The Broken American Male
And How to Fix Him
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4.7 • 3 Ratings
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Why do American husbands come home from work too exhausted to interact with their families? When did a healthy quest for prosperity become a twisted game no one can win? How did BlackBerries and internet porn become more interesting to men than their flesh-and-blood spouses?
Shmuley Boteach has made a great study of how families live today—both in his work as a rabbi privately and as host of TLC's "Shalom in the Home". He's discovered a disturbing common thread in the families he meets: men responding to the pressure of competition in their work lives by turning away from their loved ones. In a world that judges men by the size of their paychecks and the wattage of their fame, it's all too easy to lose sight of what is truly valuable in life. Men who consider themselves failures and don't love themselves turn into stressed-out dads, distracted husbands and miserable human beings. For these men, alcohol, the internet and sporting events serve as numbing stand-ins for read life.
In THE BROKEN AMERICAN MALE, Boteach doesn't just outline the problems facing marriages and nuclear families. He also offers practical, inspiring solutions, showing how wives can reach out to their husbands, helping them become heroes again to their own families.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
From a very young age, Boteach explains, men are bombarded with messages defining success "exclusively by money, power, fame, and preferably a corrosive amalgamation of all three" (think Donald Trump); for the average American man, this definition results in a deep but hard-to-pin-down sense of failure that stains his perception-of himself and his environment-and inevitably corrodes his relationships, "bringing down the American female and family with him." Boteach, Rabbi of Oxford University, author of Kosher Sex and star of the Learning Channel's "Shalom in the Home," offers a detailed prognosis of the current state of the American family based on his work with families facing familiar crises (constant fighting, depression, anorexia, sexless marriage), "approximately 70 percent" of whom suffer from "Broken American Male syndrome." The book's first third takes a hard but sympathetic look at the syndrome's symptoms and effects (such as waning libido, empty ambition, escapism and substance abuse); the middle third examines underlying causes ("soulless capitalism") and collateral damage ("The Inadequate American Female," "The Uninspired Child") on the way to chapters providing sound advice and practical solutions-beginning with a "New Definition of Success," one measured "by the quality of our relationships." Though rooted in Judaism, Boteach's lessons are applicable to anyone hoping to understand and overcome feelings of failure in themselves or their loved ones.
