Adolescent Boys

A flurry of best-selling works has recently urged us to rescue and protect boys. They have described how boys are failing at school, acting out, or shutting down emotionally. Lost in much of the ensuing public conversation are the boys themselves—the texture of their lives and the ways in which they resist stereotypical representations of them.
Most of this work on boys is based primarily on middle class, white boys. Yet boys from poor and working class families as well as those from African American, Latino, and Asian American backgrounds need to be understood in their own terms and not just as a contrast to white or middle class boys. Adolescent Boys brings together the most up-to-date empirical research focused on understanding the development of boys from diverse racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic backgrounds.
The authors show how the contexts of boys' lives, such as the schools they attend shape their identities and relationships. The research in this book will help professionals and parents understand the diversity and richness of boys' experiences.

Niobe Way, Ed. D., is Professor of Applied Psychology in the Department of Applied Psychology at New York University. She is also the founder of the Project for the Advancement of Our Common Humanity (pach.org) and the past President for the Society for Research on Adolescence. She received her doctorate from Harvard University in Human Development and Psychology and was an NIMH postdoctoral fellow in the psychology department at Yale University. Way’s has been studying the social and emotional development of adolescents in cultures around the world for the past three decades. In addition to almost a hundred academic journal publications and dozens of blogs written for mainstream media outlets, Way has written numerous books that include her sole-authored: Everyday Courage: The Lives and Stories of Urban Teenagers (NYU Press, 1998); and Deep Secrets: Boys’ Friendships and the Crisis of Connection (Harvard University Press, 2011). Her co-edited or co-authored books include: Urban Girls: Resisting Stereotypes, Creating Identities (NYU Press, 1996); Adolescent Boys: Exploring Diverse Cultures of Boyhood (NYU Press, 2004). and her award-winning Growing up Fast: Transitions to Adulthood among Inner-City Adolescent Mothers (Erlbaum Press, 2001). Her research has been funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, The National Science Foundation, The William T. Grant Foundation, The Spencer Foundation, and by numerous other foundations. Way is an internationally recognized leader in the study of social and emotional development and adolescence as well as in the use of mixed methods.Chu Judy Y. :

Judy Y. Chu is Affiliated Faculty in the Program in Human Biology at Stanford University.

The volume explores the experiences of boys who have been excluded from previous developmental research and also challenges the existing stereotypes about boys.

Way and Judy Chu have put together an excellent book on explorations into the lives of adolescent boys. The essays are rich in diversity, not only in the populations of boys studied, but also in research methodology and theoretical perspective.

Empirical research on the lives and behavior of adolescent boys from a variety of ethnic and class backgrounds.