Abstract
The very title of Judy Y. Chu’s When Boys Become Boys: Development, Relationships, and Masculinity suggests that interesting insights are in store. Parsing the thesis from the seemingly tautological main title proves illuminating. The subtle shift from sex to gender hints at the book’s core focus, a re-gendered paraphrasing of de Beauvoir’s famous insight: one is not born a boy but becomes one. Chu demonstrates throughout the book that this becoming comes at a cost for boys’ relationships.
The book begins with a lyrical foreword by Carol Gilligan, Chu’s doctoral advisor and collaborator on parts of the research. Gilligan, perhaps better than Chu herself, contextualizes the book’s place in broader academic discussions of boys’ and girls’ development. Indeed, When Boys Become Boys arrives at a time of great interest in boys’ relational capacities, evident in volumes like Reichert and Hawley’s I Can Learn from You: Boys as Relational Learners (2013) and Niobe Way’s Deep Secrets: Boys’ Friendships and the Crisis of Connection (2011).
Chu’s rich, thickly described ethnography follows a small group of four- and five-year-old boys—Mike, Min-Haeng, Rob, Jake, Dan and Tony—as they navigate complex social relationships at “Friends School.” Using two years of situated data, Chu weaves a story of gender development with a depth and patience rarely achieved. The participants’ age proves crucial, for this early developmental moment involves a transition toward boys’ stricter adherence to distinct, inviolate gender boundaries. Chu’s gift to readers is showing gradual transformation through daily interactions among this group of splendidly characterized boys.
The Introduction and chapter one describe the theoretical framework and research methods, both centered around relational theory, which foregrounds development occurring within relationships rather than individually. Chapter two shows that boys, despite popular beliefs, do have well-developed relational abilities; they begin as “attentive,” “articulate,” “authentic,” and “direct.” Then a shift occurs, and boys adopt posturing and pretense as they grow concerned with fitting in with other boys, thus becoming “inattentive,” “inarticulate,” “inauthentic,” and “indirect” (emphasis added). In chapter three, Chu focuses on socialization within peer groups, where the boys learn that they can bond through gun play and establish identity by disavowing all things feminine and avoiding affection. Chapter four introduces “The Mean Team,” a club the boys invent to oppose the girls, which Chu reads as the boys’ way of reifying their existing hierarchy and defining acceptable behaviors for each gender. Chapter five asserts that boys actively participate in their gender socialization. They resist and adapt, never just passively receiving social messages without the filters of context and personality. “The process of becoming ‘boys,’” Chu argues, “is neither automatic nor inevitable” (p. 204). Chu rightly points out, however, that boys’ participation happens under duress and the threat of consequences. In chapter six—before a summarizing Conclusion—Chu reports themes from separate father and mother focus groups. Here, the boys’ parents articulate awareness of the boys’ challenges, and they express fears that the boys will lose their exuberance and “spunk” by ceding parts of their emotional life to maintain masculinity.
The book’s biggest success, I believe, comes from Chu’s deft ethnographic writing. She provides detailed, nuanced descriptions of the boys and their activities. The middle chapters, two through five, each feature an extended case study of one boy, painstakingly illustrating the chapter’s themes through the arc of that boy’s socialization. We see, for example, Jake slowly lose his assertiveness as he conforms to the other boys’ demands, and later Mike transforms from the Mean Team’s domineering leader to a vulnerable boy who controls others to avoid the pain of exclusion.
Even with my deep admiration for this book, it has some minor limitations. First, Chu occasionally exceeds the evidence, psychologizing boys’ motivations and predicting relational futures—analyses that are not strengths of observational research with children. Second, for a book meant partly for scholars, Chu pays too little attention to related research, particularly non-U.S. scholarship and work from education rather than psychology. Finally, to my mind Chu misses an opportunity in chapter six, on parents’ perspectives, to provide evidence for hope. The boys’ fathers display the same articulate insight and sensitivity lauded in the boys; the fathers perceive and identify with their sons’ specialness, emotionality, and affection, as well as the threats facing those qualities. In other words, the fathers’ retained relational skills, despite their own similar socialization, prove that becoming a boy does not necessarily produce long-term relational dysfunction.
Overall, When Boys Become Boys provides a compelling read with key insights into gender socialization. Chu has an admirable eye for detail, and her analysis proves at once compassionate and incisive. General readers and scholars alike will find here an accessible yet complex text that, while speaking powerfully to lived experience, might also expand their views of both boys’ capacities and boys’ possibilities.