Posted on 03/06/2018 4:34:43 AM PST by Kaslin
In recent years, society has focused more on issues affecting girls and women than on those related to boys and men. But now, in all 63 of the largest developed nations, boys are falling behind girls in all academic subjects – especially the biggest predictors of success, reading and writing, in their mental health (depression, suicides), physical health (lower sperm counts), IQ, ability to create friends, and so on.
Dr. Warren Farrell, who has written extensively on men and family, just released a book with co-author John Gray, the bestselling author of Men are From Mars, Women are From Venus. The Boy Crisis goes over a long list of afflictions plaguing boys, affecting their development into men, and offers solutions to turn the problem around. He spoke with me in an interview about the book.
Farrell observes, “Whenever only one sex wins, both sexes lose.” For every girl who turns out well, she’ll have a boyfriend or son whose issues she must deal with. Even if you do not have children, you are paying for the boy crisis in taxes – boys on welfare, in prison, unemployed, joining ISIS, doing school shootings. As Farrell puts it, "Boys who hurt, hurt us.” A big part of the problem is boys are growing up without fathers. Mothers are usually awarded primary custody of children when parents split up.
Farrell brings out some fascinating insights from studies that most people are unaware of. Not only do boys do better with fathers than mothers, but girls do better with fathers too. This is true at all ages, even when the dad has no advantage in income.
Farrell, a former board member in NYC of the National Organization of Women, says the women’s movement did a great job expanding the options for women in the last half century, framing discrimination as women not being able to be equally involved in the workplace. But no one changed the public consciousness about the discrimination being faced by men desiring to enter the world of their children, the home place. Especially after divorce. And no one confronted the 53 percent of women under 30 who have children without being married as to their denial of the rights of the children to have both parents.
We gave boys what Farrell calls "social bribes" to be disposable in war – calling them heroes. And by women "marrying up" we got men to associate making sacrifices at work with being loved. The feminists portrayed the male as oppressor and the female as oppressed – acknowledging the mother’s sacrifice of a career, but not the dad’s sacrifice in his career.
Feminists cast men’s high pay as privilege and power, discrimination in favor of men – but did not understand that the expectation of men to earn money was actually discrimination against men. The road to high pay is a toll road. Currently, feminists are trying to have it both ways: “I am woman, I am strong; I am woman, I was wronged.” Affirmative consent – requiring our sons in college to ask a woman for consent before he reaches out to hold her hand lest he be sued for sexual harassment – infantilizes women by not asking women to share accountability for the changing male-female tango. He says that when women respond romantically to sensitive men, men will become more sensitive.
Farrell observes that few romance novels are titled, "He stopped when I said 'no.'” Women are still falling in love with successful men, not men who stop at the first “no.” The sexes need a dialogue, not a monologue. Farrell feels we've turned the battle of the sexes into a war in which only one sex has shown up – our sons are putting their head in the sand and hoping the bullets will miss. We have to ask girls to share the risk of sexual rejection, not just blame boys when they do it too much and ignore them when they don't do it enough. He concludes that feminism damages our daughters by honing victim power as a fine art.
Farrell says that convincing people to treat boys and girls slightly differently – without looking like an insult to girls – can be accomplished, because it’s not a positive or a negative. For example, boys tend to enjoy rough housing more, girls find it easier to sit without fidgeting in class. We can help both sexes grow effectively by acknowledging those differences and doing some combination of being conscious of them without catering to them and enabling them. It’s a balancing act. Boys have greater challenges sitting in the classroom. But they are fine getting up and doing a project, a play or chemistry experiment. And from the success that both sexes have from excelling at these differences, they’ll gain incentives to push themselves further – such as girls engaging in risk, boys sitting still.
Currently, thousands of fathers across the country are jailed for getting behind on child support. It’s like a modern-day debtors’ prison – something the U.S. supposedly got rid of years ago. Farrell says we need to change this. We have to redefine everything that child support means.
The data shows that children need dad’s time more than they need dad’s dime. We need to require dads to contribute time first. We also need to punish moms that prevent dads from contributing time.
One of the biggest solutions is to decrease divorce. Farrell teaches couples’ communications workshops all over the country. He’s discovered that the main source of conflict in marriage is the inability of spouses to take criticism from each other without becoming defensive. So the other person starts walking on eggshells. They feel less and less heard by the person they love the most. Then children arrive, and the parents have even less time to communicate their frustrations with each other. Their parenting styles are different, but they don’t know how to communicate the value of their differences. They are legally married but psychologically divorced, in “minimum-security marriages.”
