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Deep Secrets: Boys’ Friendships and the Crisis of Connection
“Boys are emotionally illiterate and don’t want intimate friendships.” In this empirically grounded challenge to our stereotypes about boys and men, Niobe Way reveals the intense intimacy among teenage boys especially during early and middle adolescence. Boys not only share their deepest secrets and feelings with their closest male friends, they claim that without them they would go “wacko.” Yet as boys become men, they become distrustful, lose these friendships, and feel isolated and alone. Drawing from hundreds of interviews conducted throughout adolescence with black, Latino, white, and Asian American boys, Deep Secrets reveals the ways in which we have been telling ourselves a false story about boys, friendships, and human nature. Boys’ descriptions of their male friendships sound more like “something out of Love Story than Lord of the Flies. ” Yet in late adolescence, boys feel they have to “man up” by becoming stoic and independent. Vulnerable emotions and intimate friendships are for girls and gay men. “No homo” becomes their mantra. These findings are alarming, given what we know about links between friendships and health, and even longevity. Rather than a “boy crisis,” Way argues that boys are experiencing a “crisis of connection” because they live in a culture where human needs and capacities are given a sex (female) and a sexuality (gay), and thus discouraged for those who are neither. Way argues that the solution lies with exposing the inaccuracies of our gender stereotypes and fostering these critical relationships and fundamental human skills.
336 pages, Hardcover
First published March 15, 2011
67 people are currently reading
1879 people want to read
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January 23, 2025
Un livre absolument génial, dans lequel la psychologue et chercheuse Niobe Way fait la synthèse de ses travaux sur les amitiés entre garçons auprès d'adolescents américains.
La thèse présentée par l'autrice tient en deux temps :
Au début de l'adolescence, les garçons ont et cherchent des amitiés fortes, intimes, avec d'autres garçons avec lesquels ils peuvent se confier, partager leurs secrets et leurs sentiments.
A la fin de l'adolescence, sous la pression de la culture masculiniste et des stéréotypes de genre, les mêmes garçons ont perdu ou renoncé à ces amitiés et considèrent que parler de leurs sentiments n'est pas "viril", que seuls les filles et les gays le font. En même temps, ils regrettent, plus ou moins ouvertement, cette situation et les effets que cela a sur eux.
Ce livre illustre parfaitement les dégâts de la culture masculiniste sur les garçons, transformant de jeunes adolescents sensibles, empathiques et ouverts à soi et aux autres, en jeunes adultes solitaires, méfiants, souffrant d'isolement émotionnel et parfois de dépression.
Ce livre confirme ce que je pense depuis quelque temps : si le patriarcat est d'abord une oppression sur les filles et les femmes, en sortir libèrera aussi les garçons et les hommes.
La thèse présentée par l'autrice tient en deux temps :
Au début de l'adolescence, les garçons ont et cherchent des amitiés fortes, intimes, avec d'autres garçons avec lesquels ils peuvent se confier, partager leurs secrets et leurs sentiments.
A la fin de l'adolescence, sous la pression de la culture masculiniste et des stéréotypes de genre, les mêmes garçons ont perdu ou renoncé à ces amitiés et considèrent que parler de leurs sentiments n'est pas "viril", que seuls les filles et les gays le font. En même temps, ils regrettent, plus ou moins ouvertement, cette situation et les effets que cela a sur eux.
Ce livre illustre parfaitement les dégâts de la culture masculiniste sur les garçons, transformant de jeunes adolescents sensibles, empathiques et ouverts à soi et aux autres, en jeunes adultes solitaires, méfiants, souffrant d'isolement émotionnel et parfois de dépression.
Ce livre confirme ce que je pense depuis quelque temps : si le patriarcat est d'abord une oppression sur les filles et les femmes, en sortir libèrera aussi les garçons et les hommes.
March 16, 2022
Language is a prison, it’s also a grave.
