Mark Sherman feels it’s vital for his fellow liberals to pay attention to the needs of boys and young men the way they’ve long done for girls and young women.
“It may still be a man’s world. But it is no longer in any way a boy’s.”
— Michelle Conlin, “The New Gender Gap,” the cover story in Business Week, May 26, 2003
I originally published this piece on my Psychology Today blog about two-and-a-half years ago, and it has received the most reads of any of the 24 posts I have on the site. I am only slightly revising it, since I believe that little has changed since I wrote it. It’s about a problem that, amazingly, still hasn’t hit a tipping point, even though the data made it pretty obvious nearly two decades ago. It involves a huge segment of our population: Young males.
In case you haven’t noticed, America’s boys and young men are in trouble – not doing well in school, lacking ambition, often floundering. Not all of them, of course, but enough to take notice. As a psychologist with a longstanding interest in gender issues, I have been aware of and upset by this for many years. (And I will freely admit that an important motivator for me is the fact that I have three sons and three grandsons.) What has disturbed me even more has been the response I have often received when I’ve mentioned this issue to female friends over the years. Either they have been unaware of it, surprised to hear that males in college are a distinct minority – now down to 43 percent of college undergraduates — or they have said something like, So what? You guys had your turn, now it’s ours.
Aside from the fact that this latter attitude is blatantly anti-child and anti-youth, since it denies the aspirations of half our children, it is bad for today’s girls and young women too. You don’t have to be an evolutionary psychologist to believe that the increasingly large number of highly educated women will not necessarily be happy with a pool of less educated men.
Yes, there have been numerous articles and op-eds in newspapers since Conlin’s piece, other magazine cover stories, and TV specials (on 60 Minutes and PBS), but there has been no “boys’ movement” with anything close to the impact of the national efforts to help girls that grew out of the modern women’s movement. Even in recent years, when someone writes about the way boys are lagging behind girls, he or she often talks about it as if it just started happening. For example, in a New York Times oped piece published on March 27, 2010, Nicholas Kristof, who has written extensively on the problems of girls and women in developing countries, says:
“Around the globe, it’s mostly girls who lack educational opportunities. Even in the United States, many people still associate the educational “gender gap” with girls left behind in math.
“Yet these days, the opposite problem has snuck up on us: In the United States and other western countries alike, it’s mostly boys who are faltering in school. The latest surveys show that American girls on the average have roughly achieved parity with boys in math. Meanwhile, girls are well ahead of boys in verbal skills, and they just seem to try harder.” http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/28/opinion/28kristof.html
I must admit that when I read this, and saw the words “snuck up on us,” my immediate reaction was “Where have you been?” For anyone who cared to look at the data – and for millions of parents of sons (and grandparents of grandsons) – the problem was already there close to two decades ago.
How has this “new gender gap” come to be and what can we do about it?
There are lots of theories about its causes, including absent fathers, schools geared more to girls than boys, brain differences between the sexes, boys’ obsession with videogames and so on. However, because no one has ever launched a major study, it’s all still speculation. But it’s very easy to point to something that has let the problem grow to the point where even the most ardent feminist may find it hard to ignore: Caring about boys and young men — as a social group — is not something liberals (aka progressives) do. At least they haven’t, right up to this day.
I’m a liberal, but my primary professional allegiance is to the truth, especially as expressed by solid data. In this case, a truth dovetails with my primary concern, period: my family, the human beings who, along with my wife, I love most in this world: my three grown children and their three kids – all males!
I first became aware of data showing boys falling behind girls in school in the early 1990s, when the youngest of my sons was turning 10. I wrote letters urging the college at which I taught not to join in on the new “Take Our Daughters to Work” bandwagon (which started in 1993), but rather to make it “Take Our Children to Work.” I presented the data, but not one person on the nine-member committee even responded to me.
I went to a conference in 1994 where David Sadker, coauthor of the then newly published Failing at Fairness: How America’s Schools Cheat Girls, was the keynote speaker, and I raised my hand to say that I was confused, since the data was showing that it was boys who were having more trouble in school than girls. I was derided by Sadker and given no support whatever from anyone else in the audience of a hundred.
Am I crazy, I thought? Is there something I don’t know?
