The explicit purpose of the advice books in this study is to help single mothers raise their sons. In doing so the authors outline a number of supposed problems, including how to teach and promote masculinity and how a boy can be made into a man without a man in the house. The stated intention of some of the authors is to rescue boys from a society that has turned its back on them and, in the process, get US society itself back on track. The unspoken assumption of a number of the authors is the conviction that humanity is dichotomous – that there is a basic, foundational difference between men and women. In this, the authors turn to scientific research that will support their claims that there are essential, biological differences between men and women, which will not only translate into differences in parenting carried out by mothers and fathers but also in insurmountable differences between mothers and sons.

The chapter begins with an overview of the concepts of sex and gender as they have been developed and applied by scientists as well as journalists and other lay people to support societal and cultural notions of masculinity and femininity. Then follows an overview of some of the central questions of masculinity studies, before moving on to an analysis of the advice books. The first section analyses the way the books construct and enforce perceived biological differences between men and women and, by extension, mothers and sons. Then follows an analysis of how the books construct masculinity, how this masculinity is intended to be taught to boys and what roles are afforded to the boys. The chapter concludes with an analysis of how heteronormativity is expressed in the books, both in terms of family structure and in assumptions of sexuality.

Sex and Gender

In 1972, sexologists John Money and Anke Erhardt published Man & Woman, Boy & Girl, in which they brought the view of sex and gender as ‘separate categories’ to a wider audience (Fausto-Sterling 2000, 3). In this view, sex pertains to body parts and reproduction, whereas gender is the ‘internal conviction that one is either male or female (gender identity) and the behavioural expression of that conviction’ (2000, 3).