June 3, 2015
Niobe Way's groundbreaking book on the friendships of boys is a clear and powerful call to action to save our sons. Way's work shows us how we systematically train our sons away from emotional connection and into lives of isolation and loss of authentic male friendships. If you care about boys or the men they will one day become, read this book.
Niobe Way is a Professor of Applied Psychology at New York University and director of the Ph.D. program in Developmental Psychology. A number of years ago, she started asking teenage boys what their closest friendships meant to them and documenting what they had to say. The results can be found in her groundbreaking book Deep Secrets. (Her book is available on Amazon.)
This particular question, about boys and their closest friendships, turns out to be an issue of life or death for American men.
Before Way, no one would have thought to ask boys what is happening in their closest friendships because we assumed we already knew. When it comes to what is happening emotionally with boys or men, we often confuse what we expect of them with what they actually feel. And given enough time, they do so as well.
This particular question, about boys and their closest friendships, turns out to be an issue of life or death for American men.
This surprisingly simple line of inquiry, once engaged, can open a Pandora's box of self-reflection for men. After a lifetime of being told how men "typically" experience feeling and emotion, the answer to the question "what do my closest friends mean to me" is lost to us.
And here is the proof. In a survey published by the AARP in 2010, we learn that one in three adults aged 45 or older reported being chronically lonely. Just a decade before, only one out of five of us said that. And men are facing the brunt of this epidemic of loneliness. Research shows that between 1999 and 2010 suicide among men, age 50 and over, rose by nearly 50%. The New York Times reports that "the suicide rate for middle-aged men was 27.3 deaths per 100,000, while for women it was 8.1 deaths per 100,000."
In an article for the New Republic titled The Lethality of Loneliness, Judith Schulevitz writes:
Emotional isolation is ranked as high a risk factor for mortality as smoking. A partial list of the physical diseases thought to be caused by or exacerbated by loneliness would include Alzheimer’s, obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, neurodegenerative diseases, and even cancer—tumors can metastasize faster in lonely people.
Consider a recent tweet by Alain De Botton:
"An epidemic of loneliness generated by the misguided idea that romantic love is the only solution to loneliness."
What Niobe Way illuminates in her book is nothing less than the central source of our culture's epidemic of male loneliness. Driven by our collective assumption that the friendships of boys are both casual and interchangeable, along with our relentless privileging of romantic love over platonic love, we are driving boys into lives Professor Way describes as "autonomous, emotionally stoic, and isolated." What's more, the traumatic loss of connection for boys Way describes is directly linked to our struggles as men in every aspect of our lives.
Millions of men are experiencing a sense of deep loss that haunts them even though they are engaged in fully realized romantic relationships, marriages and families.
Professor Way's research shows us that as boys in early adolescence, we express deeply fulfilling emotional connection and love for each other, but by the time we reach adulthood, that sense of connection evaporates. This is a catastrophic loss; a loss we somehow assume men will simply adjust to. They do not. Millions of men are experiencing a sense of deep loss that haunts them even though they are engaged in fully realized romantic relationships, marriages and families.
For men, the voices of the boys in Way's book open a deeply private door to our pasts. In the words of the boys themselves, we experience the heartfelt expression of male emotional intimacy that echoes the sunlit afternoons of our youth. This passionate and loving boy to boy connection occurs across class, race and cultures. It is exclusive to neither white nor black, rich nor poor. It is universal; beautifully evident in the hundreds of interviews that Way conducted. These boys declare freely the love they feel for their closest friends. They use the word love and they are proud to do so.
Consider this quote from a fifteen year old boy named Justin:
"[My best friend and I] love each other...that’s it …you have this thing that is deep, so deep, it’s within you, you can’t explain it. It’s just a thing that you know that that person is that person… and that is all that should be important in our friendship…I guess in life, sometimes two people can really, really understand each other and really have a trust, respect, and love for each other. It just happens, it’s human nature."
