The Authority Podcast — Expert Insights and Fresh Ideas for Education Leaders

Jennifer Fink

Ross Romano: [00:00:00] Welcome everybody to today's episode of the Authority Podcast on the B Podcast Network. It's my pleasure today to be joined by Jennifer l w Fink. She is a mom of four boys, the creator of building boys.net co-host of the podcast on Boys and an award-winning freelance journalist.

Whose work has been published? Uh, just about everywhere. The New York Times, Washington Post US News, world Report, Fox News, parents and Parade. Jennifer's new book is called Building Boys, and it's available from Roman and Littlefield. Jennifer, welcome to the show.

Jennifer Fink: Thanks so much, Ross.

Ross Romano: So I wanted to start out by just kind of talking a little bit about your background. How you got into writing in the first place, your kinda your journey into the journalism and then the writing [00:01:00] world, and then how you also along with that, started writing and talking about parenting boys, right?

Because you've been doing it for a long time. You have your website, your podcast, you've been doing journalism around it. So this book is your latest project, but it's been a, long journey of really, discovering the topic right.

Jennifer Fink: It has, I came to writing via nursing. Actually, my undergraduate degree is in nursing, and that's what I did professionally for the first few years of my career. But it turns out that it is not normal. For most nurses to graduate from college, start work clinically and kind of miss writing papers.

Turns out that is not typical and I kind of did miss writing papers and I had always enjoyed writing. but I bought into that whole idea, you know, you can't make a living doing it. I need a safe, practical career. And so that's why I did nursing. My mom was a nurse and she used to get nursing magazines, and so I was [00:02:00] the kid who would read everything in the house, back a cereal box, mom's nursing magazines, and that was part of why I went into it.

I'm like, well, I will. I got a job one summer working at a nursing home as a certified nursing assistant, and I thought, if I like this, I will major in nursing. I'm more or less like that. I majored in nursing. So I'm doing that. And then, was married, had my first child. And there's something for me anyway, and I think for a lot of people about having your first child, you become brave in a way that you never were before. You because you would do anything for that child. And I started realizing more of my own capability and- rediscovering myself. And then in the course of all of that, you know how you will also do anything to keep your kid busy when you have your kid. We had gone, he's still in the stroller, we walked to the library just for something to do, pushing him in the stroller.

And I saw this book and it was called, handbook of Freelance Writing, which [00:03:00] I didn't know was a thing. So I picked it up to look at it and it was a book by a nurse turn freelance writer. Who lived in rural Wisconsin just like I did, and it said how to do it, and that was, the start of writing for me.

So I started writing for nursing magazines, transitioned to doing more healthcare stuff, fell into educational writing, which is how our paths originally crossed. Because I had met an editor at a Scholastic publication. And so I've done a lot of health writing, education, writing, and then that first child turned into a second child, a third child, and a fourth child, and they were all boys.

And that's where the learning about boys came from, because by the time I had two, I realized that I needed to learn what was going on because I didn't understand it. And so it was really, it started as me trying to figure out how to survive my own life.

Ross Romano: Yeah. And so in the, and through the book, you have, of course it's informed a lot by your [00:04:00] own experience, 20 years of parenting boys, and by, a lot of reading and interviews and conversations. With others and reviewing the research and all of this. And so like at a high level, how different really are boys and girls from what you've found?

And how important is it to really understand those differences?

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Ross Romano: You wrote the book specifically about boys. I'm gonna guess you're gonna say pretty important, but, based on, I guess what the perception is, are we more or less different or what do you think?

Jennifer Fink: That is a fantastic question and I think it is most important to whether you are a parent or a teacher. Healthcare provider, look at and interact with the child in front of you because that is the most important thing all humans have likes, dislikes, strengths, weaknesses. So look at and interact with the human in front of you, and you're not gonna go wrong.

That will lead you in the right path every single time, whether that person is [00:05:00] boy, girl, non-binary. and The caveat to that is I found it helpful. Here's the piece I did not know. Even though I had four brothers, I was a girl. I grew up as a girl. That was my experience in the world. I did not realize, for one, that males are affected by gender stereotypes.

