Raising Cain

The stunning success of Reviving Ophelia, Mary Pipher’s landmark book, showed a true and pressing need to address the emotional lives of girls. Now, finally, here is the book that answers our equally timely and critical need to understand our boys. In Raising Cain, Dan Kindlon, Ph.D., and Michael Thompson, Ph.D., two of the country’s leading child psychologists, share what they have learned in more than thirty-five years of combined experience working with boys and their families. They reveal a nation of boys who are hurting—sad, afraid, angry, and silent. Statistics point to an alarming number of young boys at high risk for suicide, alcohol and drug abuse, violence and loneliness. Kindlon and Thompson set out to answer this basic, crucial question: What do boys need that they’re not getting? They illuminate the forces that threaten our boys, teaching them to believe that “cool” equals macho strength and stoicism. Cutting through outdated theories of “mother blame,” “boy biology,” and "testosterone,” Kindlon and Thompson shed light on the destructive emotional training our boys receive—the emotional miseducation of boys. Through moving case studies and cutting-edge research, Raising Cain paints a portrait of boys systematically steered away from their emotional lives by adults and the peer “culture of cruelty”—boys who receive little encouragement to develop qualities such as compassion, sensitivity, and warmth. The good news is that this doesn't have to happen. There is much we can do to prevent it. Kindlon and Thompson make a compelling case that emotional literacy is the most valuable gift we can offer our sons, urging parents to recognize the price boys pay when we hold them to an impossible standard of manhood. They identify the social and emotional challenges that boys encounter in school and show how parents can help boys cultivate emotional awareness and empathy—giving them the vital connections and support they need to navigate the social pressures of youth. Powerfully written and deeply felt, Raising Cain will forever change the way we see our sons and will transform the way we help them to become happy and fulfilled young men.

It’s a Boy! provides expert advice on the developmental, psychological, social, emotional, and academic life of boys from infancy through the teen years. Exploring the many ways in which boys strive for masculinity and attempt to define themselves, psychologist Michael Thompson, Ph.D., a leading international expert on boys’ development, and journalist Teresa H. Barker identify the key developmental transitions that mark a boy’s psychological growth and emotional health, and the challenges both boys and parents face at each age. • Baby Boys (birth to 18 months): falling in love with your son, healthy attachment, trust, and temperament • Toddler Years (18 months to 3 years): boys on the go, bold steps, blankies, budding language, and rambunctious physicality • Powerful Little Boys (ages 3 and 4): superhero ambitions, learning to manage the force of his anger, and celebrating the power of the boy group • Starting School (ages 5 through 7): developmental cues for school readiness, transitional challenges, tough talk, tender hearts, and first friends • Boys on a Mission (ages 8 through 10): striving for mastery in sports, organizing the boy brain for school success, and glaring academic gender gaps • The Preteen (ages 11 through 13): puberty, posturing, and popularity, the culture of cruelty, and stoic silence in the middle school years • Early High School (ages 14 and 15): powerful peer groups, sexuality, the shift away from Mom, and yearning for Dad’s respect and attention • On the Brink of Manhood (ages 16 through 18): the quest for independence, sex, love, driving, drinking, and other challenges of life Practical, insightful, and engaging, It’s a Boy! is the definitive guide to raising boys in today’s world, revealing with humor, compassion, and joy all the infinite varieties of boys and the profound ways in which we love them.

Cain made the first blackface turn, blackface minstrels liked to say of the first man forced to wander the world acting out his low place in life. It wasn't the "approved" reading, but then, blackface wasn't the "approved" culture either--yet somehow we're still dancing to its renegade tune. The story of an insubordinate, rebellious, truly popular culture stretching from Jim Crow to hip hop is told for the first time in Raising Cain, a provocative look at how the outcasts of official culture have made their own place in the world. Unearthing a wealth of long-buried plays and songs, rethinking materials often deemed too troubling or lowly to handle, and overturning cherished ideas about classics from Uncle Tom's Cabin to Benito Cereno to The Jazz Singer, W. T. Lhamon Jr. sets out a startlingly original history of blackface as a cultural ritual that, for all its racist elements, was ultimately liberating. He shows that early blackface, dating back to the 1830s, put forward an interpretation of blackness as that which endured a commonly felt scorn and often outwitted it. To follow the subsequent turns taken by the many forms of blackface is to pursue the way modern social shifts produce and disperse culture. Raising Cain follows these forms as they prolong and adapt folk performance and popular rites for industrial commerce, then project themselves into the rougher modes of postmodern life through such heirs of blackface as stand-up comedy, rock 'n' roll, talk TV, and hip hop. Formally raising Cain in its myriad variants, blackface appears here as a racial project more radical even than abolitionism. Lhamon's account of its provenance and persistence is a major reinterpretation of American culture.

