Modern males are struggling. Author Richard Reeves outlines the three major issues boys and men face and shares possible solutions.
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Boys and men are falling behind. This might seem surprising to some people, and maybe ridiculous to others, considering that discussions on gender disparities tend to focus on the structural challenges faced by girls and women, not boys and men.
But long-term data reveal a clear and alarming trend: In recent decades, American men have been faring increasingly worse in many areas of life, including education, workforce participation, skill acquisition, wages, and fatherhood.
Gender politics is often framed as a zero-sum game: Any effort to help men takes away from women. But in his 2022 book Of Boys and Men, journalist and Brookings Institution scholar Richard V. Reeves argues that the structural problems contributing to male malaise affect everybody, and that shying away from these tough conversations is not a productive path forward.
Read the video transcript ► https://bigthink.com/series/the-big-think-interview/male-inequality
0:00
1:35 Men in education
7:26 *Class matters
7:53 Men in the workforce
10:54 Men in the family
13:00 Deaths of despair
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About Richard Reeves:
Richard V. Reeves is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, where he directs the Future of the Middle Class Initiative and co-directs the Center on Children and Families. His Brookings research focuses on the middle class, inequality and social mobility.
Richard writes for a wide range of publications, including the New York Times, Guardian, National Affairs, The Atlantic, Democracy Journal, and Wall Street Journal. He is the author of Dream Hoarders (Brookings Institution Press, 2017), and John Stuart Mill – Victorian Firebrand (Atlantic Books, 2007), an intellectual biography of the British liberal philosopher and politician.
Dream Hoarders was named a Book of the Year by The Economist, a Political Book of the Year by The Observer, and was shortlisted for the Goddard Riverside Stephan Russo Book Prize for Social Justice. In September 2017, Politico magazine named Richard one of the top 50 thinkers in the U.S. for his work on class and inequality.
A Brit-American, Richard was director of strategy to the UK’s Deputy Prime Minister from 2010 to 2012. Other previous roles include director of Demos, the London-based political think-tank; social affairs editor of the Observer; principal policy advisor to the Minister for Welfare Reform, and research fellow at the Institute for Public Policy Research. Richard is also a former European Business Speaker of the Year and has a BA from Oxford University and a PhD from Warwick University.
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Read more of our stories on male inequality:
Toxic masculinity is a harmful myth. Society is in denial about the problems of boys and men.
► https://bigthink.com/the-present/toxic-masculinity-myth/
The understated affection of fathers
► https://bigthink.com/neuropsych/fathers-love/
Why are sitcom dads still so inept?
► https://bigthink.com/the-present/sitcom-dads/
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- A number of people warned
me against writing a book about boys and men because
it's such a fraught subject, particularly in politics right now, and because so many people were afraid that merely drawing attention
to the problems of boys and men was implying somehow
less effort being paid to girls and women; that
it's framed as zero-sum. And it's sort of a who's
side are you on question: and you have to be on
one side or the other, rather than just being on the
side of human flourishing. One of
the real challenges
here is that if there are men missing from certain
crucial areas of our society and our economy, that makes it
harder for other men and boys to flourish in those areas. We have an education
system that has a dearth of male teachers. We have a labor market where the jobs that are growing fastest
are ones where we have the fewest men- and in families there's the
growth in what you might call the 'dad deficit' or 'father listeners.' As men are struggling
in each of those areas,
what you'll see is it'll
be harder for other men to follow in their footsteps. It's harder for boys to flourish if their fathers aren't engaged. It's harder for men to enter occupations where there aren't men. It's harder for boys to do well at school where there are no male
teachers to be seen. And so, there's a very real danger that unless we act quite soon,
that we will set in train something of a vicious cycle. I'm Richard Reeves. I'm a Senior Fellow at
the Brookings Institution, and my lat
est book is "Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male Is struggling, Why That Matters, and
What to Do about It." The overall picture is, that
on almost every measure, at almost every age, and in
almost every advanced economy in the world, the girls are
leaving the boys way behind, and the women leaving the men. What nobody expected
was that girls and women wouldn't just catch up to
boys and men in education, but would blow right
past them and keep going. Everyone was very focused, quite rightly, on
getting to gender equality,
getting to gender parity. It's not that long ago where
there was a huge gender gap the other way, and there
was huge focus, correctly, in the 70s and 80s to really promote women and girls in education. But the line just kept
going-and nobody predicted that. Nobody was saying, "What if
