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.

[kosciusko51]

Reminds me of a Pink Floyd song:

Hush now baby don’t you cry
Mama’s gonna make all of your
Nightmares come true
Mama’s gonna put all of her fears into you
Mama’s gonna keep you right here
Under her wing
She won’t let you fly but she might let you sing
Mama will keep baby cosy and warm
Ooooh Babe Ooooh Babe Ooooh Babe
Of course Mama’s gonna help build the wall

[FLT-bird]

I tell my nieces and nephews and a lot of other younger people that I am “a liberal from 20 years ago”.

That’s not exactly true but:

I want a secure border.
I want to stay out of wars of choice.
I am deeply suspicious of the 3 letter agencies.
I am deeply suspicious of a lot of large corporations.
I distrust the government.
I am deeply suspicious of the military.
I am for personal freedom.
I am for fair trade rather than pure free trade.
I want to preserve/bring back manufacturing.
I am for energy independence.
I STAUNCHLY favor freedom of speech.

ALL of these get you called a flaming right winger/nazi/hatemonger etc today. These were all either “liberal” or at least bipartisan positions my entire life growing up and until I was at least 30 if not 40 (and I was born in the 70s).

We haven’t changed - the Left has changed. It has become really radical. We’re pretty much the same as we always were.

[sauropod]

It is.

[Roman_War_Criminal]

Not these gals. Two of them showed utter hatred for themselves and their families the way the accomplished the deed.

I was even take aback.
Just shows what humans are capable of when they don’t admit they have a problem and refuse to seek help.

[Billthedrill]

The problem you're describing is very real indeed. Male Rites of Passage (and associated physical hardship, even if contrived) have been recognized as necessary by many more cultures than the modern Western one, the latter having discarded them for reasons that are not altogether clear. That these are that universal suggests a fundamental need that is a bit more than a social construct. And the evidence you offer is very clear to those of us who have gone, say, to Boot Camp and emerged another person, and to the many in our former lives who noticed the difference afterward.

High school graduation served as a substitute in a society where it was the last step in structured childhood for most. Why that is no longer the case is a bit of a mystery, although it may be no more complicated than that people have ceased to treat it that way, or perhaps it's the reverse. Still trying to wrap my head around that one, maybe it's a little of both.

[kearnyirish2]

Yes, those unmarried older women can be nasty; there are fewer of them because some got married late (they and the men had their own assets in their name already, so nothing was risked by the men, and the women couldn’t have children to weaponize against them).

The older unmarried men seem mellow; I suspect they had marriage options (they probably increase for them over time), but chose not to.