Mark Sherman says that it’s time to give our sons the same attention and support we began giving our daughters 20 years ago.
I’m on the mailing list for a Washington, D.C.-based non-profit called the Boys Initiative (for whom I edit a blog: Boys and Young Men: Attention Must Be Paid. On Sunday, February 3, my e-mails included a press alert from the CEO, Dennis Barbour, informing us that that day’s New York Times Sunday Review had a major article on “why boys are falling behind.” And yes, when I opened my copy of the Times, there it was. You really couldn’t miss it. On the front page of that important section, with a graphic taking up more than half a page, was “The Boys at the Back,” by Christina Hoff Sommers.
The 1800-word piece started out discussing an important new study I had already heard about—boys’ grades in elementary school being negatively affected by their behavior—and went on to mention data, very familiar to anyone concerned about this issue, showing the large gender gap in colleges, one which is particularly acute for minorities. “Black women are nearly twice as likely to earn a college degree as black men,” Sommers wrote. “At some historically black colleges, the gap is astounding: Fisk is now 64 female; Howard, 67 percent; Clark Atlanta, 75 percent. The economist Andrew M. Sum and his colleagues at the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University examined the Boston Public Schools and found that for the graduating class of 2007, there were 191 black girls for every 100 boys going on to attend a four-year college or university. Among Hispanics, the ratio was 175 girls for every 100 boys; among whites, 153 for every 100.”
I sent the link to this piece to friends, including one with whom I had lunch a couple of days later. He was shocked at those numbers, which shows, once again, that the problems of boys and young men are still, amazingly, barely on the national radar. But, as feminists told us back in the late 1960s, often the personal is political. My friend has two daughters and one granddaughter; I have three sons and three grandsons.
In 2000, Sommers wrote one of the first major books on the problems boys were having, but her relative conservatism about feminism got in the way of a widespread readership among liberals – just those people who might make a real difference for boys. The book was titled The War Against Boys, and though her issues with feminism were evident in it, her data showing boys clearly falling behind girls in school and beyond was strong and should certainly have been convincing. Many feminists might not have cared for the messenger, but there was no question that the message was an important one.
Since then, as she points out in the Times piece, many more books have been written on this subject (and, she could have added, countless articles). But still no tipping point has been reached. Having been concerned about this issue for years before Sommers’ book came out, I continue to be immensely frustrated by this. And I find it hard to believe that a problem so salient still has not been addressed at the national level. I myself have written about this many times and am always startled to find that so many people still don’t know, for example, that girls and young women are significantly outpacing boys and young men at every level of school, right into graduate school.
When it was the reverse, when men clearly outnumbered women in colleges, the women’s movement looked at this and countless other areas in which women and girls were on the short end of things, and worked hard to change it. Why has the same thing not happened for our boys and young men?
I also believe that fathers of daughters, excited by the new opportunities for their children, joined in this support of girls.
A similar situation has not existed for boys. Men, as a group, have not felt especially restricted or oppressed, and so a men’s movement anywhere near the level of a women’s movement has never begun. The kind of filtering down that occurred with women and girls has never had a chance to occur for men and boys. And children themselves do not start political or social movements. We could hardly expect boys, on their own, to start a movement to, say, pull themselves them away from videogames and into libraries. In fact, perhaps it’s time for a Take Our Sons to the Library Day!
It seems to me that many adult women continue to feel a sense of unfairness regarding gender, even if girls do not. (I remember a female friend who had one child—a son—proudly wearing her “Take Our Daughters to Work” day button in 1994.) And I suspect most fathers of girls continue to delight in the unprecedented achievements of their daughters.
I truly believe that the focus strictly on girls that began in the 1990s and has only begrudgingly made room for boys is one of the principal reasons that boys are struggling the way they are today. The “girls’ movement” didn’t care if a child was rich or poor, white or minority. If the child was a male, he was excluded. We are paying a high price for this.
Though I don’t have answers, I desperately hope that parents of sons can be supportive not only of their own children, but of all boys and young men—the way so many adults were supportive of girls and young women when they needed encouragement and support. This will mean, as leading educators like Michael Gurian tell us, not only supporting your own sons (and grandsons), but other boys and young men in your community; and I would add that it means beginning to lobby our elected officials too, to join in. In a phone conversation we had, Gurian assured me there is a robust boys’ movement out there, which he sees in community after community that he visits. But I think this has to be supplemented by political action as well.
