The Boy Crisis

Great Law of the Iroquois is that our most sacred duty is to think seven generations ahead in making any decision—to be aware of whether the decisions we make today will benefit not just ourselves and our children, but our children’s children several generations into the future

I have found that the most important single tool you can give your son is a once- or twice-weekly “family dinner night.”

The research available back then made it clear that both boys and girls without dads suffered. But by the time I was writing The Boy Crisis, it was apparent that dad deprivation had an even more negative impact on boys. And that the damage to the boys was also longer lasting.

This inspired the research that ultimately resulted in my book Father and Child Reunion in 2001. In that research, dad deprivation surfaced as the leading cause of more than twenty-five social, psychological, academic, and physical health problems that overwhelmed these children.

there is a lot you can do both to prevent your son from being absorbed by the crisis and to help him turn the crisis into an opportunity. And that’s what The Boy Crisis is about.

the chapters on the evidence make clear, boys are declining in a dramatic way in virtually every key metric. And this worldwide decline among our sons will also hurt our daughters, their marriages, and their children’s emotional and global security.

If your son plans to live in an urban area, he’ll likely live in one of the 147 US cities in which young women under thirty haven’t just caught up to their male peers, but now outearn them (by an average of 8 percent).

Father and Child Reunion in 2001

When Why Men Are the Way They Are was published in 1986,

I have found that the most important single tool you can give your son is a once- or twice-weekly “family dinner night.”