I recently picked up a copy of Steve Biddulph’s book “Manhood”. His most famous book is possibly “Raising Boys” but I didn’t just want to go with the flow and found it interesting to read his earlier work (the original edition was published in 1994). I bought the latest edition of his book and don’t know how much of his original thinking has changed or how much was changed in the latest edition but somehow it’s a bit “weird”.

Good on him for writing the book in the first place though. At the time when it was first published I guess it was a good response to a lot of what happened during the women’s liberation movement. Many male issues wouldn’t have been picked up because there was so much focus on female issues. Biddulph has a number of points to do with how we seem to have lost male role models or even the presence of males altogether in the modern upbringing of children. I also like his comments about the modern education system that seems to predominately feature female teachers.

Where Biddulph is losing me is when he makes links between the above facts and just about every problem we are experiencing on the planet today. I.e. corporate greed, destruction of natural resources, wars and bad hair days all because men are stuck in their old role models or have never really learnt (or experienced) what it means to be a man. Not sure about that.

His steps to manhood as per the traditions of indigenous tribes are well noted but the modern translation of that just doesn’t work for me. His writing on getting in touch with the “Wild Man” and the “Trickster” is bizarre at times. He introduces those two concepts which are really meaningless in a book (possibly they work in a group seminar) and then keeps talking about them as if they were well understood and well defined.

Worst quote of the book: ”You show me a man who has no men he admires and I’ll show you a man whose Trickster is running over all the time”. (by Robert Moore in Wingspan).

The most annoying thing about the book though was the extremely repetitive and frequent use of other sources (if you take out all the quotes the book is only half as big). Most of his quotes originate from only two other books (Iron John and Wingspan) and it’s always the same people he refers to. It’s like they are all just good mates and keep quoting each other in their books, which wouldn’t be so bad if they actually had something to say. But it all reads like more of the same without making an actual point – so why quote them in the first place? The whole Men’s movement writing is scary at times – it reads like the advocates of this movement are trying to create a new sect or religion.

I’m glad that Biddulph has brought some valid points to the attention of a wider audience (I wonder how many of the 4 million copies he sold were actually bought and read by men), but surely men in general can do better than what is described in his book.

-Stefan

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