Listener phone in: Boys - what's it's like to be one in 2024?
Woman's Hour
BBC
4.1 • 3K Ratings
🗓️ 3 May 2024
⏱️ 58 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On today's Woman's Hour phone-in we ask what it's like to be a boy in 2024 and how society is shaping our future men.
On Monday we spoke to Catherine Carr about her Radio 4 series About the Boys. She spoke to boys up and down the country about how they felt about subjects like sex and consent, masculinity, friendship, life online and education and she found out that boys were experiencing confusing and often troubling messages about their role in society. She joins us, along with Richard Reeves, the President of the American Institute for Boys and Men to take your calls about boys.
Please get in touch with your experiences and thoughts about boys; from bringing them up to being one.
The phone lines open at 0800 on Friday 3 May. Call us on 03700 100 444 or you can text the programme - the number is 84844. Texts will be charged at your standard message rate. On social media we're @BBCWomansHour. And you can email us through our website.
Presenter: Anita Rani Producer Laura Northedge Studio Manager: Bob Nettles
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm Helena Bonkarter and this is history's secret heroes. |
| 0:07.0 | In this series we'll hear stories of daring secret missions and rarely heard tales from World War II, like Emily, the enigmatic high-ranking |
| 0:17.2 | codebreaker, and Tremont, the escape artist, interned in a German camp. |
| 0:24.0 | Tales of danger, dynamism and downright determination. |
| 0:27.8 | The new series of history's secret heroes. |
| 0:30.5 | Listen first on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:35.0 | BBC Sounds, music radio podcasts. |
| 0:39.0 | Hello, I'm Anita Rani and welcome to Woman's Hour from BBC Radio 4. |
| 0:44.0 | Good morning and welcome to Friday's Woman's Hour. |
| 0:46.7 | We're doing things a bit differently today. |
| 0:48.6 | We are going to be hearing from you. |
| 0:51.0 | The next hour is a phone in dedicated to the subject of boys. |
| 0:56.0 | This morning I want to know your experience of being a boy, bringing up boys, |
| 1:01.2 | how we're shaping the next generation of lads, the pressures they face, the impact |
| 1:05.3 | of social media, how much time they spend online, who their role models are. |
| 1:10.0 | Maybe your son had a challenging time fitting in, maybe they don't quite fit the mold of what society thinks of as masculine. What is masculinity anyway? |
| 1:18.0 | And what does all of this mean for girls? And are you a parent who has both boys and girls? Just sit and have a little |
| 1:25.9 | think for a minute. Do you treat them differently? Think how society might have |
| 1:30.3 | conditioned you or not. |
| 1:33.0 | To help us unpack some of your questions and really get into this subject, I'm joined by |
| 1:37.1 | Catherine Carr, a mother of sons who's made a brilliant Radio 4 series called About the Boys, which you can hear on BBC Sounds. And joining us from the US |
| 1:46.3 | is Richard Reeves, the president of the American Institute for Boys and Men. And most importantly, |
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