Advice books cover a plethora of topics, suggesting many ways in which the reader can become richer, cleverer, thinner, happier, more focused and less stressed. The books may promise to help readers put painful experiences or habits behind them or teach them new skills. These books intend to help the readers become better versions of themselves. But this is not the message broadcast by advice books aimed at (single) mothers raising sons. Whereas the general self-help book will reassure readers that although they suffer from a lack, this lack can be resolved, the most a mother of a son can do is stop inappropriate or harmful behaviour, such as shouting, belittling or smothering the boy. But she cannot teach the boy how to become a man, and so she needs to find suitable role models for him.

Sandra Dolby, in her analysis of the genre of advice books, refers to it as a form of urban legend, in the way that it may keep ‘certain beliefs, customs, attitudes, and stereotypes alive’ (2005, 10). This is also what happens in the advice books. The ideas that mothers are incapable of understanding and appreciating boy behaviour, that boys must put their mothers behind and enter the world of men through fathers or father figures are repeated again and again. Another stereotype repeated is that through their inept parenting, single mothers are responsible for the disintegration of contemporary society, since boys who are not raised correctly will turn into criminals, mass shooters and terrorists. There are different voices, of course, inflected through the prism of gender, class and race. For example, some authors are in favour of mothers working, whereas others promote staying at home while the children are young, or at least working from home. Some authors help with legal terminology, which might be useful if a son has been arrested. Others give advice on the importance of music lessons.

People turn to advice books for a number of reasons, as Nicolas Marquis remarks in his study of readers’ response to French advice books (2019). Moreover, what they choose to take away from the book varies and may not even be what the author intended.