About Sex: The Evolutionary Importance of Males and Females There is a lot of confusion about what it means to be male or female these days. Masculinity today is maligned and misunderstood. Some believe maleness itself is inherently destructive and should be eliminated. Others view males as superfluous. This idea is reflected in the witticism,...Continue reading
Category: Boys
The Good Men Manifesto: What I’ve learned Doing Men’s Work for 70 years, Part 1
There’s a lot of focus on men these days, much of it negative. Many are concerned about the harm men cause to women, children, and other men. Others are concerned about the problems men cause to themselves. My work over the years has been to help men answer three questions that we all need to...Continue reading
Why Every Man Needs a Men’s Group
My life was in turmoil. My marriage was in trouble. My two kids were suffering. I was very successful at work, but the stress was killing me. When I saw the flyer in Mill Valley I almost screamed. “Men, come and share a day with other men and hear psychologist Herb Goldberg, author of The Hazards...Continue reading
Body Image and Eating Disorders: Not for Girls Only
Dear Mr. Dad: I’m completely convinced that my son has an eating disorder. When he was little, he was always a little on the heavy side. At about 11—right when puberty hit—he suddenly started dieting. At first, I was proud of him for taking charge of his own weight. He looked really good and seemed...Continue reading
Young Men’s Body Image
As a female college student, I have participated in a fair number of conversations about body image and self-esteem. For many college women, these conversations revolve around how much they had to eat that day, that they cannot treat themselves for a while, or that they need to get back on the treadmill this semester....Continue reading
Boys and Girls: Nature vs. Nurture
Dear Mr. Dad: My husband and I have a boy and a girl and we try as much as we can to treat them the same way. We don’t limit our daughter’s wardrobe to pink and our son’s to blue and we’ve banned gender-stereotyped toys from the house. But our daughter still behaves like a...Continue reading
Cardiac Health Should Concern Everyone, Especially Young Men
As a young man, I often learned life lessons from my father. Perhaps none have been as lasting as the lesson he inadvertently taught me about health as his own health took a downward turn. While I was in middle school—a time when most boys are navigating puberty—my dad was busy prepping for heart valve...Continue reading
Depression Is On The Rise In Men, This Is How Women Can Help
While Men’s Health Month came to end this past week, it’s still important to talk about men’s health issues year-round. As a woman, men’s health might not be at the forefront of our minds but it is increasingly essential that women start talking about depression and suicide in men. Already nationally, there has been increased...Continue reading
Have You Hit Your Sexual Peak?
When do we hit our peak? Well that depends on how you define peak. Peak muscular strength in men occurs around age 26. In terms of smarts, Nobel Prize winners make their big discoveries at an average age of 40 years. And, as you might already know, men peak emotionally even later, at 50 years. But do...Continue reading
Are the Sons of Infertile Men Also Infertile?
There are certain questions in life that have never been answerable until now. For example, given that many human diseases are treatable, how long can we actually live? It took the jet age for us to figure out just how much g-force the human body can handle. And it’s only been a hundred years or...Continue reading