No, I wasn’t crazy, but there was something I didn’t know. I didn’t know that when it came to gender issues, political correctness was more important than data.
Always a staunch supporter of feminism, I was stuck. There was my “genetic” liberalism on the one hand (when you’re born to middle-class Jewish parents in Brooklyn in 1942, you’re pretty much a liberal from birth); but there were my beautiful children — and later, grandchildren — on the other, all members of a group clearly falling behind and being ignored by my left-wing compatriots.
Yet how could I join Christina Hoff Sommers, whose 2000 book, The War Against Boys had data I had been writing about for years, but who had infuriated feminists with her earlier book (Who Stole Feminism?: How Women Have Betrayed Women) and ultimately left Clark University to join the conservative American Enterprise Institute?
I still consider myself a liberal, but watching the struggles of my own children, and hearing about the problems of my friends’ sons, not to mention seeing data which grows more definitive every year, how can I ignore this? To me, liberals try to right wrongs, and that’s why when it comes to race, sexual orientation, the environment, and yes, sexism directed at women, I’m there.
But right now, where our young people are concerned, males need to be a major focus — not just their emotional development, which has been a liberal concern for years — but how they do in school. This will take efforts not only in the schools, but at home and in our communities. But most of all, it will take liberals joining in, whether they have sons or daughters. Ultimately, a cohort of undereducated and low-achieving men in a world of educated and high-achieving women sounds like a recipe for social disaster, one couple (or single male) at a time.
I can’t see myself joining people with whom I disagree sharply on almost all other social issues, so I can’t imagine becoming a conservative to help my sons, my grandsons, and young males across the country. But I can’t stand feeling so alone either; so all I can do is urge my fellow liberals to make this part of their agenda too. Maybe boys haven’t been the victims of laws and obvious isms, but, as a group, they have been the victims of, at very least, neglect, and they need help from across the political spectrum.
I remember a moment a few years ago when I was at my old department office at the nearby college and was talking to a colleague a few years younger than me. He was getting somewhat well-known for work in his field, one which is much less controversial. When I mentioned how the issue of boys and their problems in school was now finally getting some national attention, years after I had become very concerned about it, he said, “You were cutting edge.”
That doesn’t sound conservative, does it?
But a little while later, after we talked about his soon-to-be-published book, he said, “Maybe you should collaborate with one of those right-wing blonde women who appear on Fox News.”
I think things have changed somewhat since that conversation, but on the list of liberal causes, the “boy problem” is barely on the radar screen. Maybe a book like Richard Whitmire’s 2010 Why Boys Fail, which is cited by Kristof, will help. As Kristof says, it has “mountains of evidence” showing how boys are lagging behind girls in school.
I hope my fellow liberals read it. The time has more than come. What Michelle Conlin wrote in 2003 is every bit as true today. Yes, it may still be a man’s world — though, given what Hanna Rosin is saying in her new book, The End of Men: And the Rise of Women, even that has now come into question in the U.S. — but it is certainly not a boy’s.
When will we wake up, see this, and genuinely try to help our sons and grandsons the way we’ve so successfully helped our daughters and granddaughters?
This is a very slightly edited version of a piece which originally appeared on my blog on Psychology Today.
Photo—Old man with boy from Shutterstock
I lay the problem of boys faltering at the feet of the father. It is the father who is the first significant male in a boy (and girls) life. He is the one who sets the expectation and the example of how to be a man. From my own experience raising kids I know empirically that it is not what you say to your kid it is what you do. Fathers are the supreme role model for manhood and your son will get his version of manhood based on you. So, here’s the problem: If you as a father are… Read more »
From the article: …or they have said something like, So what? You guys had your turn, now it’s ours. Aside from the fact that this latter attitude is blatantly anti-child and anti-youth, since it denies the aspirations of half our children, it is bad for today’s girls and young women too. You don’t have to be an evolutionary psychologist to believe that the increasingly large number of highly educated women will not necessarily be happy with a pool of less educated men. Am i the only one who finds it telling that men’s problems must be re-cast to a women’s… Read more »
Like I said in another thread, the system is operating as designed and the very progressives that the author is calling on to help will be the ones to actively prevent any substantive change for the better. Keep providing lip service and building prisons seems to be the unspoken preferred solution.