Soon after President Obama took office in 2009, he established a White House Council on Women and Girls. Soon afterward, major supporters of boys’ interests, led by Warren Farrell, pushed hard for a parallel council for boys and men. A suggested name for the organization was the Council for Boys and Men, and the proposal to establish it ended with these words:
“A White House Council on Boys and Men can…provide leadership toward helping parents and our culture teach our sons that the facade of strength is a weakness. It can provide leadership to help us help our sons row on both sides of the family boat—so our daughters may have equal partners. It can co-ordinate the nation’s best efforts to parent, mentor, and teach each of our sons to discover who he is. It can end the era of boys and men as a national afterthought. It can provide leadership to raise young men our daughters are proud to love.”
Unfortunately, as Tom Golden, a member of the group that submitted this proposal, wrote on the site’s blog—on September 12, 2012, “Our report met with interest at the White House—but three years of effort have resulted in nothing.”
I am grateful to those with only daughters who wholeheartedly support the aspirations of boys, and I applaud them—people like Warren Farrell, and Michael Gurian (whose books include The Minds of Boys: Saving Our Sons From Falling Behind in School and Life (2006)). But I think the Farrells and Gurians are rare in this world. Parents of boys will need people like them as allies, but the key is for these parents to wholeheartedly support a movement for their sons with the same passion that mothers (and fathers) of daughters supported a movement that is has helped to thrust their children into the forefront of achievement in today’s world. We have left half our children behind, and this cannot be good for America’s future.
This is a very slightly edited version of a piece that recently appeared on my blog on Psychology Today
Photo: Flickr/EaglebrookSchool
Why does it have to be either/or? Personally, as a man, I find it disturbing that so many men want to blame women or feminism for our own personal neglect. It infers that men can only prosper by subjugating women. If a society wishes to eradicate that subjugation in the name of equality, it is then measured by the poor performance of males. Is that the best we can do? We have a culture that has long neglected male ethics, and this has hurt our society immeasurably. Instead of looking to re-establishing these values for young males, as a culture… Read more »
You raise one the foundational, strategic questions.
Will men move forward with a spirit of partisanship or partnership with women?
As Mark said, “…am always startled to find that so many people still don’t know…” We’re still at the infancy of awareness, in families and schools. I don’t think it has trickled down, YET, but it will soon. How we approach these male and female issues from here on out may chart the course. Dunno?
I cast my vote for partnership.
Ironically although girls outperform boys at school, they still get better paid in their jobs on general…just an observation
Selina- good observation. There has been some interesting research on wage satisfaction and yet it is still in its infancy of exploration. They find that delaying marriage and family has a negative impact on income and life satisfaction for both sexes, but has a more profound effect on women over time. I’ll copy-paste one finding…“The decision to forego or delay a relationship in favor of advancement at work can have a detrimental impact on life and job satisfaction. Men and women who delayed a relationship displayed significantly lower levels of life satisfaction. Women also reported lower earnings and more family… Read more »
The pay gap is a myth. That has been proven time and time and time again. Only feminism refuses to acknowledge that fact, so people pretend it isn’t true. No one has ever come close to proving that women get paid less for equal work — two people, a man and a women, doing the same job, will make the same pay. The pay gap only exists when you compare uncontrolled annual incomes. The dark little secret here? 80% of the pay gap is due to an unwillingness by women to take up dirty or dangerous jobs (which tend to… Read more »
Soullite – not to derail the topic of schools, yes, wage is much more equitable than some suggest. As of 2010, over 90% of clerical and secretarial positions are still held by women and over 85% of trades and manual labor jobs are held by men. Manual labor positions often come with additional hazards such as weather, chemicals, noise, heavy lifting, or equipment that commands a higher wage. While clerical jobs do not. We’ve had EEO for quite some time and opened access to women, but we don’t see a large group of women entering trades or manual labor, nor… Read more »
Firstly, it’s not a contest. And while the American girl is thriving in outpacing boys in test scores, admissions to college and athletic achievements, girls are facing challenges to their personal and professional potential. Recent studies show an overall decrease in girls’ overall confidence and self-esteem, an increase in media exposure and over-sexualization of girls and women, an increased pressure to be “perfect” and a rise in female aggression. Your article is very one sided and the truth is, both sexes are struggling and we need to address that as a whole and the inherent differences in the challenges our… Read more »
What is it with some people? The article is one-sided? Gee, maybe that’s because this is a one-sided problem. Girls just aren’t having these kinds of problems. Or maybe it’s because this is a site geared toward men, at least ostensibly. Would you go into Jezebel and leave posts about how they are too focused on the problems of women? You are part of the problem. You want everything to be about women. That disturbing tendency of feminism — far more than any deliberate attempt at malice — is responsible for the place we find our boys in now. It… Read more »
Dunno, I thought it was kinda pithy, the ultimate in minimalism perhaps. Imagine the heated disputes we could get into debating the merits of B, as everyone trots out their favourite story, as esoteric academic theory stolen from string theory competes with the anecdote overheard from the shaman in Toronto. If it is deleted, we will simply have little to debate, which reduces page refreshes, and reduces advertising revenue. If it is deleted, it will be nothing less than sabotage of the entire site, and the ultimate downfall of the project of reclaiming the species from the evils of testosterone… Read more »
LooL let us make it the comment of the day 😉
Jokes aside, I think this got posted while I was having my android in the pocket. I remember coming home (I went out to the grocery) hearing a plink…and I pulled it out, and the comment was there. The funny thing is I dont use my android to write on GMP. Maybe the dog touched the keyboard of my home comp? but why B? Bah however the B comment got there, is a mystery.
