GROWING PAINS
It has been 21 years since Steve Biddulph’s book Raising Boys influenced a change in attitudes in parenting, but in the digital age, the author says our children need our help and guidance more than ever
Steve Biddulph has released his fifth edition of Raising Boys to help families cope with the digital age’s devices and vices
The morning of my interview with Steve Biddulph, I pass by our loungeroom bookshelf and my eyes by sheer happenstance lock onto a well-worn copy of Raising Boys. How many bookshelves, I wonder, sport this 1997 book by the Tasmanian author, destined to become a parenting bible? How many anxious fathers and mothers have leafed through it, looking for the key to unlock the mystery of their surly, teenage boy or their toddler son, sent home by their teacher from kindergarten in disgrace for biting one too many playmates?
The answer is plenty. Raising Boys to date has sold more than one million copies in 32 languages. More than two decades after its publication, it’s difficult to remember just how much of a groundbreaking work Raising Boys was, and how radical some of his ideas were deemed, given many of them are now triedand-true parenting modes. For instance: Love your son openly. Hug him. Kiss him. Tell him he’s wonderful. Spend big wedges of time with him in the work/family pie. Teach him to cook. If you can, try and keep him home from school a year longer. Do not be an absent father. Help him to honour “tender” feelings.
It was a book that spoke of male softness, vulnerability and deep yearning for love, and offered a gentle alternative to the “big boys don’t cry” school of masculinity.
Biddulph himself is shy. He attributes this to his Asperger’s, something that he has never felt defines him but which manifests itself in a very particular way.