[PJ] I’m not going to lie. When I first picked up The Boy Crisis, by Dr. Warren Farrell and Dr. John Gray, I read the foreword to get a sense of the authors and their ideas -- and then after looking at the table of contents, I dove straight for the section on Boys Who Hurt, Hurt Us.Farrell has been researching multiple dimensions of men, women, boys and girls since the 1970s. His 2001 book, Father and Child Reunion: How to Bring the Dads We Need to the Children We Love is now a classic in fatherhood research. His collaborator on this book, Dr. John Gray, wrote Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus, one of if not the most famous books on male-female relationships and understanding.
The Boys Who Hurt, Hurt Us section of The Boy Crisis deals with why some boys do extreme, taboo, and incredibly violent things. Why a very small number of boys grow up in seemingly normal circumstances, in a suburban neighborhood with a perfect green lawn, but become mass shooters. Our country has been plagued by these boys who hurt others lately, and while their horrific acts remain statistical anomalies and overall violent crime is decreasing, and while the United States does not lead the world in mass shootings, these terrible acts rightly disturb us and they also distort our public discourse. Even more importantly, they leave far too many dead in their wake and shatter the lives of survivors.