The BIG News Blog

Yet another reason why parents and caregivers should talk to their children about puberty earlier than once thought: their children are starting puberty at earlier and earlier ages. Last month, the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) published a Harvard...

With spring here, most schools and school districts begin rolling out their sex education curricula for elementary, middle, and high school-aged students. Parents and caregivers may get notifications from the school about the upcoming lessons, some details about what...

Where do babies come from? How did I get into your belly, and how did I get out? Why do boys have penises and girls have vaginas? What’s an erection? What’s a period? What is sex, and how old do you have to be to have sex? Why do people even have sex? How come…………...

On the heels of last month’s article on why parents might feel anxious about talking with their children and teens about sex, it’s important to offer parents teaching sexuality to their children some helpful and concrete strategies. Specifically, it may help parents...

Over the past 17 years of educating parents and their sons about sex and puberty, I’ve noticed something interesting yet unsurprising. When I ask caregivers to make a mental list of all of the topics they know they should discuss with their children and then rank them...

When I consult with parents who want to introduce the topic of puberty and reproduction to their 5th grade sons, they are often surprised to hear that starting these talks should be happening well before 5th grade.  Recently, a short but good article from the New York...

I recently finished reading Decoding Boys: New Science Behind the Subtle Art of Raising Boys by Cara Natterson, M.D. and highly recommend it for parents of boys about to enter puberty or those who have already begun and are in the midst of it.  In short, it delves...

If you and your sons are on Instagram, it’s important to take stock of what and whom you and he follow. As data pings into your son’s brain as he checks his feed, wouldn’t it be nice to have some posts that provoke meaningful thought and inspiration? Here are a few...

A recent survey conducted by FiveThirtyEight asked 1,600 men to reflect on their ideas of masculinity. Specifically, it asked men how they would like others to see them, where they learned their ideas about what it means to be a man, and how the broad and popular...

Two recently-released and critically-acclaimed movies are about the lives of three boys growing up together. One, Minding the Gap, is a Hulu documentary that follows three young men as they transition from adolescence to adulthood. Their bonds (and their skateboards)...