Farrell has spent his life trying to get men and women to understand each other. He attempts to get men to understand the everyday “beauty contests” of regular life that women live in. He gets women to understand the risk of up to 100 romantic rejections men regularly get approaching women. By understanding these, the sexes can develop an emotional compassion for each other. Then he gets both spouses to realize that being criticized does not mean they will be rejected.
When the couples do that, they feel so much more loved by each other, and then they realize they can do that with their kids, parents, conservatives and liberals, Israelis and Palestinians, employer and employees. It’s the beginning of creating the world peace we all talk about. Which has always been elusive for us.
they've been treated like defective girls for the last thirty years, that's what
Feminism is one of the great evils of the 20th century. It has probably harmed women more than men, but it has hurt children most of all.
Lots of good points
Normal family, four boys, all did well in school and everything turned out fine. I ignore most of this horsecrap.
I think ignoring this type of commentary is to do it at our peril. Having been a single mother I did not find it easy and would have welcomed a male hand in the mix. Not only was I aware I didn’t always make good decisions (though I tried), it was the extra value put on another person’s opinion that balanced events out.
And boys are really different. I remember watching my son playing in a little mud hole with his trucks. The next time I watched, minutes later, he was sitting in the mud hole, splashing mud all over himself and loving the feel of it. My daughters were standing to the side pretending to gag at how dirty he was. I loved it all.
Like many of the social “revolutions” of the 1960s, much was a state of throwing the baby out with the bath water.
It has not gotten better, it has gotten worse.
Television advertising is a vast “social educator”, sending messages beyond the “sales” job, it also promotes social attitudes.
Unless an ad is directly intended to sell something to men, it is my anecdotal experience of late that most ads are as if they are not “sex neutral” but directed at women, in their social message - achieve, you can do it, you’re represented, you count (the males are just backdrop), and worst of all is how many of the males in ads are a duffus (and similarly how “the dumb blond” has been not merely banished, but the female is NEVER a duffus, only the males are).
Maybe we need for awhile to go back to sex-distinct K-12 schools.
>>they’ve been treated like defective girls for the last thirty years, that’s what
Good article. Good comment. Both very true.
Men can be constructive and/or destructive. Women need to decide which they want. With the recent reports of young mean giving up on relationships with the "new" women, it may be too late for that generation.
Feminism has turned much of society into "Anything you can do, I can do better." Men and women are designed to complement each other, not compete.
They are poisoned by years of daily exposure to estrogen fumes and unless they are sissified they will pay the consequences. Boys are indoctrinated with the idea that they are flawed and intrinsically evil, born into the world flawed beyond hope.
[Maybe we need for awhile to go back to sex-distinct K-12 schools.]
Of course we do. And we need to end women’s sufferage. Society has suffered enough. Societies without strong men are societies in decline.
They sure are.
I wouldn’t say the entire 20th century, more like the last 10-20 years. It sure continued and has gotten worse though in the 21st century
At my daughter’s Sports Awards Night in 2008. All the girls, except two. Declared what college they would be attending. Then it was the boys turn. All the boys, except two. Did NOT declare they would be attending college.
Put the criminals & creeps in jail or the asylum. Let kids play outside.
The boys were badgered into submission by the feminazi teachers, administration (all female and one beta male), and girls at my son’s $$$$ Christian middle school. They were made to feel stupid, the girls were made to feel smart, etc. Of course I didn’t realize this until too late.
Fast forward to my son at his $$$$ Christian high school and you will find the girls in all the AP or honors classes and the boys in very few (if any) of those. Guess who is gaining admission to our state flagship university and who is living at home going to community college?
My boys have taken to watching an hour of “Everybody Loves Raymond” on TV every day. They think it is hysterical. I keep having to make comments about how isn’t it ridiculous how the wife is so smart and always right and the husband is nothing but a stupid jerk who knows how do absolutely nothing right.
“Of course we do. And we need to end women’s sufferage.”
That I do not agree with.
The right to vote for women was achieved long before - and without descending into - modern feminism.
Your suggestion would support a rigid paternalism that is unnecessary to vanquish modern feminism.
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