The Trouble With Boys and Men

The Atlantic ^ | 5 Oct, 2022 | Conor Freidersdorf

[anthropocene_x]

Brookings scholar Richard Reeves and his just-released book, Of Boys and Men, proceeds from the proposition that “men at the top are still flourishing, but men in general are not.” Men are struggling in school, in the job market, and in family life; they are the gender most likely to end up in prison and most vulnerable to “deaths of despair.”

• “In the U.S … the 2020 decline in college enrollment was seven times greater for male than for female students.”
• “Among men with only a high-school education, one in three is out of the labor force. For those who have a job, typical earnings are $881 a week, down from $1,017 in 1979.”
• “Mortality from drug overdoses, suicides, and alcohol-related illnesses … are almost three times higher among men than women.”

Times columnist Michelle Goldberg argues that the solutions proposed by the book do too little to address “political and economic decisions that have made American life brutal.

[Roman_War_Criminal]

These past 3 years I’ve known 3 women who have killed themselves - all of them via massive violence.

I understand men have a massive suicide problem, but I wonder if it is really worse than women.

[Thrownatbirth]

After 65+ years of observation, I reasonably conclude that men and boys of faith have much better lives and tend to survive life’s struggles.

[Singermom]

When you spend 12 or more years of education and educators who constantly demean and negate men-whites especially how can you wonder why men are not doing as well?

Reality eludes these woke liberal fools.

[ConservativeInPA]

Though conservatives pay more attention “to the growing problems faced by boys and men,” he continues, their agenda is equally unhelpful. They “fuel male grievances for political gain, which simply creates more anger and discontent.” They “overweight the importance of biological differences for gender roles.” And they see solutions “as lying in the past rather than the future, in the form of a restoration of traditional economic relations between male providers and female carers” rather than “helping men adapt to the new world.”

I am a conservative old man. Quite honestly, I don’t fit in the corporate world any longer. I highly doubt that if I went back to college that I would fit in. I often have grievances with leftists at church. I disagree with 100% of Democrats and about 90% of the GOP. I do get along with my family and a small, very select group of friends.

I have watched individual freedom and liberty erode over my entire lifetime. My anger and disconnect is not fueled by a conservative agenda, at least none implemented by government because there is about zero that is conservative in government. It is fueled by progressive leftists. I have no desire to adapt to a new world. Simply give me freedom and leave me the eff alone.

[cranked]

Agreed and well said.

[Nifster]

Men tend to shoot themselves. Women take pills

[hinckley buzzard]

Suicide rates for men are 3-4 times the rate for women. This has been roughly the same since statistics began to be kept. Women make more attempts, men more likely to complete the job. Older men at higher risk.

[Billthedrill]

Not much development to the article, really - it's a series of comments from academics and journalists who appear to be observing the problems rather than living them. They're bound to get it wrong. The very last person I would ask about the challenges modern men face as opposed to those of a past generation is a feminist scholar who has faced neither; indeed, I'd be wary lest such observers may be the actual cause of the problems, hence the last to be able to address them.

I would offer this as a member of an older generation: short of a time of conscription in a war with little chance of surviving, there has never been a time where the institutions trusted with cultural maintenance have been as systemically hostile toward men in general and young men in particular as now. "Toxic" masculinity, really? The toxicity is quite in the other direction. If women in such institutions bristle at the notion that they should live up to the expectations of men, how is it that the reverse is considered invalid? When the inhabitants of such institutions - the schools, the press, popular culture, corporations, politics - when these individuals settle on a scapegoat for their own unhappiness it may be addressed on an individual basis; where it is the institutions themselves that have adopted that sort of open hostility as a collective culture the alternative left is open rejection of them. This accounts for changes in percentage of various activities pondered by the article's commenters. Dropping out is not a gesture of defeat in that sense, it's a rational response to an irredeemable environment and a search for a new one.

[DoodleBob]

Conservatives...see solutions “as lying in the past rather than the future, in the form of a restoration of traditional economic relations between male providers and female carers” rather than “helping men adapt to the new world (emphasis added).”

Men have adapted to the "new world" pretty well. I saw the little DoodleBobs' births (that was unheard of in the 60s), I do housework (I hate folding laundry though), and I changed diapers.

Now, I suspect that what they REALLY mean by "helping men adapt to the new world" is, more accurately, "get used to this wokey statist nonsense and STFU." What they REALLY want, is for us to accept the notions of reassignment surgery at 5 years old is good, lockdowns are good, pandemic cash is good, guns and self-defense are bad, parents shouldn't complain to the school boards, abortion is a reproductive right, divorce is good, and opening the door for a woman is patriarchy.

Men are wired to defend, and to be warriors. This nonsense naturally triggers a primal response. The distortion between that warrior response and the zeitgeist telling men to STFU, will cause men of lesser stock to retreat and wither.

Which is what they want.

[Falconspeed]

Public schools, such as high schools and colleges, have become jobs programs for women and minorities. All men need better opportunities because high schools and colleges.

[KC_Conspirator]

Here is an idea...stop trashing men and boys.

[alexander_busek]

These past 3 years I’ve known 3 women who have killed themselves - all of them via massive violence.

Is the method relevant? Dead is dead!

I understand men have a massive suicide problem, but I wonder if it is really worse than women.

Are you saying that you think that your subjective perception based upon your limited experience and tiny sample size might possibly trump nationwide statistics collected by professional statisticians and compiled on super-computers?

Regards,

[Organic Panic]

Women in power are to blame. Momma gonna keep you safe and love you to death.

[Angelino97]

I've always read that ...

1. A greater percentage of men than women commit suicide.

2. When women do kill themselves, they favor non-violent means, such as poison, or overdosing on sleeping pills or drugs or whatever.

3. Women are especially loathe to disfigure their faces. Even when facing death, they worry about their looks. Sticking a gun into your mouth and blowing your brains out is an overwhelmingly "guy thing."

[FlingWingFlyer]

I’ll bet the suicide rate of women who live with other women is probably higher than the male suicide rate.

[kearnyirish2]

You are right that those places are jobs programs, really for anyone with no marketable private-sector skills; just about everything related to government is now (to pretend assimilation works, along both race and gender lines).

The libs pushing these stories about men aren’t worried about the economic future of men; they are worried about the lack of breeding opportunities for WOMEN, and the economic impact for WOMEN of unattached men who look after only themselves (and maybe parents). They feel men should be providing a certain standard of living for women, and that simply isn’t happening very much anymore.

[kearnyirish2]

They wanted it until they realized how many women would age childless, and be worked (and taxed) like men; the most miserable coworkers I have are women past breeding age who realize they’ll work like men far longer than they expected when they were young princesses.

The family men are stressed and often miserable but most expected that anyway; their reality is far closer to that of their fathers’ than the women saw of their mothers’.

[muir_redwoods]

We do the more dangerous jobs
We take greater risks
We keep our emotions to ourselves
We don’t have a protector gender
We are both the sword and the shield

[A_perfect_lady]

I worry that public education is depressing all of the nation's children. The unremitting message is: You live in a racist country on a dying planet. Now work hard, because the evil capitalist machine will kill you if you don't. I mean, seriously. That's the liberal message. On top of the one you mentioned, I mean.