With all the wailing and gnashing about on this topic there is one possible path forward that no one seems to want to entertain: separate classrooms. Let boys have more recess, 8 year old boys would probably love to drop down and crank out 10 push up every 30 minutes. Use boy friendly teaching approaches. Use rewards and competition based teaching techniques that boys respond to better. I know all of this fly’s in the face of 30 years of progressive educational theory, but that has failed a couple of generations of young men and is in the process of… Read more »
Unfortunately, one all too common response is essentially the “payback” argument: men and boys had their chance for thousands of years, and now it’s the time for women and girls. Like: you guys dominated everything and didn’t give a damn about gender equality, but now that the shoe’s on the other foot you’re complaining. Too late, buddy. We have thousands of years of oppression which cannot be overcome overnight. You’ll see words like “whining” and “backlash” tossed around in support of this point of view. That basically punishes people in the present for the behavior of their ancestors. It’s really… Read more »
“Didn’t many of those women fight for equality so that their *children* could have better lives, not just their daughters?”
If your a staunch feminist like my mom, and already angry at “men,” you will only get more angry at “men” when your sons stop talking to you.
I disagree with this, “Men, as a group, have not felt especially restricted or oppressed…” Men and boys are very restricted and oppressed emotionally. Any sign of emotion in a boy is stamped down, frozen off and deleted. It’s crippling and unfair, equally unfair as stamping and freezing out a girl’s intellect.
I highly recommend Tony Porter’s TED talk on the subject. http://www.ted.com/talks/tony_porter_a_call_to_men.html
I hear a lot of rhetoric and regurgitating of what needs to be done but I don’t hear any solutions? Louise, Thank you for the history lesson … all words that I’ve heard for the past 40 years. Whereas you went back to the stone age, I’ll just go back to the revolutionary war. In total, over a million and a half men dies in wars. WWI and WWII alone, we lost over a half million men. In the midst of the feminist movement of the 60’s and 70’s, we lost over 50,000 men/boys in the Vietnam war where many… Read more »
TomB – Fair enough criticism. no proffered solutions. Here a few, but as matters stand they are not all that realistic in terms of getting implemented… and my examples are gonna be boy-centric, cause I am not gonna write a thesis. Premise – all kids originally are curious, and like to learn about things. Of course, kid A is interested in thing X, and Kid B is interested in thing Y. We cannot accommodate both now can we. Or can we? What happens when all roads lead to Rome? Lets take math and science. Suppose one kid is interested in… Read more »
This is clearly a complex issue. First of all, most educational systems have problems (personally, I like the IB programs and the finnish public school system) because they are exam based and depressing. They are incompatible with biology when they dont give reasonable break times. They also cater to very specific personality types, people who sit still and listen, mainly, but who are also extroverts because they participate and do oral presentations. Girls are better at sitting still, which isnt great, because quite frankly everyone should be jumping around for their sanity and their health with certain regularity. There are… Read more »
OK, gently then. Have you ever asked a group of boys about their feelings about the school experience? Would you agree that those with aspirations to become teachers, enjoyed their experiences as students, and felt comfortable within the environment and processes and culture of schools? I did that. A group of around 25 boys, half related, half their friends. Every single one of them replied that they absolutely hated school, that they despised almost all of their teachers, that they loathed the student culture with its cliques, that they found the assessment process absurd, that the repetitive homework assignments were… Read more »
Louise: “I’m a mother of two boys and a girl, so I have nothing against boys or men. I love them and I want them to do well.” Then why poor so much energy, effort and resources into helping girls only if the intention was to make sure both prosper? Louise: “For ever, women have been tied down by babies and held back by death in childbirth. Consequently, they weren’t considered worth educating. Because they’d never use an education, all they needed to know was how to cook and keep house and raise children.” And how are these boys to… Read more »
Hi Mark. I agree we have a problem with boys, but I’m not sure it is because we promote girls. On considering what I just wrote, I have to say, okay it isn’t because we promote girls, it’s because we no longer suppress them. I’m a mother of two boys and a girl, so I have nothing against boys or men. I love them and I want them to do well. For ever, women have been tied down by babies and held back by death in childbirth. Consequently, they weren’t considered worth educating. Because they’d never use an education, all… Read more »
“I think this is because men’s brains mature slower than women’s, men are thinking mostly of sex at very critical times in their educational life and the fact that women now have more options and outshine men in school from a very early age has made many boys give up, not try so hard, and in fact seems to be holding boys back from maturing into men who are ready to get a job and support a family.”