Way writes:
"Set against a culture that perceives boys and men to be 'activity oriented,' 'emotionally illiterate,' and interested only in independence, these stories seem shocking. The lone cowboy, the cultural icon of masculinity in the West, suggests that what boys want and need most are opportunities for competition and autonomy. Yet over 85% of the hundreds of boys we have interviewed throughout adolescence for the past 20 years suggest that their closest friendships --- especially those during early and middle adolescence--- share the plot of Love Story more than the plot of Lord of the Flies. Boys from different walks of life greatly valued their male friendships and saw them as critical components to their emotional wellbeing, not because their friends were worthy opponents in the competition for manhood, but because they were able to share their thoughts and feelings -- their deepest secrets -- with these friends.
Yet something happens to boys as they enter late adolescence….As boys enter manhood, they do, in fact, begin to talk less. They start using the phrase 'no homo' following any intimate statement about their friends and they begin to say that they don’t have time for their male friendships even though they continue to express strong desires for having such friendships.
In response to a simple question regarding how their friendships have changed since they were a freshman in high school, two boys respond and reveal everything about friendships for boys during adolescence. Justin describes in his senior year how his friendships have changed since he was a freshman:
'I don’t know, maybe, not a lot, but I guess that best friends become close friends. So that’s basically the only thing that changed. It’s like best friends become close friends, close friends become general friends and then general friends become acquaintances. So they just… If there’s distance whether it’s, I don’t know, natural or whatever. You can say that, but it just happens that way.'
Michael says:
'Like my friendship with my best friend is fading, but I’m saying it’s still there but… So I mean, it’s still there ‘cause we still do stuff together, but only once in a while. It’s sad ‘cause he lives only one block away from me and I get to do stuff with him less than I get to do stuff with people who are way further. …It’s like a DJ used his cross fader and started fading it slowly and slowly and now I’m like halfway through the cross fade.'"
And then Way takes us through the logical results of this disconnection for boys:
"Boys know by late adolescence that their close male friendships, and even their emotional acuity, put them at risk of being labeled 'girly,' 'immature,' or 'gay.' Thus, rather than focusing on who they are, they become obsessed with who they are not -- they are not girls, little boys nor, in the case of heterosexual boys, are they gay. In response to a cultural context that links intimacy in male friendships with an age, a sex (female), and a sexuality (gay), these boys “mature” into men who are autonomous, emotionally stoic, and isolated.
The ages of 16 to 19, however, are not only a period of disconnection for the boys in my studies, it is also a period in which the suicide rate for boys in the United States rises dramatically and becomes five times the rate of girls when in early adolescence it is only three times the rate of girls. And it is the developmental period in which many of the school shootings we have read about in the paper have occurred and violence, more generally, among boys occurs. Just as boys during early and middle adolescence predicted, not having friends to share their deepest secrets appears to make them go “wacko.”'
It is a heart rending realization that even as men hunger for real connection in our male relationships, we have been trained away from embracing it. We have been trained to choose surface level relationships, even isolation; sleep-walking through our lives out of fear that we will not be viewed as real men. We keep the loving natures that once came so naturally to us hidden and locked away. This training runs so deep we're no longer even conscious of it. And we pass this training on, men and women alike, to generation after generation of bright eyed, loving little boys.
That result is isolation, loneliness and early death for men. Fortunately, Way’s book outlines clear and actionable ways to support the friendships of young boys and to grow their capacity to form emotionally vibrant relationships.
Way writes:
"The research has indicated for decades that creating safe spaces in homes, schools, and communities in which positive relationships can thrive is the answer.
In these spaces where boys are encouraged to express and connect, ways of relating to others emerge which resource them for a lifetime of vibrant relationships. We simply need to banish the abusive prohibitions created by the man box, homophobia and other hateful male narratives. Do this and boys’ relationships will thrive."
To learn more, pick up Niobe Way’s book Deep Secrets.
Niobe Way is a Professor of Applied Psychology at New York University and director of the Ph.D. program in Developmental Psychology. A number of years ago, she started asking teenage boys what their closest friendships meant to them and documenting what they had to say. The results can be found in her groundbreaking book Deep Secrets. (Her book is available on Amazon.)
