identify, honor, sit with, and work through their own feelings. Techniques like paraphrasing and reflective listening can do wonders towards this goal, and I share some specific examples of how to incorporate this into your daily interactions.

Accountability

There’s a phrase out there that has freed boys from any sense of accountability for generations: “boys will be boys.” For too many people, this phrase is used to excuse away behaviors often associated with masculinity which can be problematic without accountability, especially behaviors that are aggressive, inconsiderate, unkind, and competitive — all of which align with some patterns of toxic masculinity.

In order to take accountability, you have to be comfortable sitting in the discomfort that comes from understanding you messed up, did something wrong, and/or hurt someone. But like we’ve seen above, many boys never learn how to be comfortable with navigating their emotions, or even come to see apologizing as a sign of “weakness,” so any potential discomfort or disappointment in themselves quickly turns into anger and/or lashing out at others. Moving towards taking accountability takes time, patience, and a loving hand from someone who cares. In this section, I provide some specific ways to start incorporating more thoughtful language to help boys start developing these skills.

4. Critical Media Literacy and Viewing Guide

In this section, I build on something I actually did for my own son when he entered his teens. As his request to watch R-rated movies and play M-rated games increased, I put together a curated list of documentaries and videos to help him develop a more critical eye to the media he consumes. In this section, I share some of the specific content I’ve used, provide links to all of the content, and describe the goals for each one. By going through some of these videos and documentaries, I’ve found significant growth in young people’s abilities to engage with the media around them more critically and thoughtfully. It will encourage them to think about how girls and women are represented in media, help them think about the agency of characters in various narratives, and much much more.

5. Conclusion and Addendum

Finally, I conclude the book with some final thoughts and summaries, and provide a list of phrases to say when you’re not sure what to say. As any parent, caregiver, and educator can attest, raising and caring for children is not an easy task. One of the most freeing things we can do as adults charged with guiding these young souls is recognize that we don’t have to have all the answers. It’s impossible. Instead, take this opportunity to grow and learn alongside the boy you are working with. Be vulnerable, lean into what you don’t know, share it with them. Let them know you’ll think through it together.

And that’s my book!

You can click here to download the PDF for $5 for the PDF, or get it on Amazon directly to your Kindle for $6.99.

Thank you.