Glenn is jazzed about and working hard on the final edits on his newest book

Secure Daughters Confident Sons: How Parents Guide Their Children into Authentic Masculinity and Femininity

...to be released in early 2011 by Waterbrook Press, a Random House imprint.

This carefully-researched work is an exploration of what it means for mothers and fathers to cooperate in raising little boys and girls into good, healthy men and women; basically, the process of becoming truly human. (Genesis 1:27 explains this.)

One of my great concerns is that we are losing the idea of what good man- and woman-hood look like, why they are important and how to usher our young boys and girls in that direction. Anthropologists tell us this is a task that all human cultures have to be intentional about and we are losing this ability, vision and conviction in our culture today, I am afraid.

Here is a short excerpt from the book on my passion and motivation for this new book.

From my Preface: Beyond Pink and Blue…

Every one of us spends every minute of every day of our lives either being a man or a woman. But what does this really mean? What do male qualities really look like? What are the essentially female characteristics? Are there really such things? How do we be either of these—and how do we know when we aren’t?

This book is simply about what everyone is.  

For all the diversity we see in the world, the different kinds of human beings that have populated our world throughout history have been made up of only two major models. And in all the infinite human variety around us, all of it stems from these essential two types. No one gets into this special club called “humanity” without the help of a male and female cooperating in some important way. And while there a zillion and three ways to be a healthy, well-rounded man or woman, there are behaviors, attitudes and perspectives that we universally and specifically understand as masculine or feminine. No one has to explain to a newcomer to any civilization – as different as it might be from their own - “Now, these are the women, and those are the men there!” We have lots of little ways we unconsciously make such determinations beyond body parts.

Which brings us to the primary purpose of this book.

With human sex differences, most often the discussion these days runs to one extreme or the other. In one corner, we have the Nothing-to-See-Here folks who believe that sex differences are small and inconsequential, merely “plumbing” issues, and that gender distinctions are largely created by cultural assumptions, prejudices, and sexism intended to keep people in their place.

In the other corner, we have the vigorous Macho Joes and the Pretty-in-Pinks. These folks see that boys are exactly like this, and girls are exactly like that. Pure and simple, neat and easy. A boy is a boy – wild to the bone - and he is only interested in contact sports, hunting and getting dirty. A girl is only a girl if she is captivated by make-up, clothes, babies, and gentleness and sweetness. Any boy or girl who is not like this is not healthy, well-adjusted or even fully functional as a human being, or so they would have us believe.

Is there any important territory between these two extreme corners of the room? Could there possibly be some important space where we can talk deeply, meaningfully and universally about authentic male and female differences? As parents raising little people who nature signed up to represent one of these two types of being human, shouldn’t we be more interested in helping them navigate this vast terrain in the middle than shoving them into either of these false corners? I think so. I trust you do too.

This is the space explore in these pages, to understand that thinking about what is really, truly male and female is critical to raise our boys and girls into healthy, vibrant men and women, not to mention doing this important human task with a partner who is different than you in this essential way. I believe this task is an important one for parents—and it just so happens that the natural and social sciences agree in convincing abundance.

So let’s move beyond the narrow confines of pink and blue now and investigate the amazing and beautiful reality of these two curious creatures we know as male and female and learn how we can raise them to be good, healthy authentic men and women.

Isn’t this the task of parenting after all?