As well. I just, I'd never thought about that. I didn't realize that other people's ideas about boys and men would inform the expectations that they placed on my boys and all boys. And the other piece that I didn't realize, and this is most significant with children, the pace of development for male children and female children is different.

So if you wanna talk about whether, boys and girls are more similar or different as adults. We are much more similar than different. But at age five there's some pretty significant differences. At age 15, I mean, [00:06:00] anybody who has ever spent time with a 15 year old boy and a 15 year old girl can tell you that there's usually some differences developmentally.

So by the time we get to like our late twenties, early thirties, the developmental gaps start closing. But up until then, I think it is helpful to understand, some of the differences and, how they affect people.

Ross Romano: Yeah, and it's interesting to think about, even as I'm reading through the book and. Thinking about people and when they're having kids and how much, emphasis or, anxiety they place around the gender of their child before they have the child, right? And people seem to have very strong opinions, particularly when it's their first kid about, ooh, you know, I hope it's a boy, or, I hope it's a girl because I think I would relate better to this or that, and I don't know what to do with a boy, or, I don't know what to do with a girl.

And then, a lot of times it almost goes away afterwards and then they stop thinking about it and say, all right, well now I have my kid. And,

um,

Jennifer Fink: only goes away until you, have another kid, at which point the whole world chimes in again. And no matter what you have, they hope [00:07:00] you have the other one. And if you have two or more of the same, you are prone to those comments your whole entire life.

Ross Romano: Right. And there's all that, learning, that can continue to be done to say, okay, now I understand why. there's things other than, what I was worried about was not really the thing or how I handle it. And I, and you mentioned the gender stereotypes. So I think, let's go to that and, you talk about how the current culture harms our boys in some ways, and part of the gender stereotypes and sexism, and that's, a lot of it's the pressure that's put on them.

You wrote something, about how, There's, of course a trend toward a positive trend toward female empowerment and girls being told you can be whatever you wanna be. And boys saying, well, how come I'm, I'm not told that? And it made me think, the expectation probably is that men have always believed they could be whatever they can be, but.

It's whatever you can be within societal expectations, right? Because there's a certain there's things you're not [00:08:00] supposed to be according to those stereotypes, right? So it's the assumption is that you want to be what society thinks you should be. So it actually does limit that range of expression or that range of what a boy may feel like.

They're supposed to be interested in, but, what are some of those other ways that stereotypes, around gender prove harmful to boys?

Jennifer Fink: You grew up as a boy.

Ross Romano: Mm-hmm.

Jennifer Fink: I'm sure you experienced most of these, right? Were you ever told, boys, don't cry man up. Those are so common. I recall hearing those things. I think it was my oldest son at that point playing T-ball. Right. And it's like, Parents, if you have ever gone to an early like five-year-old tee-ball game, for one, it is the most boring thing in the whole entire world because you've got adults trying to get kids to do things that don't make sense to them.

And outfielders in tee-ball, there is nothing to do. Nobody hits the ball that far. So there's this, boy in the outfield, and [00:09:00] he's. Looking around and he's kicking at the dirt and kind of using his, his foot to make it into a pile, because what else are you gonna do out there? And the coach is like, come on, are you a ball player?

or Are you're gonna play in the dirt. And it was this very, very negative, judgemental tone. Like it was very clear, which was the thing the kid's supposed to choose. And it's that kind of stuff. And I wanna go back to your, can be anything you want. Because of the society that most of us adults grew up in, and many of us, the females, experienced some limitations and expectations for what we could be because of our gender.

We make it a point to tell our daughters and nieces, you can do whatever you want, right? Because historically men have had more freedom to do and be whatever they want. We haven't made that same point to tell it to today's boys. We've been in the world. The boys haven't, they don't know that that was before.

They only know what they see. So what they still [00:10:00] so often see is there are certain things that guys do, and there are definitely things that guys don't do in their world. It is 2023. Right. And we still don't have the imbalance, between male and female teachers is huge,

Ross Romano: Right.

