It would have been interesting to raise up a family of sons, but I don’t have any sons. I am, as the song says, a man who’s rich in daughters. One thing I understand better than I did, before having daughters, is that not a few elements of society are slow poison for girls. But here's what I suspect now that I'm getting close to being out of the child-rearing business: that we won't get better in raising our children until we understand more clearly the things in our society that actually nurture children, the good many things that poison children, and, terribly important, the particular ways our society harms boys as well as the particular ways we harm girls. The truth is in the specificity of our understanding, as always. The power of truth is in not just the broad patterns but the details. And in finding a way to converse usefully about these things.