The “we can’t afford to lose any of our hard earned gains with so much work left to do” crowd will kill any effort to assist boys in what is and will be for the foreseeable future a zero sum gain, flat budget environment.
Thank you so much for this article, Mark. I welcome the prospect of working with anyone who wants to seek equality in society, regardless of their political allegiance – but fellow-liberals are a real bête noire to me when it comes to their double standards with boys and young men. Even if these issues were affecting a minority of men – although from the sounds of it, it’s worse than that – are these liberals really going to sit there and support every single minority cause under the sun, but make a sharp exit when it comes to a minority… Read more »
,,,its about power and cognitive dissonance. Progressives (ok feminists specifically) fear that acknowledging systemic disadvantages against men and boys will diminish the legitimacy of their efforts to engineer “equalizing” advantages to women and girls. Its also hard for any person whose spent many years believing a certain world view, and investing themselves wholly in it, to simply accept contrary evidence without massive internal conflict. We have a deep need to remain internally consistent; our believe systems have momentum that takes years to undo. This is true whether you are a conservative or a liberal. Easier to simply deny the facts… Read more »
How about we sponsor a scholarship for men backed by an institution with some street cred among liberals. Can I suggest a goodmenproject scholarship?
That’s actually brilliant!
What a brilliant idea. The goodmenproject is always trying to reach out to men and tell their stories. I think many people who’ve been helped by this site would be want to give back in order to make a positive difference. More men would have an incentive to share their stories if their story could earn them a scholorship too. The site coudl become a place for activism as well as story telling.
There is also the insidious belief that anything wrong with boys/young men is immediately their fault. When girls were not doing as well as boys in school, it was because they were the victims of an unfair system that was designed to suppress them. With young men, it is our own damn fault because we’re lazy and unwilling to work and would rather play video games. We get gender equality bashed into our heads, and how we have it so much better than women but that is not the reality we live in. Young women earn more than young men… Read more »
We should abolish all scholorship programs that help one gender over another or one race or religion. Our scholorship programs should reflect the Intelectual curitosity and motivation of perspective students. We should have programs that help those that would benefit and not take for granted the help that is offered them. People want equality but focus on how to “one up” the other to perceive themselves as “close to equal” or have “level playing ground”
If we want true equality we need to hold all people accountable for their actions and judge them based off their character.
I just don’t see a crisis where out of 100 students 43 are male and 57 are female. That seems pretty even to me. Maybe if out of every 100 student only 10 or 20 of them were male I can see the word “crisis” being used. What I want to know is what number would it have to be so that it was no longer brought up as a problem. If it were only 43 women out of 100 students, would it be a crisis? Maybe if men accounted for 75% of the student body it wouldn’t be seen… Read more »
You don’t see a 14% achievement gap as a crisis. In a presidential election, if one candidate wins 57% of the vote it is considered an absolute BLOWOUT. It IS a social disaster. What do you think happens when one gender is an underclass and the other isn’t? Do you think it was good when men ruled everything and women were property? Do you think it would be good to have it flipped the other way around? No one is saying that educated women will cause a social disaster. Having an upperclass of women and an underclass of men is… Read more »
well if you see society as competition as you do and not as a collective whole then of course there’s a crisis when your side isn’t “winning”. I do know it’s not illegal for men to apply for college. Neither is it illegal to apply for loans or ask family for financial help. it’s not illegal for them to chose what it is that they want to focus on and education just doesn’t seem like a priority to men any more. I would like to know WHY men are choosing not to further their education and what about themsleves and… Read more »
And thanks for the faith in the education of women causing a social disaster. That only educated men can keep this world orderly (like that has EVER happened under men’s power) is laughable. Well now. Is that what the writer is really saying or is the writer saying that the COMBINATION of educated women and uneducated men a recipe for disaster. Now I’m sure you would have no problem with looking in the past when the tables where turned and it was educated men and uneducated women and seeing the problems right? Are you really trying to say that swinging… Read more »
Well the tables aren’t turned because it was ILLEGAL for women to get an education. I see a problem with making freedom of choice illegal for either gender or race or religion etc. I guess my problem is that I seem to be the only one who see people for what they are.. human beings, not two seperate species of sex in competition with eachother. If the world were to see human beigns for what they were then there would be no crisis because 100% of colleges would be filled with 100% human beings furthering their education to benefit society.… Read more »
“it was ILLEGAL for women to get an education.” I never knew there was such a law. In what year was it “it was ILLEGAL for women to get an education?” What was the law called that made it illegal, and in what year was that law repealed? Never mind. My mother got a Bachelor’s degree when you claim that it “it was ILLEGAL for women to get an education”, when men got the majority of college degrees. It was obviously NOT illegal for women to get an education. It’s NEVER been illegal. However, the fact that there was inequality… Read more »
Your mom was born in the 1700’s?? Wow that is awesome
No. The 1960s.