Jennifer Fink: right? There's still not that many male teachers.

when you get into early childcare, there's almost no males in early childcare. In nursing, it's starting to balance out somewhat, but it's still a predominantly female profession. And then you get into things like, you know, dancing. Even though there is tremendous demand for male dancers, a little boy who wants to dance is not exactly routinely applauded in many circles.

Ross Romano: Right. And it's speaking that message of you can be, whatever you want to be to girls, is focused on expanding that vertical reach of the things that used to be, Above the, the glass ceiling, right? Are the things that women weren't encouraged to pursue, but that there's a message to boys to expand the horizontal [00:11:00] reach of, there's, a whole wide range of things you might be interested in, and it's not just this one path to becoming a, an executive or a doctor or a police officer, fire.

There's all these other things that might be interesting to you and it does, continue to be challenging, of course, because while. Expectations also compound over time without other things really going away. Right. Whereas, for example, now, in a previous generations there was definitely that gender divide of, okay.

Dad goes to work and does whatever and mom's at home with the kids and then, that's changed a lot. Economic realities have made it such that, most ha most households that have, two parents need to be a two income household anyway, so moms have to work as well. And there's some accommodation for that, although not always as much as there could be.

And then with the men, in rare circumstances anymore, is it considered acceptable for the man not to also be an active parent? But that doesn't detract from the expectation that they're also a [00:12:00] breadwinner, right? So there's all these different things to balance and to say, okay.

Reprioritizing or choosing what's the most important becomes more and more difficult because it's not that something replaces the other.

And,

Jennifer Fink: systems haven't adapted to that yet. I mean, that reality you're talking about is the reality for most families right now. And as you well know, We don't have great support for parents, period. We don't have any kind of, paid leave for females who have children.

Ross Romano: Mm-hmm.

Jennifer Fink: And if you wanna talk about parental leave for dads, that's even further behind.

So the reality is that kids need both parents ideally. And we, our society's not structured up to support that. So you've got these, I think like social and cultural things that are starting to change, but our systems haven't changed with them yet. And so we're all muddling through the best that we can and we're really stressed out [00:13:00] about it.

Ross Romano: Yeah, I would say so. And along the lines as well, I wanted to continue along with some of these. Persistent, stereotypes. There's a chapter in your book called Keep Him Close. The book is based around these 10, pieces of advice or 10 rules for raising boys.

And Keep him Close is one of the chapters. And it opens with a discussion of John Watson and some of his ideas that, I had never read about them that closely before or understood how codified some of the extreme stances were, about, non-attachment to your, children. And I would love it if you could, if you could briefly summarize some of that and also some of the ways in which, even though.

People aren't necessarily still adhering to them strictly, they still kind of do persist in the culture, at least in the sense that it, does cause confusion among mothers and, I'm sure fathers as well about what is the, what is an appropriate [00:14:00] relationship to form with your child.

Jennifer Fink: So I didn't know any of that research with Watson either until I started working on this book. Many years ago when my boys were younger, I had interviewed a woman named Kate Stone Lombardi. And she wrote a book called The Mama's Boy Myth because she had a son. And at that point her son was like a, teenager.

And she caught herself in conversation with another woman explaining that like she was working, dealing with a career situation. And she had talked over with her son and she was telling the other woman this. And she's like, you know, well, we're close. Well, not that close, you know this. Like, she almost had to apologize for this close relationship.

And the other woman said the same exact thing and, I think it's changing, but there are still moms who are counseled. That, especially as your boy gets older, he needs men. He needs to be with his dad. He needs to spend more time with men, not so much with you that you can almost hinder his development by staying close.

And there are a lot of dads, I think, who kind of feel that way too. Like a [00:15:00] boy. Becoming a man needs to be strong and independent. And if I keep him too close, I am hindering that. And so when I dug into this, I found like this guy we're talking about John B. Watson. He was the president of the American Psychological Association.

That's a big deal. And in 1928 he had this book out that was a best seller and he advised parents to never hug and kiss their children. That, too much parental love is dangerous because it hinders children's development and. Reading this, I can see the threads of all of this through my family. Like this was common.

