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| Making American Boys : Boyology and the Feral Tale
ISBN: 9780816695669
Platform/Publisher: Ebook Central / University of Minnesota Press
Digital rights: Users: Unlimited; Printing: Limited; Download: 7 Days at a Time
Subjects: Literature;
Will boys be boys? What are little boys made of? Kenneth B. Kidd responds to these familiar questions with a thorough review of boy culture in America since the late nineteenth century. From the OC boy workOCO promoted by character-building organizations such as Scouting and 4-H to current therapeutic and pop psychological obsessions with childrenOCOs self-esteem, Kidd presents the great variety of cultural influences on the changing notion of boyhood. Kidd finds that the education and supervision of boys in the United States have been shaped by the collaboration of two seemingly conflictive approaches. In 1916, Henry William Gibson, a leader of the YMCA, created the term boyology, which came to refer to professional writing about the biological and social development of boys. At the same time, the feral tale, with its roots in myth and folklore, emphasized boysOCOs wild nature, epitomized by such classic protagonists as Mowgli in The Jungle Books and Huck Finn. From the tension between these two perspectives evolved societyOCOs perception of what makes a OC good boyOCO: from the responsible son asserting his independence from his father in the late 1800s, to the idealized, sexually confident, and psychologically healthy youth of today. The image of the savage child, raised by wolves, has been tamed and transformed into a model of white, middle-class masculinity. Analyzing icons of boyhood and maleness from Father FlanaganOCOs Boys Town and Max in Where the Wild Things Are to Eliin Gonzilez and even Michael Jackson, Kidd surveys films, psychoanalytic case studies, parenting manuals, historical accounts of the discoveries of OC wolf-boys, OCO and self-help books to provide a rigorous history of what it has meant to be an all-American boy." |
