The front page of the NY Times Sunday Opinion section featured the following headline:
“Lonely, detached and isolated, today’s young men are adrift. We faced this problem a century ago. We Can Solve the Boy Crisis Again.”
Written by published authors Robert Putnam (Bowling Alone) and Richard Reeves (Boys and Men) the article begins by repeating statistics – which I have frequently highlighted in my blogs – such as, “Since 2010, suicide rates by young men have risen by a third. The share of college degrees going to men has fallen to 41%. One in ten men aged 20-24 is effectively doing nothing – neither enrolled in school or working. That’s twice the rate in 1990.” The authors posit that the current crisis is similar to the “Boy Problem” of the early 1900s where roving gangs of disaffected boys and young men engaged in crime as a result of feeling lost and abandoned by the industrial revolution. Many of today’s young men and boys are also feeling abandoned by both technology and the feminist movement. Instead of joining roving gangs disaffected young men often turn to toxic masculinity in order to figure out how to define themselves as a man. In addition, they are lost because they are lonely: 25% of boys and men aged 15 to 34 told Gallup that they experienced loneliness “a lot” on the previous day.
In the early 1900’s society’s response to the boy crisis included Boy’s Scouts, YMCA, the National Camping Association summer camps, compulsory public education, Big Brothers and a myriad of non-profits all intended to foster male mentoring and fight hopelessness which would lead to pro-social manhood. Unfortunately, an unintended consequence of seeking gender equality has been the erosion of male gender specific organizations. For example, Boy Scouting now accepts girls while the Girl Scouts remains as female only. Big Brothers is faced with a shortage of male mentors while Big Sisters is thriving. The author’s response is a call for adult men to step up and engage in civic programs that support mentoring to those boys and young men who have not been adequately fathered.
Frankly, although the authors provided an excellent analysis of the current boy crisis and the similarity to the “Boy Problem” of the early 1900s their attempts at solutions lacked specificity and is limited to a call for men to step up and become mentors. Instead we need to be strongly committed to a more affirmative approach. Start with providing strategies for teachers, especially in the heavily feminized elementary schools, to better motivate academic achievement among boys. Boys have a different learning style than girls and teachers need to learn the strategies that encourage academic achievement among boys. I would also recommend teaching positive masculinity to boys starting in middle school and continuing in high school. One approach, which I personally piloted with adolescent boys in foster care, uses the Moore & Gillette archetypes of masculinity, with examples both in the light and in the shadow, to develop a new man code that reflects the best of masculinity while respecting gender equality.
As the authors underscored we are experiencing the negative consequences of losing our boys and society must respond with action not rhetoric.