This was the American Psychological Association in the late 1920s, early 1930s. Think about your family. What is that? Maybe you know grandparents, great-grandparents. If that's how they were raised, how do you think they interacted with their children?

Ross Romano: Right.

Jennifer Fink: And I see some of this, coming down, which frankly helped me understand my family.

A whole lot better. [00:16:00] And, sadly the Watsons tried this with their kids and it did not go well. They had two sons and one died of suicide, and the other admitted to lifelong struggles. So the evidence is now pretty clear. All humans, adults, children, we need close human connections. And there are ways you can do that with your child.

That facilitates their autonomy and development as well. Certainly, your interaction with a two-year-old boy is different than your interaction with a 16 year old boy. It has to change the nature of that connection changes, but you can stay connected and involved in his life and that is healthy for him.

And it's healthy for you.

Ross Romano: Yeah. And I think, yeah, Watson had also written that he wasn't even convinced that parents and their children should live in the same house. Right. That kids should go live with some, impartial caregiver and, that's a pretty extreme stance. And then of course we could see how through popular [00:17:00] culture, there's that, that stereotype of the, the Smother mother, right?

The Norman Bates or the movie Psycho, those kind of things where it's like, yeah, you don't wanna be like that. But the reality is, these boys, and as they become men, And they don't know how to form attachments and they don't feel like they have relationships and communities and people they care about.

They go seeking it. And often that, that ends poorly. They end up seeking groups that are, not positive influences because they have commonality, right? They're all seeking some sense of belonging, some sense of, community and caring. And, when you have a group of people who all haven't really learned how to form a healthy relationships, then of course the dynamic between them ends up being, not that healthy.

Jennifer Fink: Right, and we've seen this throughout history. There is this human need for connection. And we will look for it wherever we can get it. And when you are not getting it in healthy ways, [00:18:00] you are attracted towards whoever's giving that to you. And so, we see this, People who join gangs, the people who have joined extremist movements, many of these are people who are disconnected from the wider culture, haven't found acceptance elsewhere.

This is who's taking me in. And sometimes it's not even that the person joining or getting involved with this organization believes the extremist propaganda or whatever principle it is in the beginning. But these are the people who are being nice to me. These are the people who are saying You're okay as you are.

That's how powerful those words are.

Ross Romano: I wanted to kind of circle back as well, and some of this is, it might cover some ground that we've gone over, but I think it's also important to relate it to, you know, a large. Percentage of our audience here being educators. And, you've written, a lot in the education field, so you're Of course, and your kids have gone through school, so you're mindful of that audience.

And I wanted to even touch on both halves of the subtitle, the book, raising Great Guys [00:19:00] in a World that Misunderstands males. So we've talked a little bit about the difference, of course between boys and girls, some of these gender stereotypes. Are there some other prevalent ways in which.

Parents, and also this applies to educators and it could be the same, there could be some different misunderstandings, but they kind of misunderstand males or just, certain things that they're not particularly tuned into if they haven't studied it.

Jennifer Fink: I think the biggest, most prevalent misunderstanding of males. Especially relevant to educators as boys are going through the school system is that there's not a, strong universal, widely recognized understanding that boys' developmental pace is different than girls. So in a lot of ways, cognitively and in terms of school readiness, you know the kinds of things that we ask kids to do in, kindergarten, sitting still learning how to read, writing their name, holding a pencil, A [00:20:00] five-year-old girl is more ready, generally speaking, to do those things in your average five-year-old boy, right?

So if you know that one fact that can explain so much, wanna know why so many of those boys are having a hard time sitting still and doing what you ask them to? They're not there yet. They're just not as ready. So then the boys do what they need to do to try and keep themselves awake or amused, and then that gets, annoying and it is disruptive in a classroom.

But if you don't know where it's coming from, it's kind of easy to assume that they are willfully misbehaving they are being bad. And then for a lot of us, this, plays in and interacts with our preexisting stereotypes. There are a lot of people and a lot of women especially, who have had very negative experiences with some boys and men, and if that is your experience, you may be totally unconsciously inclined to [00:21:00] see danger more quickly than other people.

