World Famous Comics: It's a Boy: Women Writers on Raising Sons
It's a Boy: Women Writers on Raising Sons
From: Seal Press Publisher: Seal Press Average Rating: Binding: Paperback Label: Seal Press Number of Items: 1 Number of Pages: 200 Publication Date: October 21, 2005
The most popular question any pregnant woman is asked — aside from "When are you due?" — has got to be "Are you having a girl or a boy?" When author Andrea Buchanan, already a mom to a little girl, was pregnant with her second child, she marveled at the response of friends and total strangers alike: "Boys are wonderful," "Boys are so much better than girls," "Boys love their mothers differently than girls." This constant refrain led her to explore the issue herself, with help from her fellow writers and moms, many of whom had had the same experience.
The result is It's A Boy, a wide-ranging, often-humorous, and honest collection of essays about the experience of mothering boys. Taking on topics like aggression, parenting a teenage boy, and wishing for a daughter but getting a son, It's A Boy explores what it's like to mother sons and how that experience may be different, but no less satisfying, than mothering girls.
Boring, Negative Book I found this book to have a very negative and complaining tone to it. It was not what I expected. Rather than celebrate having a son it seemed to find writers that wanted a girl and ended up with a boy, or their boy was a bully or some other negative story. Not worth your precious time.
Great memories This book brought back a lot of great memories of raising my 2 sons (who liked to fight a lot when they were younger) and I'm glad they're grown up now.
Disappointing. I found this book, along with it's sister title, to be tirelessly repetitive and over simplified. Most of these women (the great majority of whom are upper middle class New Yorkers) have very similar stories to tell, albeit in slightly different ways and with a few truly unique perspectives and experiences. Whether reporting on mothering girls or boys: expectations based on very old gender stereotypes that are reinforced by the old, inevitable nature argument. I was saddened that the majority of these accounts were not more imaginative or complex. Catherine Newman, among a few others, were the exceptions.
An enjoyable collection of essays on raising sons. I really enjoyed this collection of essays on raising sons. I have three of them myself and was very excited to get my hands on this book that tells the tales of mothers and their challenges and joys when raising their sons from conception to the dreaded teenage years. There were obviously some essays that I enjoyed more than others such as Susan Ito's "Samuel" about a woman and the son she never had. "Things You Can't Teach" by Katie Kaput a transgender woman trying to raise a son, "Pretty Baby" by Catherine Newman a hilarious essay about a woman trying to raise a son without the confines of societal norms and Jacquelyn Mitchard's "The Day He Was Taller" a touching essay about the day she realized her son was becoming a man. All of these above mentioned essays made me laugh or cry and I thoroughly enjoyed them all.
So one may wonder if I liked all of these essays so much why am I only giving the book three stars. Well that is because many of the essays despite being fairly entertaining did not touch me...I could not relate. The beginning essays mostly focused on women's disappointment at learning they were having a boy. Now, trust me when I tell you no one has wanted a little girl more than I did and when I found out I was having twin boys after already having a three year old son I was a bit miffed to say the least. However, no matter how much I wanted a girl I never cried over the fact that I was having boys, my disappointment did not run as deep as many of these women's seemed to have at the news of a boy. I was just happy to be having healthy babies. So on this issue while I could totally understand, I couldn't completely relate.
Also, many of these women writers wanted to raise their sons to be free of the confines society forces on boys. Which is all well and good but I cannot, personally, relate to letting my son wear earrings and necklaces to preschool just because he felt like it. I cannot conceive of buying my son pink clothes and shoes from the girls section of the store just be cause he really likes pink and I don't tend to give my sons dolls over trucks because I want them to be more open minded. I am just not one of those mothers so again I couldn't relate.
Overall I think this is a good collection of essays centered around raising boys especially since there are not a lot out there like it. Therefore, I would recommend it to mothers of sons even if you cannot relate to all of the essays some are guaranteed to touch your heart.
I like it! The stories are written by mothers of different ethnicities and socio-economic backgrounds. It's strange to realize that mothers all over the country feel the same way about having sons. Makes me LOVE being a mother of a boy!
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