Making American Boys

by Kidd, Kenneth B.

• ISBN13: 9780816642960
• ISBN10: 0816642966
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2005-06-09
• Publisher: Univ of Minnesota Pr

Summary

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 "boy work" promoted by character-building organizations such as Scouting and 4-H to current therapeutic and pop psychological obsessions with children's self-esteem, Kidd presents the great variety of cultural influences on the changing notion of boyhood. Analyzing icons of boyhood and maleness from Huck Finn and The Jungle Book's Mowgli to Father Flanagan's Boys Town and even Michael Jackson, Kidd surveys films, psychoanalytic case studies, parenting manuals, historical accounts of the discoveries of "wolf-boys," and self-help books to provide a rigorous history of what it has meant to be an all-American boy.

Author Biography

Kenneth B. Kidd is associate professor of English at the University of Florida and associate director of the Center for Children's Literature and Culture.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	ix
Boyhood for Beginners: An Introduction	1	(22)
Farming for Boys	23	(26)
Bad Boys and Men of Culture	49	(38)
Wolf-Boys, Street Rats, and the Vanishing Sioux	87	(24)
Father Flanagan's Boys Town	111	(24)
From Freud's Wolf Man to Teen Wolf	135	(32)
Reinventing the Boy Problem	167	(24)
Notes	191	(30)
Works Cited	221	(16)
Index	237