Adolescent Boys: Exploring Diverse Cultures of Boyhood » (1st Edition)

Niobe Way is professor of applied psychology at New York University's Steinhardt School of Education. She is a three-time NYU Press author/editor, having written Everyday Courage and edited Adolescent Boys as well as having co-edited Urban Girls with Bonnie Leadbeater in 1996. She is also co-editor of The Experience of Close Friendship in Adolescence.

Judy Y. Chu is lecturer at Standford University and the principal investigator of "Learning What Boys Know," A multi-site research project examining boys' relationships and boys' psychosocial developemnt during adolescence and early childhood.

A flurry of best-selling works has recently urged us to rescue and protect boys. They have described how boys are failing at school, acting out, or shutting down emotionally. Lost in much of the ensuing public conversation are the boys themselves—the texture of their lives and the ways in which they resist stereotypical representations of them.

Most of this work on boys is based primarily on middle class, white boys. Yet boys from poor and working class families as well as those from African American, Latino, and Asian American backgrounds need to be understood in their own terms and not just as a contrast to white or middle class boys. Adolescent Boys brings together the most up-to-date empirical research focused on understanding the development of boys from diverse racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic backgrounds.

The authors show how the contexts of boys' lives, such as the schools they attend shape their identities and relationships. The research in this book will help professionals and parents understand the diversity and richness of boys' experiences.