Why Modern Men Are Struggling

Richard Reeves needed courage of a sort to write this book. After all, in an age where women’s issues are often accented – the wage gaps, their inadequate presence in senior leadership roles or on Corporate Boards, on persistent harassment at workplaces and in domestic spheres – it’s not easy, as a writer, an academic and the Director of a research body, to spotlight troubles faced by the other gender. To draw attention to the manner in which men might be slipping into a malaise of their own; and not for the right reasons or in socially salubrious ways.

As the father of three boys, Reeves could not help but empathize with the plight of men. Besides, at Brookings Institution, the data was throwing up glaring gaps – signaling troubles that were already ripping through society. “It has become clear to me that there are growing numbers of boys and men who are struggling in school, at work, and in the family.” Social scientists have always been attuned to the manner in which drifters, or those otherwise disengaged from institutions, can be roped into crime, or drug dealing or some other ruinous means of survival.

Though this book is centered mostly in the U.S with some data drawn from similar Western economies, some of its recommendations or research might warrant consideration in other nations. Like in India, where the labor force participation of women has been dropping. Why would we need to bolster “men” in a country where women seem to be regressing? Because the construction of “masculinity” as Reeves puts it, can be problematic not just in America, but here too. Similar hardened notions of gender might be leading to the “protection” of women in our nation (as in, not permitting them to work, and keeping them at home) as they are to the lassitude and purposelessness of many men in America.

Here are some takeaways from Reeves’ study:

Boys Are Falling Behind at School

Women won the right to vote in 1920 in America. Of course, black women were denied that right till the emergence of the Civil Rights movement and the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965. Since then, women’s rights across the U.S. have surged forward in many ways. But in the meanwhile, men, and especially those who are doubly or triply disadvantaged by race and class, have started sliding in the other direction. As Reeves notes, “In 1972, men were 13 % points more likely than women to get a bachelor’s degree.” Currently, women are 15% points more likely to acquire that qualification.

The education gap begins at schools. Boys start falling behind right from high school. Strangely, while boys continue to perform better at Standardized tests, their high school GPAs are lower, on average, than that of girls. Girls, for instance, constitute two-thirds of the top 10% of high schoolers. In 2018, 88% of girls completed high school compared with 82% of boys. To highlight how significant this gap is, Reeves points out, the drop-out rate of boys is comparable to the drop-out rate of impoverished students.

Interestingly, the poor performance of boys in schools is also borne out by data from a few other countries. Finland, which is considered an exemplar with outstanding educational outcomes, seems to bank on its female outperformers to retain its high standing. When analyzing its PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) results, 20% of Finnish girls score at the highest reading levels versus only 9% of Finnish boys. According to Reeves, if you mask the girls’ results, Finland would no longer claim such eminence. In OECD nations, “Boys are 50% more likely than girls to fail at all three key school subjects: math, reading and science.” Sweden acknowledges that it has a pojkkrisen or “boy crisis” in schools; Australia has launched a program titled “Boys, Blokes, Books and Bytes.”

Why Are Boys Underperforming at School?

According to Reeves, such male lags are driven by the slower rates of male brain development. Compared with female brains, boys’ brains develop at slower rates, and this delay is further exacerbated during adolescence. That is also a period when impulse control tends to be at an ebb. Studies depict up to a two year lag in the development of the male prefrontal cortex compared with that of females. Such tarrying is also reflected in other brain parts like the cerebellum.

At a time, when academic pressure is intense, boys are tempted to “Party” with a capital P. This not only impedes their applications to colleges, but also their performance inside those institutions. As Jennifer Delahunty, a former dean of admissions at Kenyon College said in a New York Times article titled: “To All The Girls I’ve Rejected”: “Standards for admission to today’s most selective colleges are stiffer for women than men.”

All this, of course, is heightened for those residing at the intersections: the ones in poor neighborhoods, and belonging to non-dominant races.

The solution, suggests Richard, is to red-shirt boys. That is to place them a whole year behind girls. That way, their biological lag might be compensated for with a slightly gentler academic climb. Ironically, we might be facing a motivation crisis too among men: “Girls and women have had to fight misogyny without. Boys and men are now struggling for motivation within.”

Working Class “Male” Jobs are Vanishing

In the U.S., labor force participation of men has dropped by 7 percent points. And this decline has not been driven by video games, as commonly assumed. Since most working class male jobs have involved heavy lifting or physical dexterity, many of those jobs have been automated or performed better by robots. Others have been outsourced to countries with lower labor costs.

On the other hand, the economy has seen a rise in jobs requiring EQ or “soft skills” – like jobs in healthcare, education and personal services. Coining the term HEAL (Health, Education, Administration and Literacy), such jobs, observes Reeves, have typically attracted women. While men might find their physical muscles atrophying sans construction or transportation opportunities, they have not gleaned compensatory emotional know-how to fill vacancies in the “softer” people-oriented sectors.

And as Reeves points out, we cannot put the onus on individual men to fix their situations. There are broader structural issues that require policy interventions. And perhaps social messaging, that allows for less rigid forms of “masculinity” to get prominence. Rather than always celebrating male CEOs or sportspersons, we would do well to champion male teachers and nurses.

Male Failings Inside Families

Besides the educational and workplace slippages, many men are not performing a critical social role inside families. Of being reliable fathers to children. As Reeves points out, at least one-in-five fathers do not live with their children. These situations are rarely brought to public attention, because at the top rungs, men are thriving and controlling most systems and institutions. Nonetheless, as The Economist put it, “The fact that the highest rungs have male feet all over them is scant comfort for the men at the bottom.”

Some feminists have also echoed Reeves’ observations. In her 1999 book, Stiffed, Susan Faludi wrote: “[It] seems that men of the late twentieth century are falling into a status oddly similar to that of women at mid-century.” Rather than falling prey to outdated constructs of masculinity – breadwinner, protector, impregnator – we need, as Reeves puts it, “a prosocial masculinity for a postfeminist world.”

References

Richard V. Reeves, Of Boys and Men: Why The Modern Male is Struggling, Why it Matters, and What to Do About It, Swift Press, 2022