TO RAISE A BOY

This is a journalist's searing investigation into how we teach boys to be menand how we can do better.

When the now-convicted Harvey Weinstein's sexual assault allegations broke, The Washington Post reporter Emma Brown was home nursing her six-week old son. The cascade of stories about powerful men abusing women left her with a daunting question about the world her newborn son would face: How would she raise him to be different?

Her query took Brown across America from bucolic rural towns, to distressed Rust Belt capitals, to the nation's most affluent suburbs. She spoke with hundreds of educators, parents, coaches, researchers, and young men and boys to unearth hidden truths about the task of reaching manhood today. The question she started with - how can we raise boys to be different? - led to a new question. How must we be different to help boys thrive? What must we do differently to give our sons the tools they need to build strong relationships with themselves, with other boys and with girls and women?

In To Raise a Boy, Brown excavates the misguided assumptions and public policy missteps that have failed generations of emerging men and produced a public health crisis. We fight for girls to have all the same opportunities as their brothers even as we leave boys burdened by narrow ideas about what it means to be a man. We allow real sex education to be replaced by social media and pornography, teaching boys that consent is optional and creating confusion around what real sex and love look and feel like. And we talk about sexual violence as a woman's problem, overlooking the staggering numbers of boys who are themselves victimized.

Brown shows that we cannot punish our way into a healthier culture. She points to research that suggests sex education must start earlier and receive attention worthy of its impact on children's health and safety. She points to successful work with men and boys in countries outside the United States and explains how it might be able to help here. And she shines a light on efforts to help boys resist gender stereotypes, build strong relationships and openly share their insecurities and feelings with peers and trusted adults.

Meticulously researched, urgent, and in equal measures shocking and heart-wrenching, To Raise a Boy shows what we have misunderstood about boys, what it will take to see them more clearly, and how badly they need us to do better

Emma Brown is a reporter on The Washington Post's investigative team. She worked as an intern at the Center for Investigative Reporting and The Boston Globe before joining The Washington Post in 2009.