There's a lot of chatter these days about men in crisis, lacking purpose and direction,

sometimes deeply unhappy.

In certain corners of the online world, the solution is clear.

They need to toughen up, build up physical strength,

and tamp down the strong emotion unless that emotion is anger.

But to the extent that those expectations shape the way we raise boys,

maybe they are not the solution to the problem, but the source of it.

From KERA in Dallas, this is think. I'm Chris Boyd. Joshua Coleman is a

psychologist in private practice and senior fellow with the Council on Contemporary Families.

He has studied the differences in the ways parents treat daughters and sons without

necessarily intending to do so. And he finds that starting in infancy, many boys in our society

don't get their emotional needs met as reliably or as completely as girls do. He wrote about this

in an article published in the Atlantic titled What Parents of Boys Need to Know. He's also

the author of a book called Rules of Estrangement, Why Adult Children Cut Ties and How to Heal the Conflict.

Joshua, welcome back to think.

Thank you for having me. Good to be back.

So this is interesting to you as a professional, maybe for personal reasons as well.

What was this nickname your parents gave you in childhood?

The nickname was Tiny Tears.

So when I was a child, at least according to my parents, I cried a lot.

You know, whether I cried more than the average son, I don't know, average boy.

But my parents used to call me tiny tears, which of course I hated, but that was what they

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