well if illegal is too strong of a word for you. they weren’t ALLOWED. Government wasn’t for women. it was for men. Men were women’s government. girls still didn’t attend school outside the home until the end of the 1700s, when grammar schools began to allow females to attend classes. In 1833, Oberlin College in Ohio became the first college to permit women The first woman was permitted to attend Harvard Medical School in 1945 During this time it was government who made legality toward males. Government Wasn’t for the female population. Someone was already governing the female population. It… Read more »
“well if illegal is too strong of a word for you. they weren’t ALLOWED.”
I’m okay with illegal if it’s true, but it’s not.
So, you’re complaining about what happened before 1945?
There are over 50 colleges in the US that don’t allow men to attend. In 2012, and only 3 that don’t allow women to attend. So, I am not at all bothered that Harvard didn’t allow women to attend until 1945.
I have no idea what you are talking about here. Are you complaining about women’s rights back in the 1940s? This is 2012. Why not join us?
Well the tables aren’t turned because it was ILLEGAL for women to get an education. I see a problem with making freedom of choice illegal for either gender or race or religion etc. Irrelevant. Simply because something isn’t in the law books doesn’t mean it’s not bad. Regardless of WHY girls weren’t getting into those higher levels of education it was deemed something that needed to be looked into a addressed. Honestly I’m glad such things are being corrected. Oh and when was it illegal for women to get an education? I’m not saying it never was, I just want… Read more »
“You don’t see a 14% achievement gap as a crisis.”
Feminists.
More evidence that inequality favoring females is the desired state, the larger the gap the better.
Nah. Just Passing doesn’t identify as feminist in that comment.
Let’s bear in mind that when it comes to denying the situation that boys and men are in it’s not just feminists we have to deal with (but with the intensity they deny it I can understand being distracted by them).
I’ve never seen anyone outside of the feminist movement or its influence that argued that men and boys being increasingly behind is a good thing. Maybe this is a first.
@ Just Passing “I just don’t see a crisis where out of 100 students 43 are male and 57 are female. That seems pretty even to me.” Does it? So why aren’t you simultaneously calling for an end to programs assisting girls and women? Why are there women’s centers, but not men’s centers. Look at the outcry at SFU when a men’s center was proposed. Why is there no push to include considering ALL student services and not just athletics when determining Title IX compliance? Why is there a push now to forgive student loans, is it because the primary… Read more »
first; why wouldn’t I Simultaneously “call for an end to programs”? because there is nothing I said that is simultaneous with calling for an end to programs. There are men’s centers, just less of them. have you asked the men in your life why they haven’t come together to make these centers? There is no push because society see Human beings as seperate from eachother based off their sex. If they were forgiving student loans for ONLY female college students then I can see your arguement but that is not the case. Again, I don’t see how student loan forgiveness… Read more »
I must admit that when I read this, and saw the words “snuck up on us,” my immediate reaction was “Where have you been?” There are two types of people that who think this “snuck up on us”. People who truly were not aware of the situation and people who actively ignored/denied the situation. Be prepared to see scores of the latter trying to disguise themselves as the former. But it’s very easy to point to something that has let the problem grow to the point where even the most ardent feminist may find it hard to ignore: Caring about… Read more »
“some illusion that ANY instance of helping boys/men inherently hurts girls/women.”
It’s not a zero sum game seems to only be used when girls / women are given special programs, assistance, or incentives. Many progressives seem to feel that when it comes to boys / men, it is a zero sum game. or at least that’s the way they play it.