This particular question, about boys and their closest friendships, turns out to be an issue of life or death for American men.
Before Way, no one would have thought to ask boys what is happening in their closest friendships because we assumed we already knew. When it comes to what is happening emotionally with boys or men, we often confuse what we expect of them with what they actually feel. And given enough time, they do so as well.
This particular question, about boys and their closest friendships, turns out to be an issue of life or death for American men.
This surprisingly simple line of inquiry, once engaged, can open a Pandora's box of self-reflection for men. After a lifetime of being told how men "typically" experience feeling and emotion, the answer to the question "what do my closest friends mean to me" is lost to us.
And here is the proof. In a survey published by the AARP in 2010, we learn that one in three adults aged 45 or older reported being chronically lonely. Just a decade before, only one out of five of us said that. And men are facing the brunt of this epidemic of loneliness. Research shows that between 1999 and 2010 suicide among men, age 50 and over, rose by nearly 50%. The New York Times reports that "the suicide rate for middle-aged men was 27.3 deaths per 100,000, while for women it was 8.1 deaths per 100,000."
In an article for the New Republic titled The Lethality of Loneliness, Judith Schulevitz writes:
Emotional isolation is ranked as high a risk factor for mortality as smoking. A partial list of the physical diseases thought to be caused by or exacerbated by loneliness would include Alzheimer’s, obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, neurodegenerative diseases, and even cancer—tumors can metastasize faster in lonely people.
Consider a recent tweet by Alain De Botton:
"An epidemic of loneliness generated by the misguided idea that romantic love is the only solution to loneliness."
What Niobe Way illuminates in her book is nothing less than the central source of our culture's epidemic of male loneliness. Driven by our collective assumption that the friendships of boys are both casual and interchangeable, along with our relentless privileging of romantic love over platonic love, we are driving boys into lives Professor Way describes as "autonomous, emotionally stoic, and isolated." What's more, the traumatic loss of connection for boys Way describes is directly linked to our struggles as men in every aspect of our lives.
Millions of men are experiencing a sense of deep loss that haunts them even though they are engaged in fully realized romantic relationships, marriages and families.
Professor Way's research shows us that as boys in early adolescence, we express deeply fulfilling emotional connection and love for each other, but by the time we reach adulthood, that sense of connection evaporates. This is a catastrophic loss; a loss we somehow assume men will simply adjust to. They do not. Millions of men are experiencing a sense of deep loss that haunts them even though they are engaged in fully realized romantic relationships, marriages and families.
For men, the voices of the boys in Way's book open a deeply private door to our pasts. In the words of the boys themselves, we experience the heartfelt expression of male emotional intimacy that echoes the sunlit afternoons of our youth. This passionate and loving boy to boy connection occurs across class, race and cultures. It is exclusive to neither white nor black, rich nor poor. It is universal; beautifully evident in the hundreds of interviews that Way conducted. These boys declare freely the love they feel for their closest friends. They use the word love and they are proud to do so.
Consider this quote from a fifteen year old boy named Justin:
"[My best friend and I] love each other...that’s it …you have this thing that is deep, so deep, it’s within you, you can’t explain it. It’s just a thing that you know that that person is that person… and that is all that should be important in our friendship…I guess in life, sometimes two people can really, really understand each other and really have a trust, respect, and love for each other. It just happens, it’s human nature."
Way writes:
"Set against a culture that perceives boys and men to be 'activity oriented,' 'emotionally illiterate,' and interested only in independence, these stories seem shocking. The lone cowboy, the cultural icon of masculinity in the West, suggests that what boys want and need most are opportunities for competition and autonomy. Yet over 85% of the hundreds of boys we have interviewed throughout adolescence for the past 20 years suggest that their closest friendships --- especially those during early and middle adolescence--- share the plot of Love Story more than the plot of Lord of the Flies. Boys from different walks of life greatly valued their male friendships and saw them as critical components to their emotional wellbeing, not because their friends were worthy opponents in the competition for manhood, but because they were able to share their thoughts and feelings -- their deepest secrets -- with these friends.