Even if you're looking at a five-year-old boy or a seven-year-old boy, much less, you're dealing with a 14 year old who may be taller and stronger than you. And so some of this is us learning some basic facts that can help us understand boys, and then learning to question some of our assumptions that we have about boys and men, and all of us have these.

We don't necessarily realize it as we're going about the world.

Ross Romano: Right. And then, there's also, with relation to. Developmental stages and, how it relates to the classroom, right? There's the compound effects of the difference in age, within a grade level. That has been the topic of some study, to say that the, kids that are closer to the cutoff date on one end or the other, Are almost a year, they can be up to a year,[00:22:00] set apart in age.

And then if you're combining that with a boy who's at a certain development level versus a girl, they could be almost two years behind developmentally, then their classmate, For completely, scientific reasons, and yet those same kids are in the same class with one teacher who's trying to go through the curriculum.

And I know you recommend, for parents of boys, being mindful of this and considering delaying formal education, particularly if the child's not especially ready for that. Would you recommend perhaps. A, systemic look at that to say, not, only should parents have to make these decisions for themselves, but is there a way for the school systems to look at, okay, this is what we know about developmental science and we need to do some things differently here because we're disadvantaging a lot of students because of the way in which kids are grouped.

Jennifer Fink: Yes, yes, yes, yes. There is a gentleman named [00:23:00] Richard V. Reeves, of the Brookings Institute, and he came out with a book a few months ago called of Boys and Men. So while mine is much more aimed directly at, parents, grandparents, educators. His is much more like policy solutions. And I think we need both, right?

We do need these policy and societal changes, and my book is if you are raising a boy right now, you don't have 20 years to wait for those changes to happen. But one of the changes that he recommends is automatically red shirting all the boys by default. So for instance, That if the, usual start age for kindergarten for girls, if that cutoff is five years old, that for boys it would be six years old.

And I've heard him talk about this on other podcasts, including our On Boys podcast. And the his idea is that yes, the final say, should, and could rest with the parents. So if you feel like your kid, for whatever [00:24:00] reason, is ready and he hasn't hit that, sure, you can send him. But having it be more of a, default that you have in the beginning, older boys with younger girls, because developmentally they're more in line.

And one of the things that he points out in his book that we haven't yet discussed is these differences are super apparent in those early elementary years. And they come up again in those adolescent years because once again, the girls typically mature more quickly. And so there's a big difference between a 15 year old boy and a 15 year old girl.

So Reeve's thinking is that if you give boys that little bit of extra time on the front, you also help ease some of that gap in the adolescent years because the boys basically have an extra year to catch up somewhat to the girls.

Ross Romano: Yeah, particularly right in the early years, the. Physical development is obvious as well. You could tell girls are taller faster, and, but then once that evens out and then [00:25:00] reverses, it's harder to see on the surface, right? That boys are still maturing.

They could be these big, tall, almost adult sized men. And then, they get into the things like, when I thought back to it, Later on after I was older, I think I was lucky, I would say, to have grown up in a state in New Jersey where you don't get your driver's license until you're 17.

Because when I see these states where the kids are 15 and 16 year olds and driving, and I'm thinking, man, I shouldn't have even been driving when I was 17, right? Because you just don't have, the impulse control or there's just things that even as an otherwise, Mature, intelligent, good student, good, community member thing.

There's just certain things that your brain is not yet fully equipped to do. And these are, serious considerations.

Jennifer Fink: Yeah, and you know this I'm sure from personal experience too, right? That's the case for an individual. And then if you take,[00:26:00] an individual boy who's at that point and you surround him with a bunch of other boys who are also at that point, I. Generally speaking, they don't make more mature decisions when they're in a group, do they?

Ross Romano: No, no, that's, uh, well then the compound effects there, I wanted to touch on, as I mentioned, subtitle, raising Great guys in the world that misunderstands Male. So we talked about the misunderstands part. If you had to choose five words that come to mind when you think about what, a great guy is that you're wanting to raise, what five words would you use?

Jennifer Fink: Okay, I'm gonna be taking notes so I can count. I am going to say, caring, responsible, resilient, this might not be the right word, but I'm gonna say dedicated. And the idea being, that, has that kind of persistence and, stick to itness. And when there's something that's important goes for it. And you know what, I'm gonna go with interdependent for the last one.

