Lynn Smith: Let’s hear it for the boys
No other cohort of America’s population has fallen farther and faster than our current generation of young men. They are three times more likely to become addicted, four times more likely to kill themselves, and 12 times more likely to be jailed, when compared to their female counterparts.
Educational performance, especially in the lower grades, is dominated by girls. By middle school, boys are already two years behind girls developmentally, often requiring scholastic and behavioral interventions that are rarely found in public schools. This missed opportunity is one of the earliest causes of inequality in America.
By high school, girls represent the top 10% of academic performance in almost all curricula. Currently, young women represent 74% of all college grads, in part because during COVID-19, the male drop-out rate was seven times higher than women’s.
In the workplace, 35% of men lacking either a college or vocational degree have dropped out of the labor market, with the biggest drop among 25- to 34-year-olds. (This jaw-dropping statistic is worth reading twice.) Manufacturing jobs have been moved off-shore or suffered automation-related wage stagnation, but many Americans still hold the notion that men should be the primary breadwinner for the family. Unable to meet this ideal, most young men have chosen not to marry, and are growing increasingly demoralized, with too many leading haphazard and lonely lives. Currently, 63% of men under 30 have chosen to remain single, up from 51% just four years ago.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that non-working men are frequently spending their free time watching screens rather than socializing, putting them at risk of being subsumed by video games, pornography and hostile online communities focused on devaluing any perceived sources of competition, i.e., immigrants, minorities and even women.
Ideally, we should be able to acknowledge this crisis without taking away the ground gained by women, who for generations, have fought for equitable treatment. We need policies and practices that raise the floor for everyone, not silly screeching that mischaracterizes fairness for women as an attack against men. The problems afflicting men and boys aren’t good for women or society, so our goal needs to be this: To examine the underlying causes of this growing aspiration gap between boys and girls, and be prepared to make the cultural and educational changes that will ultimately benefit both.
We now have more women flying U.S. military jets than we do men teaching kindergarten, and while we should celebrate the former, we cannot perpetuate the latter. There is a disproportionate number of women in the “caring” professions, i.e. childcare, education and mental health … because we’ve viewed traditional masculine traits as unsuitable (and even dangerous) for children. Substance abuse counselors, psychologists and special needs educators treat many more boys than girls, but because these services are invariably performed by women, too few boys experience a man modeling compassion, reliability and excellence. Without exception, data suggests that school-aged boys prefer male teachers, benefitting mightily by exposure to men in elementary school classrooms, and later on, in language arts.
More controversial, but already widely practiced among affluent families, is the concept of starting kindergarten later for boys, or “redshirting” them during pre-K education. Having more mature boys in classrooms improves the learning environment for everyone, reduces the need to repeat grades later in school, and allows boys to narrow their neurological gaps with girls while they’re still very young. It must be acknowledged that redshirting can only be built on a foundation of massive preschool expansion … the sort proposed by the Biden administration, but thus-far rejected by Republicans.
Everyone agrees that boys would benefit by stronger emphasis on career and technical education (CTE) during high school, and that this curricula should be linked to public and private universities, with tuition costs reduced or waived via enrollment in apprenticeship programs. This would remove remaining stigmas against vocational training and greatly enhance enrollment across the board. At the same time, it would ease the dire labor shortages in so many technical areas of our economy. Thankfully, educational innovators are hard at work in this space.
Young men need viable, up-to-date models of masculinity that are different from their grandfathers, so approaches designed to turn-back-the-clock won’t serve them now. The cruelest consequence of almost a century of unprecedented economic and technological progress is that modern America has less use for those men who lack a skillset. And unfortunately, the majority of men leaving the workforce have not yet picked up the slack in other areas of necessary, and rewarding, human activity.
Without question, restoring men’s sense of purpose should be among our nation’s highest priorities.
— Community Columnist Lynn Smith is a retired wealth management executive who resides in Holland. Contact her at lynn.angleworks@gmail.com.
This article originally appeared on The Holland Sentinel: Lynn Smith: Let’s hear it for the boys
