Boys and men are in crisis because society is
Many years ago, I went to a nail salon at an upscale mall in Kampala, Uganda, and was surprised that almost everyone work- ing there was male. When I asked one of the employees why this was, he explained that doing nails was men’s work because it paid well. The salon wasn’t unique; as a local newspaper put it, “There is no visitor that comes to Uganda and won’t notice and comment about the young men carrying a basket in their hand with a manicure set.”
I thought of those male manicurists while reading Richard V. Reeves’ much-discussed new book, “Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male Is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do About It.” He writes about the myriad ways boys and men, particularly in America, are flailing: Many are falling behind in school, disconnected from family, vulnerable to opioid abuse and to deaths of despair. He believes, I think rightly, that it is important to recruit more men into fast-growing industries now dominated by women, particularly health and education.
But though Reeves, a senior fellow in economic studies at the Brookings Institution, recognizes material causes of men’s suffering, he’s hesitant to offer redistributive solutions. He emphasizes clever technocratic interventions, like having boys start school later than girls in order to account for their slower development, over far-reaching reforms, like increasing unionization and ending public subsidies for job-displacing automation.
The result is a book that, while often useful and interesting, also reveals the limits of wonky moderation. Dismissive of partisanship, Reeves elides the political and economic decisions that have made American life brutal, in different but overlapping ways, for women and men both.
Like many parents, I’ve seen how school is harder for my son than my daughter. “Boys are 50% more likely than girls to fail at all three key school subjects: math, reading and science,” writes Reeves. Things don’t get easier when boys grow up. Men’s rates of workforce participation have fallen and their suicide rates have risen.
It’s possible to believe that sexism remains a major impediment to women’s flourishing and also believe that for many boys and men life is much harder than it should be.
Even if you’re not inclined to care much about men’s welfare, their growing anomie and resentment is everyone’s problem, fueling right-wing populist movements around the world. People who feel unmoored and demeaned are going to be receptive to the idea that the natural order of things has been upended, the core claim of reactionary politics.
Some of men’s dislocation is an inevitable product of modernization, which, by making physical brawn less economically important, blurs men and women’s social roles. It is not just America, after all, where more women than men earn college degrees.
But male problems can be either exacerbated or ameliorated by political choices. Reeves makes the case that girls are more resilient than boys, writing that “economic and social disadvantage hurts boys more than girls.”
Similarly, Reeves makes a convincing case that boys benefit from male teachers, and that Black boys benefit from Black male teachers.
Reeves has his own marketing to do, so his emphases make sense: Demanding more money for schools is boring; his plan to give boys an extra year of preschool is novel and provocative. But as he writes, “The male malaise is not the result of a mass psychological breakdown, but of deep structural challenges.” If that’s true, we also need deep structural changes to heal it.