Caring, responsible, resilient, dedicated, [00:27:00] interdependent.

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Ross Romano: Excellent. Are they, do any those ideas relate to, areas in which you've observed progress that we've made in like in the 20 years that you've been a parent? Right. And when raising boys and, seeing how. What you knew and thought and expected then, and then you've seen over the course of your kids growing up, and how conversations evolve.

Have we made progress in some of those areas? Maybe would more people agree with your des your description there than they

Jennifer Fink: I hope so.

Ross Romano: then? Or, or how do you see that progressing?

Jennifer Fink: I do think that we have made and are making progress, right? I'm not entirely sure that when I was a kid that caring would've been on the list for boys, for men. I think it, oh, we should have been, but we weren't thinking in those terms. And I think increasingly we are thinking that way.

There is more of a recognition now that. [00:28:00] Men are caregivers too. Men are fathers and have a lot to offer beyond that stereotypical provider protector role. So I think there has been motion on that. I think there's more to be done because there's still, I'm part of some Facebook groups for, parents of boys and it's hugely mom dominated.

And a couple times a month you'll see something like a mom buying her son a doll and getting backlash for that. So we have a ways to go on even caring. Yet I think we've definitely seen a movement towards this resilient piece. There's so much more talk about mental health and emotions and wellbeing than there ever was, and I think that that ultimately is a good thing.

I think those of us who are the adults now have a responsibility to. Keep somewhat of a positive focus on that. We can talk about depression and we can talk about anxiety and we can [00:29:00] normalize that, but I think we also need to normalize that tough stuff happens, and that's normal too. And it happens to all of us. And here's the role of resilience and here's the role of hope.

Interdependent. I think we generally have a long way to go with in this country. I mean, we are a very stubbornly independent people and so many of us feel like we have to do it all by ourselves, and we are all suffering, especially families, because we lost the proverbial village.

You know, it's each little household trying to do it all on their own, and that is near impossible. So I think we all have work to do on the interdependent piece.

Ross Romano: Yeah. I mean it takes, for really any of those, right? One through line is that it, it takes a significant amount of self-confidence to be able to engage fully with any of those competencies. And to do it in a way that is. Independent [00:30:00] of the, pernicious influence of gender stereotypes or, or what anybody else thinks one is supposed to do,

But it takes a very long time to come around to that, if ever not everybody gets there. But certainly as far as growing up and thinking about. And all of the things that go along with much of what we've talked about that. Kids themselves aren't aware of, kids themselves aren't aware of, and even if they were, I don't know how they would wrap their heads around these developmental differences.

To understand, okay, well I'm one of the youngest kids in my grade and I'm a boy. So yeah, I'm just not exactly as mature yet as my classmates here. And so there are some things that are harder for me. Even if you know that as a kid, how does it manifest other than potentially as anxiety or, lack of confidence, right?

But most kids don't know that anyway, even, so it's better to, for the parents and, the [00:31:00] educators to be aware and to figure out ways to address it and to create situations for success.

And to, cultivate that confidence because, yeah, it, it would be. Nearly impossible to have that, that comfort level with oneself, right.

When you're constantly feeling like you're fighting that uphill stream. Yeah.

Jennifer Fink: I agree with you 100%. And so much of this woven in between the chapters in this book, it really is about seeing and affirming and encouraging, facilitating your son, whatever his thing is. And for a lot of boys, and this can be true for girls, but for a lot of boys like their thing, whatever. It gets them excited about life or they're interested in, it's not what they're covering in second grade or it's not what they're doing in seventh grade.

And [00:32:00] so as a parent and as an educator, I understand educators like you have this curriculum that somebody's telling you, you have to get through with all these kids of varying abilities. And that is, it's putting you and these kids in a impossible and unhealthy position.

Ross Romano: Yeah.

Jennifer Fink: way you can look at and see and affirm the specialness and the gifts of the child in front of you and connect on that, it will help the child.

