Boys Should Be Boys

I’ll admit: I rolled my eyes when I saw the title. *Another* book about how boys are failing? But within 20 minutes, Meeker had me hooked—not with statistics, but with stories. There’s the 12-year-old who transformed after his dad took him hunting instead of grounding him for a bad report card, or the high schooler who stopped cutting class once his shop teacher treated him like a future mechanic, not a problem kid. Ward’s narration sells these moments; she doesn’t *perform* the boys’ voices, but her subtle shifts in tone (exasperation for the clueless administrators, quiet triumph for the breakthroughs) make the cases feel alive. That said, the book isn’t perfect. Meeker’s dismissal of certain mental health diagnoses as “cultural overreach” will rankle some listeners, especially parents of neurodivergent kids. And while her critiques of feminized classrooms are incisive, her solutions sometimes skew traditional—more “boys need fathers” than “boys need *good* mentors, full stop.” The pacing drags slightly in the final hour, when the advice loops back to familiar territory (limit screen time, demand respect). But the audiobook’s strength lies in its specificity: Meeker doesn’t just lament the problem; she names the *institutions* failing boys (see: the chapter on how zero-tolerance policies criminalize normal male behavior) and arms listeners with scripts to push back. If you’re exhausted by vague laments about “toxic masculinity” or “boys in crisis,” this is the antidote—messy, opinionated, and grounded in the messy reality of raising humans who happen to be male.