Media

Recent Writings

Audio Clips

  • "Best Friends, Worst Enemies"

    Parents often worry about their children's social lives. They see their children get hurt feelings, they see their children teeze, and be teezed. They stand helplessly by and wonder what is going on and what is my role as a parent.

  • "Adopting a Life"

    In my heart I know that the most important fact about my life is that I am a father, the father of two teenage children. I am, of course, proud of my professional success as a psychologist and as the author of books about the psychology of boys and the social lives of children.

  • "Passage to Manhood"

    What could a seventeen-year-old boy do during between the last week of June and August that he could anticipate would make him a man? American culture doesn't have any universal ritual that sees a boy through that psychologically difficult passage from boyhood to manhood.

Video Clips

  • "Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys"

     Raising Cain is a 2-hour PBS documentary that explores the emotional development of boys in America today. Raising Cain chronicles the lives of boys from birth through high school through powerful documentary stories about real boys. The hallmark of the program is Michael Thompson's in-depth interviews and interactions with these boys. The interviews reveal the challenges and confusion that boys encounter while growing up in America.

  • "Boys Have Cooties"

     What percentage of the time in fifth grade do boys and girls choose free play with the other sex? It's actually zero. A boy who feels excluded in the boy group will play alone in isolation rather than join the other girls.

  • "Boys and Abandonment"

     We are getting research in detachment to show that there are some gender differences in detachment. We are beginning to get evidence that boys may be more sensitive and react to detachment disruption with anger and avoidance.

  • "Boys and Farting"

     This is a little boys experience of being a little boy. They are physically wild, they imitate noises. It seems to be what they do.