It will help your relationship because kids build a. All of us, not just kids, we build on our successes. So if somebody sees a little spark in you and comments positively on that, you're more likely to keep going with that. And that's where we see our growth and our learning and where we, boys, girls, all humans, we start developing like our internal sense of competence.

And I think that's where true confidence comes from. You know when you feel like you can do something and it makes a difference and matters to other people, that's when you really feel good about yourself.

Ross Romano: I want to [00:33:00] transition into a little bit of a rapid round here and go through, a handful of questions here that are, quick response, the first one being, what is the best thing about raising boys?

Jennifer Fink: They expand my horizons. They introduce me to things that I never would've otherwise done, and I get to learn about new things. It's fantastic.

Ross Romano: Along those lines, what's been the most surprising thing?

Jennifer Fink: Um, the most surprising thing has, honestly, for me, it has been the just wealth and prevalence of all these stereotypes that people hold about boys. I didn't expect people to feel sorry for me because I have four sons, and you get that way more than you get people feeling happy for you.

Ross Romano: Right. You're outnumbered, as they say.

Jennifer Fink: I'm definitely outnumbered.

Ross Romano: What's the scariest thing?

Jennifer Fink: The scariest thing is realizing that you can do all the things and you can safety proof your house, and you can role [00:34:00] model good stuff and ultimately you cannot control what they do.

Ross Romano: Maybe that's why I, you know, I just gave up on safety proofing halfway through and said, you know what?

Jennifer Fink: Here's the thing though, Ross. I mean, you know this

Ross Romano: They'll find a way.

Jennifer Fink: My youngest is now 17, my oldest is 25. I have a book out called Raising Great Guys. You think I'm not terrified that somebody's gonna do something extremely stupid right now?

Ross Romano: Right.

Jennifer Fink: Right. Like kids, kids do stuff and kids make mistakes and as they get older, you mentioned it, start giving them cars.

Ah, bad stuff can happen and I can't control any of that.

Ross Romano: yeah. Is there a particular insight that comes to mind? That an educator gave you into one of your kids during their time in school that helped you learn something about them that you may not have otherwise noticed.

Jennifer Fink: I'm gonna say [00:35:00] no on that one.

Ross Romano: Okay?

Jennifer Fink: Yeah. I'm gonna say no. And to be fair, some of that may be because, we homeschooled for seven and a half years, so I had a pretty solid understanding of like personality and academics and all that before they got to the school system. So in a lot of ways I was trying to help the teachers understand what made my guys tick.

Ross Romano: Right. Yeah. And on that point, is there any particular insight that comes to mind for you that you were able to provide to your kids, teachers because of having that close relationship to them? Or is there anyone that are you more, more broadly in insight that you would like to share with educators that are listening?

Jennifer Fink: So much of what I want educators to know and do frankly, is out of their control, and that is just sad for me. Educators know how important play is. Educators know how important time outside is and [00:36:00] movement, and you are working in these systems that don't give you enough time to do that. I mean, one of my sons, when he hit seventh grade in our district, that's when there's no more recess.

None. No recess. It was not a surprise to me that my son and his friends who were generally active in Sporty boys. Many of them started landing in in-school suspensions because they started creating trouble at lunch and afterwards, if you had given them an outlet, I think that would've made a difference.

But there's the system, and I think we all, educators, parents, society, I think we all have a role to play in hopefully rebuilding the system and making it healthier for the students and for those who work there. Because it's not a great place for a lot of educators either.

Ross Romano: Right. And if there was, one thing that you could change about the education system other than the one we've already talked about, what would it be?

Jennifer Fink: I wish that we were [00:37:00] able to allow children, Okay, let me back up. Here's what I would do right now in our system, the early years are focused on learning to read and write, and those are the foundational things. You get those, and then we can get to science, and then we can get slow studies and the interesting stuff, it's not how young kids learn.

Young kids learn by seeing, doing, touching, interacting, and I wish we could flip it. And just spend those early years focused on feeding the kids curiosity, letting them play, letting them explore, letting them touch and learn about the world. And then as both boys and girls find motor skills and cognitive skills mature, then introduce reading and writing.