gender inequality reemerges in just as big a way as
now, in some cases bigger, but the other way around?" And to some extent,
everyone's still trying to get their head around this new wo
rld where, at least in education, when you talk about gender inequality, you are pretty much always
talking about the ways in which girls and women
are ahead of boys and men. And that's happened in a
very, very short period of human history. So if you look at the U.S., for example, in the average school
district in the U.S., girls are almost a grade
level ahead of boys in English, and have caught up in math. If we look at those with
the highest GPA scores, the top 10%, two-thirds
of those are gi
rls. If we look at those at the bottom, two-thirds of those are boys. When it comes to going to college, there's a 10 percentage
gap in college enrollment; a similar size gap in completing college, conditional on enrolling. And the result of those
trends is that the gender gap in getting a college degree is now wider than it was in 1972, but
the other way around. So in 1972, when Title
IX was passed to promote more gender equality in education, there was a 13 percentage point gap in favor of men
getting college degrees. Now there's a 15 percentage point gap in favor of women getting college degrees. So the gender inequality
we see in college today is wider than it was 50 years ago- it's just the other way around. There's quite a fierce
debate about the differences between male and female brains. And in adulthood, I think
there's not much evidence that the brains are that different in ways that we should worry about, or that are particularly consequential. But where there's no real deba
te is in the timing of brain development. It is quite clear that
girls brains develop more quickly than boys brains do, and that the biggest difference seems to occur in adolescence. So what happens, is in adolescence, we develop what neuroscientists
call the prefrontal cortex. The prefrontal cortex of
our brain is sometimes known as the "CEO of the brain." It's the bit of your brain that says, "You should do your chemistry homework rather than going out to party." It's the bit of your brain
tha
t says it is worth maintaining a high GPA 'cause
it'll help you get to college, which might help you in the future. And that bit of the brain
develops considerably earlier in girls than in boys, between
one and two years earlier. Partly because girls go into
puberty a bit earlier than boys and that seems to trigger
some of this development. What that means is that if
you have an education system that rewards the ability
to turn in homework, stay on task, worry about
your GPA, prepare for college
, and so on, then, just
structurally, that's going to put at an advantage the group whose brains have developed earlier in
those particular areas- and that turns out on average to be girls. I think it's a great
irony of women's progress that by taking the breaks off women's educational
opportunities and aspirations, we've revealed the fact
that the education system is slightly structured
against boys and men, because of these differences in the timing of brain development. But it took the women'
s
movement to show that, because the natural advantages
of women in education were impossible to see
when women's aspirations were being capped by a sexist society. Now that those caps have
been largely removed, we can see that it's boys and
men who are at disadvantage in the education system. At the risk of sounding boring,
let's collect the data first so we know what we are dealing with here. I do think that we should
be strongly encouraging boys to start school a year later than girls. I thin
k that should become the default in many school districts
because of the developmental gap that there is between boys and girls. Because boys brains mature more slowly, then them starting school
a year later would mean that they were developmentally
closer to being peers with the girls in the classroom. We need a lot more male teachers. It's striking that the teaching profession has become steadily more female over time. Only 24% of K-12 teachers, now, are male- that's down from 33% in the 80s-
and fewer men are applying to
teacher training year on year. And so, we've seen this steady shift towards a close to an
all-female environment; that has all kinds of
consequences for the ethos of the school, for the way
we deal with different kinds of behavior among boys
and girls, for example. And so we need a very serious
and intentional effort to get more men into teaching. The third thing I would do in this world where I have significant
power to dictate policies, would be significantly more
investment in vocational education and training: That is an area where we do
seem to see better results for boys and men on average, and one that's woefully
underinvested in in the U.S. The U.S. has really
bet most of its dollars on a very academic, a very
narrow route towards success, and less emphasis on vocational training. And that has actually put boys
and men at a disadvantage- so apprenticeships,
technical high schools, are actually a really good
way to help more boys and men. I think on
e of the
challenges with this debate is that if you're talking
to women and men who are, say, at the top of the economic ladder- four-year college degrees, decent incomes- they look around and they
don't see some of these issues. But that's not the same
for working-class men; that's not the same for men
