Boy Culture

In this two-volume set, a series of expert contributors look at what it means to be a boy growing up in North America, with entries covering everything from toys and games, friends and family, and psychological and social development. Boy Culture: An Encyclopedia spans the breadth of the country and the full scope of a pivotal growing-up time to show what "a boy's life" is really like today. With hundreds of entries across two volumes, it offers a series of vivid snapshots of boys of all kinds and ages at home, school, and at play; interacting with family or knocking around with friends, or pursuing interests alone as they begin their journey to adulthood. Boy Culture shows an uncanny understanding of just how exciting, confusing, and difficult the years between childhood and young adulthood can be. The toys, games, clothes, music, sports, and feelings—they are all a part of this remarkable resource. But most important is the book's focus on the things that shape boyhood identities—the rituals of masculinity among friends, the enduring conflict between fitting in and standing out, the effects of pop culture images, and the influence of role models from parents and teachers to athletes and entertainers to fictional characters.

The stereotype of the Victorian man as a flinty, sexually repressed patriarch belies the remarkably wide variety of male behaviors and conceptions of manhood during the mid- to late- nineteenth century. A complex pattern of alternative and even competing behaviors and attitudes emerges in this important collection of essays that points toward a "gendered history" of men.

A landmark book that reveals the way boys think and that shows parents, educators and coaches how to reach out and help boys overcome their most common and difficult challenges -- by the bestselling author who changed our conception of adolescent girls. Do you constantly struggle to pull information from your son, student, or athlete, only to encounter mumbling or evasive assurances such as “It’s nothing” or “I’m good?” Do you sense that the boy you care about is being bullied, but that he’ll do anything to avoid your “help?” Have you repeatedly reminded him that schoolwork and chores come before video games only to spy him reaching for the controller as soon as you leave the room? Have you watched with frustration as your boy flounders with girls? Welcome to Boy World. It’s a place where asking for help or showing emotional pain often feels impossible. Where sports and video games can mean everything, but working hard in school frequently earns ridicule from “the guys” even as they ask to copy assignments. Where “masterminds” dominate and friends ruthlessly insult each other but can never object when someone steps over the line. Where hiding problems from adults is the ironclad rule because their involvement only makes situations worse. Boy world is governed by social hierarchies and a powerful set of unwritten rules that have huge implications for your boy’s relationships, his interactions with you, and the man he’ll become. If you want what’s best for him, you need to know what these rules are and how to work with them effectively. What you’ll find in Masterminds and Wingmen is critically important for every parent – or anyone who cares about boys – to know. Collaborating with a large team of middle- and high-school-age editors, Rosalind Wiseman has created an unprecedented guide to the life your boy is actually experiencing – his on-the-ground reality. Not only does Wiseman challenge you to examine your assumptions, she offers innovative coping strategies aimed at helping your boy develop a positive, authentic, and strong sense of self.

Every major political and social dispute of the twentieth century has been fought on the backs of our children, from the economic reforms of the progressive era through the social readjustments of civil rights era and on to the current explosion of anxieties about everything from the national debt to the digital revolution. Far from noncombatants whom we seek to protect from the contamination posed by adult knowledge, children form the very basis on which we fight over the nature and values of our society, and over our hopes and fears for the future. Unfortunately, our understanding of childhood and children has not kept pace with their crucial and rapidly changing roles in our culture. Pulling together a range of different thinkers who have rethought the myths of childhood innocence, The Children's Culture Reader develops a profile of children as creative and critical thinkers who shape society even as it shapes them. Representing a range of thinking from history, psychology, anthropology, sociology, economics, women's studies, literature, and media studies, The Children's Culture Reader focuses on issues of parent-child relations, child labor, education, play, and especially the relationship of children to mass media and consumer culture. The contributors include Martha Wolfenstein, Philippe Aries, Jacqueline Rose, James Kincaid, Lynn Spigel, Valerie Walkerdine, Ellen Seiter, Annette Kuhn, Eve Sedgwick, Henry Giroux, and Nancy Scheper-Hughes. Including a groundbreaking introduction by the editor and a sourcebook section which excerpts a range of material from popular magazines to child rearing guides from the past 75 years, The Children's Culture Reader will propel our understanding of children and childhood into the next century.

A reader on children's culture

This student text provides activities and material to complete students' personal performance portfolios and identifies key words and phrases throughout, following the subject specification unit by unit as it covers the course.

Since Toy Story, its first feature in 1995, Pixar Animation Studios has produced a string of commercial and critical successes including Monsters, Inc.; WALL-E; Finding Nemo; The Incredibles; Cars; and Up. In nearly all of these films, male characters are prominently featured, usually as protagonists. Despite obvious surface differences, these figures often follow similar narratives toward domestic fulfillment and civic engagement. However, these characters are also hypermasculine types whose paths lead to postmodern social roles more revelatory of the current “crisis” that sociologists and others have noted in boy culture. In Pixar’s Boy Stories: Masculinity in a Postmodern Age, Shannon R. Wooden and Ken Gillam examine how boys become men and how men measure up in films produced by the animation giant. Offering counterintuitive readings of boy culture, this book describes how the films quietly but forcefully reiterate traditional masculine norms in terms of what they praise and what they condemn. Whether toys or ants, monsters or cars, Pixar’s males succeed or fail according to the “boy code,” the relentlessly policed gender standards rampant in American boyhood. Structured thematically around major issues in contemporary boy culture, the book discusses conformity, hypermasculinity, socialhierarchies, disability, bullying, and an implicit critique of postmodern parenting. Unprecedented in its focus on Pixar and boys in its films, this book offers a valuable perspective to current conversations about gender and cinema. Providing a critical discourse about masculine roles in animated features, Pixar’s Boy Stories will be of interest to scholars of film, media, and gender studies and to parents.