Yet something happens to boys as they enter late adolescence….As boys enter manhood, they do, in fact, begin to talk less. They start using the phrase 'no homo' following any intimate statement about their friends and they begin to say that they don’t have time for their male friendships even though they continue to express strong desires for having such friendships.
In response to a simple question regarding how their friendships have changed since they were a freshman in high school, two boys respond and reveal everything about friendships for boys during adolescence. Justin describes in his senior year how his friendships have changed since he was a freshman:
'I don’t know, maybe, not a lot, but I guess that best friends become close friends. So that’s basically the only thing that changed. It’s like best friends become close friends, close friends become general friends and then general friends become acquaintances. So they just… If there’s distance whether it’s, I don’t know, natural or whatever. You can say that, but it just happens that way.'
Michael says:
'Like my friendship with my best friend is fading, but I’m saying it’s still there but… So I mean, it’s still there ‘cause we still do stuff together, but only once in a while. It’s sad ‘cause he lives only one block away from me and I get to do stuff with him less than I get to do stuff with people who are way further. …It’s like a DJ used his cross fader and started fading it slowly and slowly and now I’m like halfway through the cross fade.'"
And then Way takes us through the logical results of this disconnection for boys:
"Boys know by late adolescence that their close male friendships, and even their emotional acuity, put them at risk of being labeled 'girly,' 'immature,' or 'gay.' Thus, rather than focusing on who they are, they become obsessed with who they are not -- they are not girls, little boys nor, in the case of heterosexual boys, are they gay. In response to a cultural context that links intimacy in male friendships with an age, a sex (female), and a sexuality (gay), these boys “mature” into men who are autonomous, emotionally stoic, and isolated.
The ages of 16 to 19, however, are not only a period of disconnection for the boys in my studies, it is also a period in which the suicide rate for boys in the United States rises dramatically and becomes five times the rate of girls when in early adolescence it is only three times the rate of girls. And it is the developmental period in which many of the school shootings we have read about in the paper have occurred and violence, more generally, among boys occurs. Just as boys during early and middle adolescence predicted, not having friends to share their deepest secrets appears to make them go “wacko.”'
It is a heart rending realization that even as men hunger for real connection in our male relationships, we have been trained away from embracing it. We have been trained to choose surface level relationships, even isolation; sleep-walking through our lives out of fear that we will not be viewed as real men. We keep the loving natures that once came so naturally to us hidden and locked away. This training runs so deep we're no longer even conscious of it. And we pass this training on, men and women alike, to generation after generation of bright eyed, loving little boys.
That result is isolation, loneliness and early death for men. Fortunately, Way’s book outlines clear and actionable ways to support the friendships of young boys and to grow their capacity to form emotionally vibrant relationships.
Way writes:
"The research has indicated for decades that creating safe spaces in homes, schools, and communities in which positive relationships can thrive is the answer.
In these spaces where boys are encouraged to express and connect, ways of relating to others emerge which resource them for a lifetime of vibrant relationships. We simply need to banish the abusive prohibitions created by the man box, homophobia and other hateful male narratives. Do this and boys’ relationships will thrive."
To learn more, pick up Niobe Way’s book Deep Secrets.
March 30, 2025
Something everyone should read at least once and was remarkably relatable. Only downside is that the book could have been shorter to convey the point (message’s clarity would benefit from conciseness)
Main take-aways:
* Young boys describe their male friendships in very “romantic” terms and acknowledge their importance (research even shows male-to-male friendships contribute more to happiness than having a partner)
* They appreciate these friendships mostly for the fulfilment of their need to share deep secrets / emotions.
* Along the way, as they grow older, these friendships are lost, which the boys themselves often attribute to experiences of betrayal.
* Research in this book suggests this loss of connection is due to an increasingly individualistic society and homophobia (erstwhile emotionality is girly and gay).
* The desire for such intimate male friendships, however, does not disappear. This leads to loneliness.m and increased chances of depression.