Foster and adoptive parents are challenged by society to raise the child with extraordinary emotional and behavioral problems, the child marked by his past, the child whose future without help looks grim. In effect, we ask these parents to not only "Raise Cain" but to raise him better. But if we ask foster and adoptive parents to raise society's abused and neglected youngsters, our system (legal, welfare, and mental health) must better attend to the best interests of its children and of those who care for Cain. Raising Cain challenges failings in the legal, welfare, and mental health system that undermine the best interests of foster and adoptive children. It protests, confronts, and "Raises Cain" about basic, but reparable flaws in our present system of care.

“Beside oneself,” “as old as the hills,” “the kiss of death,” “see eye to eye,” and “raising Cain” are all expressions most English speakers understand and use in conversation. If you asked someone what these phrases have in common, few would be able to say that they all come from the Bible. Even in a secular, post-Christian age the imprint of the Bible, and especially the King James Version, is pervasive and profound. A distinguished professor of literature has said, “the King James Version of the Bible is the most influential English book ever printed.” Its themes have influenced the arts, constitutions, laws, and everyday language. In Raising Cain. Dr. Wayne Harvey provides fascinating documen- tation of the echoes of the King James Bible on the tongues of and in the writings of 21st century English speakers. His entry on “Raising Cain” shows how this treasury of biblical expressions works: Raise Cain (See also “Cain and Abel” and “Cain, Mark of”) To create a disturbance. One sense of raise in old English is to conjure up. To raise Cain is to bring up or express the spirit of Cain. But unto Cain and to his offering he had not respect. And Cain was very wroth, and his countenance fell. And the LORD said unto Cain, Why art thou wroth? and why is thy countenance fallen? If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? and if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door. And unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule over him (Genesis 4:5-7).

It can be a challenging task to raise a child to love the Lord, discover God’s purpose for his or her life, and be faithful to Him in the midst of a society that seems bent on destroying the home. Seasoned pastor and committed father Keith Pisani digs deep into God’s word and relates lessons from numerous biblical passages, from Genesis through Revelation, to guide parents down an inspirational path to learn how to raise children for the Lord, form a salvation relationship with God through faith in Jesus, and ultimately give Him glory. While relying on applicable scriptures to provide insight on how the family began and sharing principles on parenting from Proverbs, Pisani also includes lessons on child-rearing from other family-related bible passages, a nine-session interactive small group bible study extracted from the text, and principles for parenting. In this modern-day manual, a pastor and experienced father shares scripture, wisdom, and a roadmap that guides parents on an insightful journey to raising Christian children within a challenging society.

You’ve heard it said, “Be careful what you pray for.” But it may also be a good idea to be careful who you ask to pray. Because when folks like Hattie Hopkins talk to God…anything can happen! Stuck in the semi-reclusive life she’s built for herself, Olivia Harmon is still recovering from the tragic loss of her husband and daughter five years before. Though she loves her job at Vermont’s department of tourism, she longs for something more–so she asks her landlady Hattie to pray for a little volunteer work for her to do. Things don’t work out exactly as she had planned, however, and soon Olivia finds herself bursting out of her carefully built cocoon to undertake the nurturing of three rambunctious street children. Even her heart seems out of control, causing her to fall for Zach Springer, the handsome handyman who rode a mudslide right into her sun room. Can a woman so accustomed to self-imposed solitude adjust to a new life, a new love, and the new challenge of Raising Cain…and His Sisters?