DADS, KISS YOUR SONS

Craven expounds on the importance of fathers loving their sons in this nonfiction work.

The author acknowledges up front the apparent contradictions involved in someone like him sounding a call for more affectionate, supportive roles for fathers—he’s a big guy with a neck tattoo and hardly seems the type to be encouraging sensitivity in other men. But, as Craven notes, looks can be deceiving; contrary to his stereotype, he isn’t a sports fan and likes nothing better than reading a good book in a friendly cafe. The author writes that he has a bad relationship with his mother, who was a pathological liar. He claims he never had a paternal figure until he was in his 20s and met his biological dad—his mother had previously assured everybody Craven’s father was dead. This understandably led to the author developing some guarded, cynical attitudes in his youth: “I just assumed that no matter what, I would always be let down,” he confides. “Trust wasn’t even an option because this persistent letdown was a consistent inevitability.” Nevertheless, Craven overcame these and other obstacles and eventually reached the point where he could write this book, drawing on both his own autobiography and an array of research in the field of parenting to reinforce his plea to fathers to express affection for their sons. “Everything else will fall into place as it should, but please, kiss your little boy,” he writes. “Beautiful healing awaits you in this process, and beautiful hope, security, and strength await your son.” Throughout, the author is an approachable and authoritative narrator, using a tough, no-nonsense tone (heavily interspersed with wrestling references and dad jokes) and very convincing neuroscience data to buttress his case for emotionally demonstrative and transparent relationships between fathers and sons. It’s a call an entire generation of fathers probably needs to hear.

A rousing, science-based argument encouraging fathers to give all the love they can to their sons.