The Well-Trained Boy

In BoyMom: Reimagining Boyhood in the Age of Impossible Masculinity, British author Ruth Whippman offers readers a window into her mothering journey. This is a beautifully written, often thought-provoking, and disarmingly vulnerable book that begins with a mom of three boys whose illusions about motherhood fell away when her older two sons began in their preschool and early elementary years to fight “constantly and brutally” with one another. Whippman puts forth a unique perspective on the limitations and possibilities of boyhood that departs from both the totality of her feminist priors and the embrace of any more conservative ones.