Hello Blog Followers:

Over the past twenty years I’ve grown increasingly concerned about the developmental challenges and pitfalls that boys and young men face. My concerns arise partly due to my professional work with young males and their parents and partly due to recent news about the “Boy crisis” in the U.S.

For a long time I’ve wanted to write a book that would be helpful to young men and to the parents, teachers, coaches, and others who care about them and their development. I finally have some time for this project and would like to invite people to contribute thoughts and stories that will help me shape and enrich what I want to say.

This is not a research project. I have no intent to generalize any findings or build a theory. The purpose is journalistic in that I intend to listen to individuals who share thoughts and stories with me and then report some of this information within the frame I’ve already established for the book.

I’m looking for people who might want to share a story, an experience, or an opinion about boys and their development, particularly their sexual development. If you’re interested, here’s the plan:

1. Email me at drjohnsproject@gmail.com; You’re welcome to do this anonymously.
2. In response, I’ll send you an email with about 10 questions, some general and some specific.
3. After you receive the email with the questions, you can choose to email me back (or not). And you can respond to any or all of the questions (or you can even make up your own questions that you feel are important). I won’t quote anyone without permission.

Thanks very much for considering sharing your thoughts or stories. I appreciate your time. I hope this project helps boys and their caretakers overcome some of the more destructive and misguided messages about maleness in our current culture. Boys deserve our help as they strive to become productive, mature, and compassionate men.

Sincerely,

John Sommers-Flanagan, Ph.D.