What a load of bullsh*t.
I strongly feel both boys and girls’ issues need to be addressed together. Boys are falling behind for sure and it’s a HUGE problem.
But there are still issues with the way we talk to girls about what matters in their lives, and that needs to be addressed as well. We can’t keep choosing just one gender to advance. We need to move both forward, together.
Look at this NIGHTMARE – https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=424995154252320&set=a.284616091623561.69831.113626428722529&type=1
Absolutely true, Joanna. There is simply NO reason not to act for both (all) sexes, all genders. What on earth prevents that? The constraint is not financial, it is really not human resource based ( as in people’s time). It is not really opportunity based (college spots are readily expandable, for instance). So what is it? If you ever have some time ( you probably won’t, suspect you are very busy), track down the submissions to Australia’s commission on boys education – not the report itself, the submissions to the commission made by various stakeholders. Read particularly the submission from… Read more »
Yes, I agree that there are certainly issues that have to be discussed with girls, but, on the whole, doing well in school is not one of them. Having three daughters-in-law, I am personally aware that young women today know that it’s a very different world for them than it was for their mothers – in terms of opportunity, etc. (The three-hour PBS special tonight – “Makers” – is all about what women have accomplished in the 50 years since the publication of Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique, and that’s a lot of accomplishment!) To me, the most important thing… Read more »
Dr. Mark, these education issues extend into the workplace as well. The human resource field has become highly feminized over the last decade. HR practicioners have been facing the tough gender issues for quite some time. Historically, they’ve been concerned about diversity and balance throughout the workplace, but recently they are challenging the female dominance in their own HR field. Since HR is heavily involved in compliance measures and employee training and development, they are on top of this issue too. (maybe not all companies, but most) This 2011 article and MANY others…should come as some relief to men and… Read more »
While we seem to understand that young boys and young girls need different things when it comes to education any attempt to create a gender-specific program suddenly becomes adversarial, less about educating the future and more about one-upping the male/female counterparts. How can we possibly educate children fairly when the older generations are so intent on dragging their sexist baggage into the mix?
C’mon, let’s be honest here …. No matter how we want to paint new age feminism as being progressive in a sense that they want to be all inclusive, it’s not. We are a feminist society that will not relinquish any control. Whereas the feminist movement of the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s focused on a perceived notion that men had it better and they oppressed women in other words laying blame on men for the state that women were supposed to be in, you won’t see them stepping up and admitting that it was the feminist movement that screwed men… Read more »
Interesting title for this article.
Question: Maybe it would’ve been a better idea to give our sons and daughters the same level of attention from the beginning instead of pouring it all into our daughters alone?
I first came across your material a few years ago on your blog at Psychology Today. I have enjoyed them, so I thank you. I hate to be gloomy, but I read the 609 comments attached to Hoff Sommers article at the New York Times. Given that any modification to the education system will require political will and some consensus, I have to say that there is no evidence that the issue will be addressed, or even that the public want it addressed. Perhaps it is just too complex. From my reading, here are some of the components that I… Read more »
This is such a sad commentary and so completely real. Boys are definitely getting the short stick, generally have a “non-present”, figuratively or not, father and need so to be nurtured and encouraged.
In an oblique way it’s akin to awareness of breast cancer vs. awareness of prostate cancer. No comparison!