As a teen, I was a babysitter with a number of steady clients, and I firmly believed that there was little to no difference in the way parents should approach raising boys versus girls. As a child, I spent most of my time hanging out with boys and was far from what one would call a \u201cgirly girl.\u201d I loved playing in the mud, collecting frogs and playing with Hot Wheels. I was sure that any behavior differences were due to parenting choices or societal expectations, not gender.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I became a mom, and my girls seemed to follow in my footsteps \u2013 they frequently engaged in rough-and-tumble play. My assertion held true.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Then I had a boy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While I still believe that gender expectations influence behavior, I also recognize that some differences between the sexes are innate. Generally speaking, boys are busier and more physical, and certain skills tend to be mastered at different ages. While my girls were busy kids, parenting a boy seemed to bring on its own level of exhaustion. As we got to the school years though , I noted that these differences also influence how adults respond, sometimes leading to unfair comparisons and unrealistic expectations, which have the potential to be harmful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She includes such things as ignoring that voice inside that says \u201cNo \u2013 that\u2019s dangerous!\u201d instead letting them try (with limits), and also teaching them that chores are gender-neutral (and setting expectations that our boys actually do them).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While it is not a huge focus of the book, Fink also touches on the fact that there are many resources to help girls interested in traditional male careers and activities, but very few, if any, that help boys interested in female-dominated careers, such as those related to caretaking. Given how hard women have had to fight for equal footing, it\u2019s hard to say boys are at a disadvantage, but I think this point is important to note, as is the fact that it is also shortsighted, given the demand for such workers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Fink relies not only on her own experiences raising four boys (bless her!) but also on her journalistic skills as she shares information gleaned from interviews and research studies about parenting boys (and parenting in general). Reading through the book, I found myself nodding and whispering to myself that this is good advice for parents of girls too!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While the book is not specific to teens (in face, I would argue that you need to read it sooner to take advantage of her wise advice at an earlier age), there is much here to recommend for boy parents, particularly those, like me who had no brothers to learn from.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Note: Though a digital copy of this book was provided free of charge, no compensation was made for this review and the opinions are exclusively mine. KY<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As a teen, I was a babysitter with a number of steady clients, and I firmly believed that there was little to no difference in the way parents should approach raising boys versus girls. As a child, I spent most of my time hanging out with boys and was far from what one would call a \u201cgirly girl.\u201d I loved […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":647,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[117,116,115],"class_list":["post-646","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book-review","tag-building-boys","tag-jennifer-fink","tag-parenting-boys"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/kimberlyyavorski.com\/lifeontheotherside\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2026\/07\/building-boys.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kimberlyyavorski.com\/lifeontheotherside\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/646","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kimberlyyavorski.com\/lifeontheotherside\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kimberlyyavorski.com\/lifeontheotherside\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kimberlyyavorski.com\/lifeontheotherside\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kimberlyyavorski.com\/lifeontheotherside\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=646"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/kimberlyyavorski.com\/lifeontheotherside\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/646\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":658,"href":"https:\/\/kimberlyyavorski.com\/lifeontheotherside\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/646\/revisions\/658"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kimberlyyavorski.com\/lifeontheotherside\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/647"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kimberlyyavorski.com\/lifeontheotherside\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=646"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kimberlyyavorski.com\/lifeontheotherside\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=646"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kimberlyyavorski.com\/lifeontheotherside\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}