Of Boys and Men by Richard V. Reeves

In recent decades, the feminist movement has revolutionized and expanded the role of women in society, freeing them of their historical economic dependence on male providers. Despite the rapid and enormous shifts in society’s ideas about womanhood, society’s definition of manhood has changed relatively little. The traditional ideal of the male protector-provider once provided a solid foundation for a man’s place in the family, in the community, and in the economy. The male protector-provider role has been eroded by women increasingly performing these functions, but nothing new has yet risen in its place. As the dual-earner dual-caregiver household has become more common, women have moved much more into the traditional male domain than the other way around. The cultural question of what it means to be a man in a post-feminist world remains unresolved. In the meantime, traditional ideas of masculinity alternate between being glamorized and being demonized.

In many domains of life, boys and men are now struggling relative to girls and women. Academically, boys underperform girls in school across all age levels in all OECD countries. Boys are more likely than girls to be suspended or expelled, more likely to be held back a grade, more likely to drop out, and less likely to finish school in the standard timeframe. Women outnumber men in both college enrollments and completions, sometimes drastically. Many professions have shifted from majority-male to majority-female, but no profession has gone the other way. The fraction of jobs requiring physical brawn is already low and is expected to continue falling. Many of the job sectors that have experienced the most losses in recent decades are in male-dominated fields like manufacturing and heavy industry, whereas most of the gains have been in female-dominated fields like healthcare, education, and administration. All inflation-adjusted GDP and wage growth in the US since 1980 has occurred among women; if only mens’ labor is counted, the economy is stagnant. Boys and men tend to have fewer friends and smaller social support networks than girls and women. Men make up a disproportionate share of “deaths of despair” from suicide, alcoholism, and drug abuse. Men make up a disproportionate share of young adults who are disengaged in society, not in employment or education nor seeking it. Fathers are far less likely than mothers to be living with their biological children and more likely to lament that they don’t get to spend enough time with them. In anonymous research surveys, parents express more concern about the success prospects of their sons than of their daughters. Most of these negative trends are much more pronounced among Black men rather than White men and among working-class men rather than middle- or upper-class men. Areas of male disadvantage or underperformance are often not taken as seriously as inequalities in the other direction.

When discussing gender-specific problems, the nature-vs-nurture debate about sex differences inevitably comes up. Most sex differences are exaggerated in popular culture; among most character traits and personal interests, men and women form heavily overlapping bell curves rather than strict dichotomies. However, there are a few sex differences that are too wide, too statistically significant, and too culturally universal to overlook. Males are more prone to aggression, have a higher appetite for risk, and have a higher sex drive than females. Boys start maturing later and finish later than girls; throughout the K-12 years, boys’ brains lag girls’ brains by about a year in terms of their anatomical development. Boys thrive especially well in response to good upbringings and wilt especially badly in response to bad upbringings. Males tend to be more interested in things and females tend to be more interested in people. Men tend to gain greater psychological benefits from romantic relationships than women do. As parents, mothers like to tend and fathers like to teach.

Gender is a flash point in the culture wars; the left-right gender gap is wide and continuing to widen. The political left overemphasizes the importance of culture and socialization; the political right overemphasizes the importance of inborn differences. The political left either ignores modern male problems or shrugs them off as self-inflicted; the political right blames them on feminism going too far and proposes to roll back the clock. The political left is fond of using terms like “toxic masculinity” as though-terminating cliches to avoid deeper debates; the political right views masculinity more favorably, but uses similar rhetoric when labelling Black or poor men as thuggish and irresponsible. The political left’s prescription for society is to tell boys to be more like their sisters; the political right’s prescription for society is to tell boys to be more like their fathers. Neither side is being constructive and neither side is being realistic, which causes many of these problems to remain unaddressed.

Today’s problems are solvable, but they are often in the hands of local and poorly-resourced initiatives. In school, boys benefit greatly from later start times, more physical education, and better school lunches. For poorly-understood reasons, boys learn better under male teachers (especially in language) while there is no gender effect for girls; given that the share of male schoolteachers is low and declining, a recruiting push is in order. Since boys’ brains are much less developed than those of girls at the same age, we should consider starting boys in kindergarten one year later as a default; based on studies of cases where parents voluntarily delayed their children’s entry into school, the outcomes of doing this are positive. We need a push for more men to enter the majority-female fields of healthcare, education, and administration; the successful multi-pronged effort to get more women into science, technology, engineering, and mathematics is a good template to follow. We need a push for more apprenticeships, trade certifications, and technical education, especially at the high school level; many European countries offer a good template to follow. Paid parental leave should be equal for both sexes, should not be transferable, and should be permissable across a wider age range than just during early childhood (having an engaged father seems to be especially critical during the teen years). Never-married parents usually have custody, visitation, and child support handled separately in the family court system, frequently leading to bizarre outcomes; if the process was unified like it is for divorcing parents, it would likely make fairer decisions. If child support obligations were more closely linked to an ability to pay them and if all the proceeds went to the families (most US states take a cut to fund welfare programs), child support delinquency would likely fall. Work schedules and career ladders need to stop assuming that all workers have wives at home; work-life balance is increasingly in demand by job seekers and employers with staffing shortages are being forced to adapt. Heavy-hitting career tracks like law, finance, and consulting are very unfriendly for parents because the only choices are overwork or no work at all; by onboarding to more modern processes and improving the free flow of information, individual workers will become more interchangeable and flexible work arrangements will become more feasible. Lastly, when analyzing the effects of policy interventions, researchers should get more in the habit of breaking down outcomes by gender; in many cases, average outcomes conceal significant gender gaps.

Boys and men are currently in an awkward rut; fixing it will require a shift in institutions and cultural mindset. We need an education-to-career pipeline that is better adapted to the realities of being a boy. We need a new vision of engaged fatherhood that is not tightly coupled with husbandhood and not subordinate to motherhood. The political left must recognize that helping boys and men in a time of need is not a betrayal of feminism and that it’s possible to help boys and men without hurting anyone else. The political right must recognize that there is no going back to the old days of women’s economic dependency and that post-feminist manhood stands to be more balanced and fulfilling than what came before.