Welcome to No One Told Us, the podcast that tells the truth about parenting and talks about all the stuff you wish you knew before having kids.

I'm your host, Rachel Shepardota, and today I am so, so excited to speak with Ruth Whitman.

Ruth is an author, journalist, and cultural critic who writes for The New York Times, amongst other large

media outlets. And if you follow me on Instagram, you know that I've been obsessed with her book,

Boy Mom, reimagining boyhood in the age of impossible masculinity. And it's so pertinent right now.

I'm so excited to have this conversation. So, Ruth, thank you for making the time for us.

It's such a pleasure. Thanks for having me.

So I got your book. I forget exactly where I saw it first, but I think everybody's been talking lately about adolescents on Netflix. And so this conversation has been very like top of mind in

the zeitgeist. I also recently read Black Pill, which talks a lot about in cell culture

and that type of thing. I've been just kind of trying to make sense of what's going on in this

country. And your book really, really helped me to do that. So I'm so excited to dive in. I'd love to

just know, I know that you're the mom of three boys, but I'd love to know what kind of inspired you to write this type of book.

So I actually had my third son.

So I was like very, very heavily pregnant, you know, like full of pregnancy hormones and fear and all the rest of it.

Right as the Me Too movement was just exploding online. So I, you know,

there I am, nine and a half months pregnant and it's just like, I go through my, my news feed,

and it's just like more and more and more examples of men just doing terrible things. And, you know,

I'm about to become a mom of three sons. And I'm just like, oh, God, you know, I'm a

feminist. I really support the Me Too movement. I'm really excited that women have this, like,

voice and clarity and, like, we're able to speak out about these things. But I'm also feeling, like,

so defensive, so shut down, so terrified, you know, just like, what does it mean to raise a boy in this

moment? So that was kind of the catalyst for it. And the book itself is a mix of memoir. So it's my

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