This is the best book I've seen on raising boys to be happier, healthier men. I've read a few on the subject because, well, I was pretty nervous when I found out through amniocentisis that my second child was a boy. Growing up, my father was not around much and he died three days after I turned twelve; after that time we were definitely an all-female family and I never really understood men at all. I was in a lot of relationships with boys, and later men (the psychology-inclined would say I was trying to replace my father) and I learned enough about them to discover that they were even more lost, emotionally, than I was. The McGill Report on Male Intimacy (Michael E. McGill, Published 1985) gave me the best handle I had on the ways in which men differ from women in their perception of love, and some of the reasons for it, and an acceptance that it was not wrong, just alien, though McGill demonstrates that a lot of male emotional patterns are unhealthy.
So I wanted to raise my son differently. I read and was vastly disappointed by Raising A Son (Jeanne Elium, Don Elium, Paperback, Published < 1996) which seemed like a fuzzy mishmash of ideas from all over (Iron John to feminism and everything in between). I picked up and put down many others. But when I started reading The Courage To Raise Good Men I got that, "Ah hah!" of insight. This doesn't just give ideas on things we might try to help our boys grow up more emotionally healthy, it explains how the traditional system of parenting fails by wounding boys at an early age. Silverstein backs up the information with stories from her practice counselling men, and you can easily see the pattern. This little bright bit of insight -- so simple, so clear -- gives you all the understanding you need to stop worrying when your boy plays with trucks and not dolls. If there's anything to the idea that to raise our boys to be better, happier men then we need to raise them no differently than we do our girls, the key is to love them just the same.
Please read this book. I do not want to try to synopsize the insights because you really need to hear the whole argument and see it from the many sides the book offers.