Boys W I T H O U T Dads

Real Life Stories, the Lessons Learned, and a Call for More Male Involvement in the Lives of Boys

This book chronicles the authors nearly half-century effort to help troubled boys. It began auspiciously with a job at a summer day camp where he worked to ready himself for a possible career in teaching. But it was there that he became so captivated by the unique social problems of two particular fatherless boys that he began looking for ways to work more closely with troubled youths rather than teach. Not long thereafter, he began his more than four decades of being a mentor, a foster parent, an unofficial grandparent, and a guardian to a large number of youths. During those forty years, the author took note of some important changes in the way that society was treating its boys. He noted, for example, that there was the beginnings of a shift away from the reactionary, authoritarian way of treating youth to a more positive, proactive approach; he noticed an emerging affirmation of the idea that stepdads all too often can create more problems than they solve, and he took quiet notice of the mounting evidence about how our schools had become feminized in ways that were making school life tougher for our boys.