lower down the economic ladder. So there's a danger that we're so busy, to borrow Sheryl Sandberg's phrase: "So busy leaning in that
we don't look down." The reality for men
further down the ladd
er is very different. The economic trends for
men have turned downwards along four dimensions. One is wages: Most men today earn less
than most men did in 1979. In employment, with a drop
in labor force participation of eight percentage points,
which means nine million men now of prime age are not working. We've seen a drop in occupational stature, and so, there are now more men
working in employment areas which are seen as lower status
than they were in the past. And we've also seen a drop
in t
he acquisition of skills, the kinds of skills and
education that boys and men need. If boys don't get educated
and men don't get skilled, they will struggle in the labor market. And across all of those domains,
we've seen a downwards turn for men in the last four or five decades. And so the way in which social
class divides have opened up, economic inequality has
widened, is really important to understand in the context
of gender inequality. If we only focus on gender
gaps, then we miss the fact
that both men and women at the top have done increasingly well. But that's much less
true of everybody else, and especially it's less true of those from lower-income backgrounds, working-class boys and men,
and Black boys and men. You see many of those
trends are amplified, and so those boys and men are
really at the sharpest end of many of the social
and economic changes. On the one hand, we have
a huge and successful and laudable effort to get
more women into STEM jobs. So 'science, technolog
y,
engineering, and math.' On the other side, we have
what I call "HEAL jobs." So that's 'health, education,
administration, and literacy.' Almost, if you like, the
opposite side of the coin to STEM jobs- and that's where a lot of
the jobs are coming from. Health and education alone
are huge and growing sectors in the U.S., and so by my estimates, for every one job we're
gonna create in STEM between now and 2030, we're
gonna create three in HEAL jobs. But those jobs are at
least as gender-segreg
ated as STEM jobs, but in the other direction, and unlike STEM becoming
more so over time; so if you look at the HEAL
sector, only 24% of the workers in those sectors are male,
and that number is falling. And in particular sectors,
we are seeing a really precipitous drop in the number of men. We have a drop in the
number of male teachers. We have a very sharp drop in the number of male psychologists; that's dropped from 39% male to 29% male in the last decade alone. And among psychologists
under
the age of 30, only 5% are male. So we roll that forward, and
we're going to see psychology becoming essentially almost
an all-female profession. So these jobs, which are
both crucial, I think, for society, and where
it'd be very useful to have more diversity, are actually becoming more gender-segregated, and so we have absolutely
no effort to get more men into HEAL jobs, which is
where I think the future lies, and where we should be
helping men to move. One of the problems that we
face is what
I call in the book a 'dad deficit.' And that can be seen in
various different ways: So one in four fathers don't
live with their children. If parents split up,
they're much more likely to lose contact with their
fathers than with their mothers- and so one in three children,
if their parents split up, don't see their father at all after a few years post the separation. So this fatherlessness is something that's very, very specific. And when 4 in 10 children
are born outside marriage, and most ch
ildren, to
less educated parents are born outside marriage, then we have to reinvent
what it means to be a father, because right now men are still being held to an old standard of what it meant to be a successful father in a
world where that is neither possible for many of
them, or even desirable, because what we've seen
is, as women have grown in economic power and
economic independence, then of course they're going
to choose to be with a man rather than being forced
to, as in the old days. Thi
s is probably the greatest
liberation in human history, honestly, that women can now choose whether to be with a man or not. More than 2 out of 5
households in the U.S. now, a woman is the main breadwinner. 40% of American women earn
more than the average man. These are huge economic
changes, and all for the good, but it does pose some
really sharp questions about what fathers are for. And until we escape the obsolete model of the breadwinner father,
then we will continue to see more and more me
n being
left out of family life. And the kicker is that boys in families that don't have a father presence suffer much more than girls. And so then what happens
is that male disadvantage can become intergenerational because if the fathers are struggling, and therefore not really
involved in their kids' lives, then the boys are the
ones who suffer most, who will then go on to struggle themselves in education, and in the labor market. It's clear by now that marriage
and social institutions and a s
ense of purpose matter to men. And so as we've seen these
real challenges faced by men in education, work, and the family, you're seeing some really difficult and troubling health consequences. And so, the so-called 'deaths of despair' from suicide, overdose, or alcohol, three times higher among
men than among women. Suicide itself, three times
higher among men than women, and rising very quickly, especially among middle-aged
