Raising Cain is the product of nearly four decades of combined experience by two of the country’s top child psychologists, Dan Kindlon, Ph.D., and Michael Thompson, Ph.D.. In the book, the authors expose the emotional illiteracy of teenage boys from ten to twenty, an emotional inability to express which often results in depression, violence, anger, silence, drug and alcohol abuse and suicide. The book is light on complex medical and psychological theories and heavy on case studies that are both poignant and revealing of what it is boys need but are not getting. The authors argue that socialization is a much bigger causative factor than biology in creating emotional isolation and its manifestations of violence, loneliness and cruelty in and among boys in their second decade of life. The authors argue caregivers have a lack of understanding of the needs of the male psyche at this age. This, coupled with other unmet needs such as a clan that serves as a source of role models of maturity and emotional health, creates emotional ignorance and isolation in young males:
Every troubled boy has a different story, but their stories share a disturbing theme of emotional ignorance and isolation. Each day we try to connect with boys…who are unversed in the subtleties of emotional language and expression and threatened by emotional complexity. When we ask them to open up, most respond with the same fight-or-flight response we all have to threatening situations. We see boys who, frightened or saddened, experience those feelings only as mounting anger or an irritable wish that everyone would ‘just leave me alone.’ Shamed by school problems or stung by criticism, they lash out or withdraw emotionally.
The authors do not blame socialization from the media or broader cultural institutions as the sole cause for the emotional ignorance and isolation experienced by young males. They also lay part of the blame at the feet of boys thems...