* Absence of a father or a male role model is not necessarily a contributing factor as research shows involvement of a father on average leads to affirmation of male gender stereotypes and thus increased chances of underdevelopment of male emotional skills. The role of the mother was the opposite.
* Those boys with enough “masculinity points” (right ethnicity, athletes, …) could permit themselves to be overall more intimate with male friends as they had “no homo credit”.
Main take-aways:
* Young boys describe their male friendships in very “romantic” terms and acknowledge their importance (research even shows male-to-male friendships contribute more to happiness than having a partner)
* They appreciate these friendships mostly for the fulfilment of their need to share deep secrets / emotions.
* Along the way, as they grow older, these friendships are lost, which the boys themselves often attribute to experiences of betrayal.
* Research in this book suggests this loss of connection is due to an increasingly individualistic society and homophobia (erstwhile emotionality is girly and gay).
* The desire for such intimate male friendships, however, does not disappear. This leads to loneliness.m and increased chances of depression.
* Absence of a father or a male role model is not necessarily a contributing factor as research shows involvement of a father on average leads to affirmation of male gender stereotypes and thus increased chances of underdevelopment of male emotional skills. The role of the mother was the opposite.
* Those boys with enough “masculinity points” (right ethnicity, athletes, …) could permit themselves to be overall more intimate with male friends as they had “no homo credit”.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 8, 2024
Niobe Way brutally reminds us of the ways our hyper-masculine American culture destroys intimacy amongst boys as we grow up, in favor of independence, emotional stoicism, and homophobia disguised as “masculinity.”
Additionally, she discusses the dangers of linking a fundamental human capacity (i.e., empathy, and sensitivity) and need (i.e., close friendships) with a sex (female), sexuality (gay), and age (childhood). While also offering solutions!
This is essential reading. And the message is overwhelmingly clear: let boys be passionate and intimate in their same-sex relationships without judgment and ridicule! Amazing stuff 👏
Additionally, she discusses the dangers of linking a fundamental human capacity (i.e., empathy, and sensitivity) and need (i.e., close friendships) with a sex (female), sexuality (gay), and age (childhood). While also offering solutions!
This is essential reading. And the message is overwhelmingly clear: let boys be passionate and intimate in their same-sex relationships without judgment and ridicule! Amazing stuff 👏
February 16, 2017
I did enjoy her perspective as a psychologist, heck I was surprised that she was a psychologist period. She starts off going over what has been covered in her field as well as setting up the context to the study. Way spends a good deal of time after the first 2 chapters disecting the interviews of adolescent boys as they gradually become more and more closed off from friendship. It's pretty sad, but the opportunity to correct our cultural constructions of masculinity and femininity is there. We must recognize boys ability to be just as communicative, sympathetic, and caring as girls first---stop naturalizing the cultural construction of gender.
Way refers to a time when boys and men alike kept intimate friendships througout their lifetimes, to which I would refer you to anything studying friendships prior to Industrialization. Godbeer's "Overflowing of Friendship" is a good read, very novelistic in following the lives of men through their "love" letters to friends.
Way refers to a time when boys and men alike kept intimate friendships througout their lifetimes, to which I would refer you to anything studying friendships prior to Industrialization. Godbeer's "Overflowing of Friendship" is a good read, very novelistic in following the lives of men through their "love" letters to friends.
December 5, 2012
Excellent! Not only is this text (and it really i a text) written in a very easy to read style, the content that she includes is fabulous!
It doesn't come as a real shock -- but she offers real evidence that boy want, have and have the skills to have real, deep and intimate friendships just as girls do. But, we socialize those skills out of them through late adolescents in the name of "manhood" and "maturity."
she argues for a need to re-design how we raise boys to be men that supports them to continue to have and experience the friendship that they organically have in childhood and early adolescents, and stop making men really caring for and with each otehr something that is seen as "childish", "feminine" or "gay' and therefore not something that a "real man" avoids
Highly recommend it!