Ross Romano: Excellent. So, at the end of each of your chapters, you have some reflections I would call them for, building boys and, this'll be a little challenging, but I wanted to see if we could narrow it down a little bit just for the purpose of this question too. If you had [00:38:00] three overall reflections. Three, for parents and then three, for educators, they don't have to be the exact ones in the book, but if you asked yourself these three questions, you would get a pretty good sense of how tuned in you are to some of these strategies for, developing boys.

Jennifer Fink: I think the first one for both would be, What do I believe about boys?

Ross Romano: Mm-hmm.

Jennifer Fink: That's a tougher question to answer than you may think. And that's the kind of thing where probably because I'm a writer, I journal, but that's the kind of thing that I have to journal through to find out what I really think. What do you believe about boys? What scares you about boys and. What is your definition of a great guy? I would give those three questions for both groups because I really think that those answers to that would be quite instructional. It would show you perhaps where some of your beliefs are [00:39:00] limiting and it would kind of guide you towards where you wanna go.

Once you can define what you think a great guy is right now, you've got a place to aim.

Ross Romano: Yeah. Have you found that there are particular identifiable differences in what? Adult men and women believe about boys,

Jennifer Fink: I think that adult men, because it. Caveat, I've never been an adult man, right? So I can only guess based on what I see in conversations that I have. Adult men are much more in tune with and sympathetic to boys, I think, than women are because they see things like, just for no apparent reason.

Jumping up and running on the couch and leaping off. They're like, yeah, that's normal. And the, and women, we don't get that, you know? There are so many men who. Can look back as adults and realize some of the things that they did that they weren't mature at that point in [00:40:00] time. But because they had that experience, they have faith that the boys can get there.

And a lot of us women don't have that same innate understanding. And we have a lot of fear that we're gonna screw this up and we're going to somehow raise a boy who becomes a bad guy or can't function in the world.

Ross Romano: Absolutely. So Jennifer, is there, another book other than yours that you'd like to recommend to our listeners? Maybe one of the ones you cited in your book or something else that you think they would find useful?

Jennifer Fink: I really did enjoy Richard Reeves of Boys and Men. I know I said it's a lot of policy recommendations, but he also. He also outlines very definitively and with stats and facts to back it up. Where boys are at today, where men are at, where are the points they're struggling. You know, it's easy, if you're a woman to look around and go, men and boys are doing fine.

But the fact is that on pretty much all academic outcomes and all health [00:41:00] outcomes, they aren't, they're doing worse. And that's a problem for all of us. So I recommend that one. How to raise a Boy by Michael Reichert, one of my, all time favorites. He's a psychologist. He studies this stuff. He is a dad, he's a grandfather, and he's just a wonderful man. And his whole point is that connection. Connection, connection. Connection is so important, and that's a piece that traditionally, hasn't been emphasized in how we raise boys.

Ross Romano: Are there any final ideas that I haven't asked you about that you wanna leave with our listeners?

Jennifer Fink: Take time to get to know the boys around you. Look at what they are excited about and let them teach you about it. They will light up and some of the stuff they're interested in, you might not be interested in Roblox, not my thing. Dirt biking, Uhuh not my thing. But I have learned so much and forged connections with my guys by letting them teach me and by entering their worlds.

By [00:42:00] letting them explore places that I wasn't familiar with, and that's where that kind of growth and competence and confidence comes from.

Ross Romano: Jennifer lw. Fink the book is called Building Boys. It's available now. We'll put the links below. Where else can our listeners find you? You have your podcast, your website. Where should they check out, those things?

Jennifer Fink: The easiest place to go would be building boys.net. That's my website, and you'll be able to find all the other stuff from there.

Ross Romano: Excellent. Well listeners check that out. We'll put the link below for building boys.net and you can find Jennifer's other work, her writing her podcast on boys. We'll put the link to the book below so you can check that out. And please do also subscribe to the authority for more in-depth author interviews like this one and visit be podcast.network to learn about all of our shows.

Jennifer, thanks again for being on the Authority.

Jennifer Fink: Thank you so much. I had fun.

Ross Romano: Then the music plays. [00:43:00]