What We’re Teaching Our Sons

Owen Booth is a journalist, copywriter and father of two sons. He lives in Walthamstow, London. He won the 2015 White Review Short Story Prize and was recently awarded 3rd prize in the Moth Short Story competition. His work has been published in numerous print and online magazines and anthologies.

Wise and funny, touching and true, What We're Teaching Our Sons is for anyone who has ever wondered how to be a grown up.

We're teaching our sons about money; about heartbreak, and mountains, and philosophy. We're teaching them about the big bang and the abominable snowman and what happens when you get struck by lightning. We're teaching them about the toughness of single mothers, and the importance of having friends who've known you longer than you've known yourself, and the difference between zombies and vampires.

We're teaching them about sex, although everyone would be a lot happier if the subject had never come up...

Meet the married Dads, the divorced Dads, the widowed Dads and the gay Dads; the gamblers, the firemen, the bankers, the nurses, the soldiers and the milkmen. They're trying to guide their sons through the foothills of childhood into the bewildering uplands of adulthood. But it's hard to know if they're doing it right.

Or what their sons' mothers think...

Wise and funny, touching and true, What We're Teaching Our Sons is for anyone who has ever wondered how to be a grown up.

Wise and funny, touching and true, What We're Teaching Our Sons is for anyone who has ever wondered how to be a grown up.