It doesn't come as a real shock -- but she offers real evidence that boy want, have and have the skills to have real, deep and intimate friendships just as girls do. But, we socialize those skills out of them through late adolescents in the name of "manhood" and "maturity."
she argues for a need to re-design how we raise boys to be men that supports them to continue to have and experience the friendship that they organically have in childhood and early adolescents, and stop making men really caring for and with each otehr something that is seen as "childish", "feminine" or "gay' and therefore not something that a "real man" avoids
Highly recommend it!
February 23, 2012
Niobe Way has done a terrific job in this highly readable book that will challenge the idea that boys may be emotionally illiterate. The author takes us through several interviews with many boys and their deep friendships that I found refreshing to read. Upon finishing this book from the library, I immediately ordered a copy from the store.
June 22, 2017
Critical research done on the state of intimate male relationships that society should learn. Boys need friends, period. This book is not about opinions. It is about a life spent as a school counselor, and developing research that gets to the heart of the so-called "boy problem." This is an important book for anyone who has an adolescent boy in their family.
November 22, 2014
It's so sad what our culture's definition of "manhood" is doing to young boys and by extension to everyone else. I would definitely recommend this book to men, teens, the parents of boys, and all other human beings.
September 8, 2015
Interesting research about boys' friendships. This book made me think a lot about why boys have close friends in early high school, only to detach from them in late high school. What is it about our society that makes boys think they're not allowed to have close male friendships? It's sad.
March 18, 2021
This book was a fascinating look into the shift in boys' emotional worlds through adolescence and how that affects friendships into adulthood. A point I found particularly interesting was that the American focus on the nuclear family actually makes this emotional retreat worse because boys don't see the wide range of healthy emotional adult relationships that are available as models. Focus on the family entrenches toxic masculine norms, and boys twist their rich emotional selves to fit the expected mold of an emotionally independent (and also stunted) man. The bibliography pointed me further down this rabbit hole and I'm curiously heading deeper.
December 25, 2017
Much of the interviews and some of the opinions were interesting and I could relate to many of the boy's interview comments. So, my book is tabbed for many interesting observations. However, it seem to have a very liberal slant on interpretation of the data. Having a feminist mentor (Carol Gilligan) behind the scenes did not help. I do not think it helps for a feminist to try and interpret the lives of teen age boys. It would be interesting to see what conclusions would be reached if someone else were to read thru all the compiled data.
March 17, 2023
I started reading this book after watching the movie Close and hearing its director Lukas Dhont mention it as part of his inspiration for the film. The book makes extremely important points about the (d)evolution of boys into men, but unfortunately, I found it extremely repetitive and Lucas’s description during the interview that prompted me to read the book gave me almost the same insight as the 300+ pages of the book.
November 25, 2020
An important piece of research and literature on an under examined subject, intimate friendships among teen boys. The findings were fascinating and left me with more questions. The content was rich, but often quite repetitive. With some of the main findings of the researched reiterated time and time again throughout the book, not necessarily building toward new information.
August 1, 2022
A research-grounded tour of the experience of boys trying to negotiate their experiences of desire (and need) for social connection and societal pressures (including homophobia and post-modern definitions of masculinity) pushing them towards embracing psychological defenses and deep loneliness (sometimes depression and suicide).
September 29, 2024
A profoundly moving to powerful study on the intimate relationships of boys and young men. Its challenge to gender- based stereotypes is so timely as we live through a mental health crisis. Schools and businesses can respond to positively to this books' findings in a way that everyone benefits.
Niobe Way's work needs to be far more visible - what a difference it would make!
Niobe Way's work needs to be far more visible - what a difference it would make!
September 3, 2025
Το βιβλίο θίγει θέματα ταυτότητας και φιλίας των αγοριών. Νιώθω ότι αναφέρεται και γενικότερα στα προβλήματα φιλίας (μάλλον γιατί είναι κάτι ανθρώπινο και δεν καθορίζεται από το φύλο). Ενδιαφέρουσα έρευνα, συνεντεύξεις και επισημάνσεις.
