SOURCE: Harder, Cherie. “Kiss the Boys and Make Them Die.” Human Events 56, no. 43 (24 November 2000): 14, 19.

In the following review of The War against Boys, Harder comments that Sommers fails to take into account the influence of parents and popular culture on the socialization of children.

If you think winning the presidency is hard these days, you should try being a boy. The banal tortures of forced play with dolls, “noncompetitive tag,” the abolition of recess, prohibitions against running, discipline imposed by “princessipals”—are but the tip of the iceberg of the “reconditioning” that author Christina Hoff Sommers describes and denounces in her provocative book The War against Boys. At issue, Sommers claims, is a clash of worldviews—over what human nature in general, and masculinity in particular, is and should be—fought in the arena of the schools. Whoever the victor of the battle, the victims are boys.

Sommers...