men and younger men. So we can see these as symptoms, I think, of a br
oader malaise, which is what's troubling boys and men. And for men in particular, this sense of purpose is very important. I think it's a human universal
that we need to be needed. There's a wonderful piece
of work by an academic called Fiona Chan, who
looked at the last words that men had used to describe themselves before committing suicide,
or attempting suicide. And the top of the list were
"worthless" and "useless." I think if we create a
society in which so many men do feel like they're no
t needed, then it's no surprise that we
see these deaths of despair. We see problems with opioids- opioids are a much bigger problem for men than they are for women- and one of the great
tragedies of opioid deaths is the death rates are higher in part because the users are on their own. And so, in some ways, the opioid epidemic is a perfect illustration
of a whole series of things we are talking about: which is a loss of role in the family, a loss of status in the labor market, turning to drugs,
and being
isolated and withdrawn. And so in that example, I
think you can see a symptom of this broader, male
malaise that we just need to take it more seriously. And we have a cultural
responsibility, as a society, men and women together,
to help men and boys to adjust to this new world- because, right now, many of
them are really struggling.
Comments
The number of male therapists decreasing while the number of men needing therapy increases is worrying to think about.
I remember being homeless at 17, having finally been old enough to leave my abusive home but still working my job at the coffee house. No one knew I was homeless except the cops that harassed me, ticketing me over and over for sleeping in my car, eating up my paychecks with fines until I couldn't pay anymore, at which point they put you on probation and draw out even more fines. Zero criminal record, drug-free, holding down a job, and just trying to make ends meet... It didn't matter. I was trash to be chased down by the cops. There was no help for young men. Only women's shelters. Only women's assistance. Only women's free college, etc. Your pride and sense of masculinity keeps you waiting to ask for help until you're so hungry, you can feel it up your stomach and in your throat. Then you finally seek assistance and everyone looks at you in disgust because hey, you're a man in the patriarchy right? How dare you ask for help! Then you stew in your emotions, having traded what little bit of self-respect you have left for nothing more than a horrifying reinforcement of what you already feared; you're worthless not just to the people in your life but to society as a whole. It wasn't until my probation officer came to arrest me for not showing up and found me half dead in a hospital bed with blood clots and walking pneumonia from sleeping in my car that someone took pity on me and got me out of the never ending spiral of fines for just trying to live my life. Even then, that was only after the officer tried to drag me out of bed and caused a scene with the doctors and nurses. Again, I had zero criminal record (beyond tickets for being homeless), was drug-free, and was working full time. I wasn't a leech or a danger. I was a young man on his own trying to get by and that seemed to be unacceptable for whatever reason. Thank god I made it out. A lot of young men never do.
Male teacher here. During our master's degree in uni, in my class we were 5 boys and 65 women 😅
I have a younger brother, only 24. And he has struggled. His relationship with our father is tense/nonexistent. He has struggled with substance abuse, addiction, and I’m sure anxiety and depression though they were never officially diagnosed… He is adverse to any form of therapy, and it took nearly 5 years of convincing to get him into a small college. Our father sees him as a failure and a bum, and it breaks my heart because I don’t see him that way. I see him as my younger brother who loved to tinker with toys and build and create things. Just because he didn’t love traditional school (he wasn’t even a bad student, just not at the very top), it built a bad relationship with our father, and thus, I believe, pushed him into this “malaise”… where he just on the surface seems very behind in life. This man’s work helped me to give voice to what I believed my younger brother has been suffering from and is having to deal with. Thank you, A Big Sister
We can foster a better model of masculinity without diminishing the undeniable gains of feminism. We all do better when we all do better.
One major issue with men in teaching professions, particularly around young children is the stigma around it. As a man, you can't get too friendly around children or you risk being branded a pedophile. I've seen this with my mother. We had a very nice old guy who loved children who worked at the cross walk. One day he saw that my sister's backpack was all beaten up and falling apart so he offered to help get her a new one. My mom immediately assumed ill intentions and called the school to get him fired. Imagine if we replaced that nice old man with a nice old lady. My mother, and most other parents would be singing her priases about how she went above and beyond with a single act of kindness. It's sad really. Personally, I go out of my way to avoid children. I refuse to work in any job that puts me around children, because once you have that label on you, you're screwed. I reckon it's the same for other men as well.
