Deep Secrets: Boys’ Friendships and the Crisis of Connection

Deep Secrets reveals the false story we tell about boys, friendships, and human nature. Niobe Way argues that boys experience a “crisis of connection” as they approach manhood. Human needs and capacities are given a sex (female) and a sexuality (gay), and thus are discouraged for those who are neither.

About the Author :
WayNiobe: Niobe Way is Professor of Applied Psychology at New York University and director of the Ph.D. program in Developmental Psychology.

Review :
[Deep Secrets] offers a surprising glimpse into the hearts of American boys, revealing a group of lonely young men who crave acceptance and belonging and deeply miss the friendships of their childhood...Compulsively readable...Way recounts the hundreds of interviews her team conducted in American high schools. The voices present are heartbreakingly authentic in revealing a pattern, a gradual drift away from "emotionally intimate same-sex friendships" with other boys and toward a destructive stereotype of manliness that perpetuate the false notion that "boys are only interested in one thing." Publishers Weekly (starred review) 20110411 The stories that Way and her research team have persuaded boys to tell are a welcome corrective to the stereotyping of males as essentially unfeeling and/or incapable of communicating their feelings, which has been such a striking (and offensive) feature of recent discourse on gender differences. Way deserves our gratitude for bringing to the surface what seems lately to have become the deepest secret of all: that the needs, desires and feelings of boys and girls, or men and women, are at bottom far more similar than different. -- Deborah Cameron Times Higher Education 20110407 Deep Secrets tells a story of American teenagers in baggy jeans and T-shirts, with a basketball under the arm, expressing extraordinary sensitivity and tenderness about their same-sex friends, and expecting the same in return. The disappearance of this gentle world, it seems, scars them for life, and appears to do extensive damage to the culture at large... In short, this is an extremely important book, a revelation in a way, and one of the most absorbing academic publications I've ever had the privilege of reading. -- Bradley Winterton Taipei Times 20110508 Way's book should provide encouragement to parents wondering whether they are setting their children, especially their sons, up for abuse by encouraging closeness and defiance of gender stereotypes, particularly those concerning close same-sex friends. Way asserts that the need and ability for connection is as keen in boys as it is in girls, and she backs up her assertion with plenty of data and close reading of the literature. Connection is not something one needs to teach, as the author so eloquently demonstrates; it is something one needs to foster. The text is beautifully written, and the boys' stories are interspersed with explanations and discussion substantiated by the literature. A truly approachable piece of work for a wide audience. -- J. F. Heberle Choice 20110901