Love That Boy What Two Presidents, Eight Road Trips, and My Son Taught Me About a Parent's Expectations

"[A]n eloquent, brave, big-hearted book…about the timeless anxieties and emotions of parenthood, and the modern twists thereon.”
—James Fallows, The Atlantic

Love That Boy is a uniquely personal story about the causes and costs of outsized parental expectations. What we want for our children—popularity, normalcy, achievement, genius—and what they truly need—grit, empathy, character—are explored by National Journal’s Ron Fournier, who weaves his extraordinary journey to acceptance around the latest research on childhood development and stories of other loving-but-struggling parents.

RON FOURNIER is Publisher and editor of Crain's Detroit Business, formerly the Senior Political Columnist for National Journal. He began his family and career in Arkansas, covering then Governor Bill Clinton before moving to Washington in 1993, where he covered politics and the presidency during the administrations of Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama. Fournier also served as a fellow at the Harvard Institute of Politics, where he co-wrote the New York Times bestseller Applebee's America. He holds the Society of Professional Journalists' Sigma Delta Chi Award for coverage of the 2000 elections, and he is a four-time winner of the prestigious White House Correspondents' Association Merriman Smith Memorial Award.