Worked at a job where I was sexually harassed daily. Told my manager that I didn't feel comfortable and she told me "To learn to take a compliment". I quit. She emailed me two months later and asked if I wanted to come back and that she would add 3 dollars to my hourly wage. To this day I'm still pissed.
Tried to say this a few years ago and was treated like a nut
I'm a male teacher, in middle school. At the start of my career I interviewed for 12-15 elementary school positions, and was rejected by every single one of them. I earnestly tried to teach elementary, but I just couldn't get in. I was just starting out, so one could argue that my inexperience cost me. But once I started interviewing for middle school positions, multiple schools promptly offered me a spot. I truly do believe my being male played a role in this.
It's refreshing to hear someone intelligent speak on male issues without discarding the inequality faced by women. I want an equal society for everyone.
As a child if the 80s, I never had a male teacher demand that I be drugged, or they would refuse to teach me... but I did have 2 female teachers that did. And it later came out that the 2nd teacher that made that demand, had made the same demand to the parents of EVERY single male student in her class.
I love that this isn’t making it a competition about who suffers the most and it genuinely explains the problems, men are very much needed and should be made to feel so.
As a "younger" male person who graduated high school relatively recently, I can't tell you how much I appreciated my male teachers (shop teachers, and one english teacher). They taught me a lot about being a man by just acting as a role model around the classroom and showing how to properly deal with stressful situations and what not.
As a young black man I am glad to see this topic being discussed in this way. I lost my little brother to suicide about 5 years ago and one thing that was evident is that he felt strangled by the pressures of society at just 16. More discussions need to be had about what it means to be a man in this time. It is tough trying to be an upstanding man when the level of expectation is unrealistic and does not match the reality of roles and responsibilities being played out in society. It is also tough to prosper as a man when major industries that promote sedentary behavior (gaming and television) and illegal drugs are exploiting media outlets to numb men into a malaise. I don’t have the answers, but the fact that this dialogue is beginning is a good sign.
I think another key point is this new culture coming up of “hating men”. I’ve witnessed so many women exclaim something along the lines of “men are the worst” etc without thinking much of it. This further perpetuates male feelings of worthlessness and hopelessness in efforts to become equals.
I'm in highschool but from what I've seen already is that, compared to girls, a lot of guys are not doing so well emotionally and many honestly don't look like they have anything to look forward to. I get it's a more recent thing due to social media affecting younger people in general, but it particularly hit the guys hard and it shows. I think some resentment can occur from the fact that schools offer exclusive help and scholarships for girls while having their own clubs too, but the guys arent getting any of this. They can see where the preference lies. There's also the huge expectation for a guy to handle their own wants/needs independently which only worsens it. It starts making sense why they end up lonely. I'm literally seeing guys get left out during these times when they need a healthy support system now more than ever, and very few seem to notice or care about it. If someone in school does, they often don't call it out in fear of being labelled sexist. The fact of the matter is it's just not a good time to address male struggles right now despite the necessity of it. It's great to see the progress that was made to encourage girls, I just wish both sides can get equal acknowledgement on their issues as well
“It’s often seen as ‘who’s side are you on,’ instead of being on the side of human flourishing” It’s so refreshing to see this issue given its own space to be discussed, instead of being weaponized as a bad faith rebuttal against women’s issues. Society need to talk about this, and we need to do it in solidarity with women and feminism, as opposed to in contrast to it
I like this. It’s not someone ranting on Twitter. It’s someone respectfully and calmly discussing a topic that could be considered controversial.
I totally agree with you 100% and have personally felt and experienced most of what you are taking about. It's difficult to thrive in a society that says it doesnt need you and demonizes your very identity. But at the end of the day, all you really want is purpose and to feel needed.
Well this video made me cry. It got me thinking back to high school and the one teacher that didn’t hate me, the only male teacher. He was the only one that was able to look past my difficult personality and really understand me. It was such a difficult time dealing with undiagnosed bi polar disorder. My parents were neglectful. I had nobody. 😭