Perspective: Are ‘man camps’ something to celebrate or scorn?

Not so long ago, the term “man camp” was used to describe temporary housing set up for workers in what is collectively known as the extraction industry — oil, gas and mining.

These days, the term has taken on new meaning, describing multi-day camps designed to make men more manly —  if by “manly” you mean more able to crawl under barbed wire, plunge into tubs full of icy water and run for miles carrying a heavy backpack. You know, Spartan stuff.

Extreme endurance events like Spartan Race and Tough Mudder have been around for more than a decade, but for the most part, these challenges involve individuals training alone (and of course, women are Spartans and Tough Mudders, too). Contemporary man camps, according to a somewhat skeptical article in USA Today, are offering men many of the same grueling physical challenges combined with a bonding experience — think a Spartan Race with a campfire and s’mores, and in some cases, a touch of Promise Keepers.

Licensed marriage and family therapist Erik Anderson told USA Today, “Men are seeking out difficult experiences. They’re seeking out groups. They’re seeking out tribes. They’re seeking some sort of social bonding and sense of social capital. And they’re turning to these groups that, to me, feel like they’re giving people a bit of a false sense of that.”

USA Today focused on one particular man camp offered by the Modern Day Knight Project. Its camp, a “75-hour crucible,” is described as a a “personal growth experience for men who want to live a life filled with fulfillment, purpose, financial freedom, and have a deep loving relationship with their family.”

Another I found, “Man Camp with Brian Tome,” has a spiritual element and was founded by a Cincinnati pastor who has a podcast called “The Aggressive Life.” Tome’s camps offer men the chance to “destroy your spiritual comfort zone, move beyond your physical limits, and find out what you’re made of.”

The website describes an “off-the-grid, primitive weekend camping experience for men 18 and older. It’s a break from the numbing grind of comfort and busyness. It’s like jumping in a sketchy van and ripping away to freedom. But in the woods, with a bunch of other guys desperate to breathe some life into their lungs.”

Then there are the largely religious events that a decade or so ago would simply have been called a “men’s retreat” but have smartly rebranded. One such camp says on its website “Because men don’t retreat. We camp” and offers “axe throwing, killer food, and deep teaching.”

In addition to man camps, we are witnessing the rise of the “manfluencer,” and by that, I do not mean men who sell products to other men on social media, but men who teach other men how to live in hyper-masculine ways, such as eating more meat, living off the grid or doing facial exercises to have a more defined chin. (Also by that, I mean Jordan Peterson.)

News coverage of man camps and manfluencers is often accompanied by no small amount of handwringing, and rightly so. There are many worrisome social trends that seem to be contributing to their popularity.

The life expectancy gap between women and men is widening, young men are not going to college at rates that women are and many young adult males are failing to launch. Christianity Today editor Russell Moore wrote about this recently, saying that people are observing in young men in their orbit a “kind of hopelessness, a lack of ambition, in some cases even to leave the house at all, much less to go out into the world and start families of their own.”

Also concerning — and likely connected — is the number of men who report not having deep friendships. While a decline in close relationships is taking place across all demographics, it’s particularly pronounced among young men, 1 in 5 of whom say they have no close friends.

The man camp may not be a solution to these problems. Its existence may be more of a symptom, a predictable byproduct of society in which both rates of church membership and military service have declined steeply in recent years, and the very definition of manhood — the very definition of men — is often called into question.

Related

• How this Seattle man became ‘the internet’s dad’

• The Spartan Race founder on the challenges of parenting in a sedentary society

In the course of the baby boomers’ lifetime, our expectations of men, once celebrated as protectors and breadwinners, has been kneaded and shaped and expanded into something quite different. This was evident in an ad for a fabric softener that aired during Sunday’s 49ers-Lions game. The ad showed a father cuddling his baby on a shirt newly softened by the product, and it was sweet. But the fact that it aired during an NFL championship game spoke volumes about how our society has changed since the first Super Bowl in 1967. In many ways, we have asked men to become softer, too. But families need more than tender and devoted fathers; they also need tough and capable men.

The men going to Tome’s man camps will not need Downy-refreshed clothes, although they’re advised to pack “multiple user layers for warmth and dryness,” because there will be no rescheduling if it snows or rains. They will, I presume, be told to “man up” when things get hard, even though we’re not supposed to say that anymore.

Interestingly, one FAQ on Tome’s website is “What if I’ve never camped before?” which strikes me as an indictment of almost every social trend in the past 25 years, from children growing up without fathers in the home to the decline of scouting. Somehow, when we weren’t looking, it became a thing to raise children who’ve never spent a night sleeping outside in a tent. Like the popularity of the “How Do I, Dad?” YouTube channel, which teaches children (and adults) to do things that fathers historically taught them, there’s something profoundly sad about this.

So bring on the man camps, and the rucking in the rain and the crawling through the mud, and whatever hardships these camp directors can throw at our men. There are far worse uses of one’s discretional time, many of them indoors.