BOYMOM

As a lifelong feminist, journalist and cultural critic Ruth Whippman was thrilled by the emergence of the Me Too movement. But as a mother of three boys, she found herself frightened, conflicted, and surprisingly defensive.

The sheer volume of terrible male behavior was impossible to deny, but she looked at her sons and found it hard to believe they could ever cause harm. These complex emotions, shared by so many mothers of boys, led Whippman to ask herself the question: How do we raise our sons to be compassionate, responsible men in a world where toxic masculinity is still the norm? And where are we going wrong?

BOYMOM is a deep exploration in to how to answer that question, as well as a look in to where this dichotomy of male behavior and expectations stems from. Combining elements of memoir, social science research, popular culture, and reporting from the frontlines of contemporary American boyhood, Whippman takes on the serious subject of our collective anxiety about boys and what will become of them, drawing on interviews from parents, educators, psychologists, and boys themselves.

With wit, insight, and honesty, Whippman uses her experience as a mom and a journalist to upend the cultural conversation around raising boys, offering parents a new framework to support boys in shaping their sense of self and allowing them to thrive.

Ruth Whippman is a British author, journalist, and documentary filmmaker living in the United States. Before becoming a full-time writer and speaker, she spent ten years in London working at the BBC as a director and senior producer. She is the author of AMERICA THE ANXIOUS, HOW OUR PURSUITOF HAPPINESS IS CREATING A NATION OF NERVOUS WRECKS, (St Martin's/ Macmillan, UK title: The Pursuit of Happiness) WHY WE ARE DRIIVNG OURSELVES CRAZY AND HOW WE CAN STOP (Hutchinson, Penguin.) The book was a New York Post Best Book of 2016, A New York Times Editors' Choice and Paperback Row pick, one of Newsweek's Nine Books to Change the Way You Think in 2016, a Sunday Times top summer read and a Daily Mail Must Read. Her essays, cultural criticism, and journalism have appeared in the New York Times, Time magazine, New York magazine, The Guardian, HuffPost, and elsewhere. Fortune described her as one of the "25 sharpest minds" of the decade. She is a regular speaker at venues including TEDx, Google, The Moth, and Somerset House in London and appears regularly as a guest on radio, television, and podcasts.