American Academy of Pediatrics’ Nurturing Boys to Be Better Men: Gender Equality Begins at Home (10/24/23) is an evidence-based guide that gives parents tangible tools to foster the lifelong journey of raising their sons into men who are mentally healthy, empathetic, and committed to gender equality.
When author Shelly Vaziri Flais, MD, FAAP – a Persian American raised in a home where her father taught her she was equal to males – was pregnant with her twin sons (with a toddler boy already at home), the thought of raising three future men led her to wonder, “What steps can I take as a parent to defy prevalent generational and societal messages like male stereotypes and toxic masculinity? How can I help my sons not only become full humans in touch with their creative, nurturing sides, as much as their athletic, physical sides, but also become empathic, educated allies?”
Dr. Flais leaned into her training as a pediatrician to put together a roadmap with three main goals to promote greater generational gender equality:
- Promote a whole-child approach, recognizing our sons as capable of the full range of human emotions despite generational perpetuation of the idea of “male” characteristics.
- Use an ages-and-stages developmental approach, recognizing opportunities for growth and awareness not only within the child-parent relationship but also in how our sons interact with extended family, school, and the greater outside community.
- Propose how parents can best model gender equity for our sons, since kids do as they see.
Dr. Flais argues that gender equality should be an ongoing dialogue that happens between parents themselves and between parents and sons throughout childhood.
Nurturing Boys to Be Better Men is full of conversation-starting questions, age-based suggestions for books to read and movies to watch and discuss together and tips for addressing specific hurdles like division of physical labor and of emotional labor.
The book also includes relatable stories from Dr. Flais’s own family along with those she’s worked with during her many years as a primary care pediatrician. The anecdotes and the science both serve to emphasize the benefits of gender equality for boys and girls, men and women, not only in the context of the family but also the extended family, school, and greater community.
Shelly Vaziri Flais, MD, FAAP is a board-certified practicing pediatrician, the mother of 3 sons and 1 daughter, and Assistant Professor of Clinical Pediatrics at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago. She is the author of Raising Twins, Editor in Chief of Caring for Your School-Age Child, and coeditor of The Big Book of Symptoms. She is an American Academy of Pediatrics spokesperson and frequent media contributor who lives in the Chicago suburbs.
On-camera clip of Dr. Flais: https://www.
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