Ως προς τη δομή χρειάζεται υπομονή γιατί πλατιάζει, γίνεται υπερβολικά αναλυτικό και υπάρχουν συχνές επαναλήψεις .
Ως προς τη δομή χρειάζεται υπομονή γιατί πλατιάζει, γίνεται υπερβολικά αναλυτικό και υπάρχουν συχνές επαναλήψεις .
November 4, 2024
Every man should read this one.
January 4, 2020
Deep Secrets: Boys' Friendships and the Crisis of Connection (Hardcover)
by Niobe Way
ILL from library
just heard au https://www.npr.org/templates/transcr...
HIDDEN BRAIN
< Guys, We Have A Problem: How American Masculinity Creates Lonely Men
October 14, 20194:00 PM ET
Contents: The hidden landscape of boys' friendships -- Investigating boys, friendships, and human nature -- pt. 1. Friendships during early and middle adolescence -- "Sometimes you need to spill your heart out to somebody" -- Boys with feelings -- Nick and George : stories of resistance -- pt. 2. Friendships during late adolescence -- "When you grow up, your heart dies" -- As boys become men -- Fernando and Danny -- The crisis of connection.
What I got out of this is that boys aren't naturally unemotional and unrelating but are made that way by the culture so they won't be like women.
by Niobe Way
ILL from library
just heard au https://www.npr.org/templates/transcr...
HIDDEN BRAIN
< Guys, We Have A Problem: How American Masculinity Creates Lonely Men
October 14, 20194:00 PM ET
Contents: The hidden landscape of boys' friendships -- Investigating boys, friendships, and human nature -- pt. 1. Friendships during early and middle adolescence -- "Sometimes you need to spill your heart out to somebody" -- Boys with feelings -- Nick and George : stories of resistance -- pt. 2. Friendships during late adolescence -- "When you grow up, your heart dies" -- As boys become men -- Fernando and Danny -- The crisis of connection.
What I got out of this is that boys aren't naturally unemotional and unrelating but are made that way by the culture so they won't be like women.
March 19, 2018
This is a in-depth study of the views teenage boys hold about friendship and how those views change as the boys get older. And for a non-fiction, it's incredibly touching and sad. As young adolescents, the boys talk about deep bonds with their friends that are very important to them and then because the study behind this book is a longitudinal one, we see the boys loose these connections and becoming more withdrawn because they feel that they "need to toughen up and become men." Also it's sad how much homophobia seems to dictate the relationships between the boys in the study.
I'm glad that Niobe Way saw the friendships of young males as a worthy topic to study and I'm glad she points out the social factors that ends those friendships and are often harmful to young men and their lives and well-being.
I'm glad that Niobe Way saw the friendships of young males as a worthy topic to study and I'm glad she points out the social factors that ends those friendships and are often harmful to young men and their lives and well-being.
October 25, 2013
Niobe Ways' scholarly work is not written for the layman or for parents of boys. While the book does a good job highlighting how boys lose their connections to male peers as they develop, this subject would have been better addressed in a shorter article length piece. The book is repetitious and where she does provide real life examples, they are interrupted by her repetitious analysis. While as a woman I agree that it is sad how few friends adult males often have, I also see a biological similarity to alpha males of other species which Way does not address. As an introvert, I also feel that Way is addressing this issue from an extrovert's bias, a perspective too often taken in recent research. For introverts, social interaction can often be stressful and exhausting.
October 4, 2011
Perhaps one of the most important books I have ever read.
December 4, 2012
Many good insights but far too long. This book could easily have been half the length, and I found the repetition tiresome.
January 20, 2014
Insightful, well written and very thought provoking. Shines a lot of the way society has construed masculinity and sexuality. Very highly recommended.
July 21, 2015
Interesting ideas but the writing was sense and repetitive...I did some skimming...
Want to read
July 19, 2018Mentioned in this blog post http://www.andrearamsey.com/profundit...
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