Males Under 35: Are they struggling and what can be done about it?

Parent Cafe
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I don’t think “domination” is really the correct characterization. Men compete for status, sometimes physically, women compete in different ways. So a guy may hit a rival whereas a women may spread gossip about her.

Gaming is a substitute for some of that physical competition, but I’d also note that physical prowess and competitiveness are perhaps relatively less valued than it was decades ago: in some parts of the country sports like football are disapproved of by many parents (or pigeonholed as lower class). Certainly protecting kids from physical altercations is seen as much more important than in past generations. Part of the point of those physical displays was to appeal to the opposite sex. “Typical boy behavior” as @Rivet2000 says.

If you provide much improved experiences in a virtual world and much diminished experiences in the real world, you should hardly be surprised if the time spent in each changes. And boys don’t spend much time in a virtual gaming world displaying their abilities to the opposite sex or learning how to interact with them.

Girls are spending more time in virtual worlds too, it is just that in general their preferences for those experiences are social networking oriented. As such they may be more depressed than in past years (due to feeling their own social lives are inferior) but those experiences don’t harm their abilities in social interactions quite as much.

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Further to the point of physical vs virtual worlds: how many people were in a physical fight growing up? I think every guy I knew encountered that at some point in school (though rarely in college) and a not insignificant number of girls were in fights too.

I think that’s rare nowadays, I don’t think any of my kids have ever been hit or hit someone else.

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In general, I’d agree. But I can’t recall hardly any - actually none that I saw, but I’m sure I must be forgetting something - fights at school growing up. This was in Northern Virginia mostly. But, OTOH, H loved to fight growing up. Everyone around here got in them apparently. I know he breaks up fights somewhat regularly at elementary school. And there are plenty at the older schools too. I’ve heard of several security guards getting permanently disabled over the years.
But these schools are rougher than your average school represented on cc. To my knowledge, my kids were never in a fight, nor were their friends.

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There was a female gang war over me when we were in intermediate school. (It was after school and I was simply the excuse—I was not present.)

I was regularly hit by boy bullies in elementary school. I really disliked all the bullies and elementary school overall because of it.

My D has had to defend herself and hit back when hit by boy bullies at k-2nd grades. She pinned any boy who wanted to wrestle her at recess, even though she was much smaller and lighter than all of them—strong and agile. As far as I know, S never had to hit anyone back.

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For our S it has been about finding the right people to date. Our S has been extremely picky and I can’t really fault him for that. His current gf is in a PhD program at Berkeley and he has told me she’s the smartest person he knows - a good sign :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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In my experience, I hear a lot of excuses being made for boys. I think it is a biological fact that males mature later than females and I heard that plenty while growing up (I’m a baby boomer, born late '50’s), but I don’t recall it being used back then to excuse disinterest in school or simply slacking. H also grew up with that not being an excuse.

Note that I am the parent of both a D and a S. I raised both to work to the best of their abilities.

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Some articles about troubling trends for young men that I had bookmarked:

https://thehill.com/opinion/technology/4218666-ai-girlfriends-are-ruining-an-entire-generation-of-men/

https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/3868557-most-young-men-are-single-most-young-women-are-not/

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I really dislike the cut and dry advice he gives at the end to redshirt boys to kindergarten until they are 6 years old. I think this decision should ALWAYS be made on a case-by-case basis.

My ds would have been hugely academically bored had I not started him at kindergarten at age 5. And, he was a young 5 with a summer birthday. He grade-skipped 8th grade and graduated high school at 16 and college at 20.

I understand that academic ability shouldn’t be the sole determining factor in the decision. However, he has always been mature for his age. Heck, he is much more mature than I ever was at his current age.

Just not a fan of such sweeping generalizations.

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Personal opinion based on having a boy :slight_smile: and nothing else.

I think the majority (not all) of boys thrive with discipline, structure, clear cut boundaries, competition - both physical and mental, and relationships with their fathers or father figures.

I think modern boyhood no longer emphasizes many of those things and our young men have suffered for it.

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Both of my sons are currently thriving. I believe part of the reason is because they both had in person activities to participate in during Covid. They were very lucky.

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Right up until you need someone to do heavy lifting. Just sayin.

I’m pretty sure football players aren’t put on pedestals because they do math problems really fast.

I still call my H to do the heavy lifting. And any other male if the occasion warrants.

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Being able to hold a conversation with another person is an underrated skill these days. The two main aspects to a conservation to me are listening and knowing about what you are talking about. Being able to have a back and forth discussion. I have always said I know a little about a lot of subjects and I keep up current events and pop culture. I can usually find some common ground with people.

I think conversating is a skill many people struggle with. It is going to be super hard to find a mate if all you know about is gaming or sports. Same goes for fashion or celebrities. You don’t have to love your mate’s hobbies/interests but knowing about them to a certain degree helps. I see plenty of examples/complaints that a female on a date or before the date during the texting stage get frustrated with the male who gives one word answers and asks no questions.

But let’s say a couple gets past the initial dating stage and moves in together or even progresses to marriage. Many females don’t want to have to take care of all the needs of their mate like they were raising a child. If a male can’t/won’t help out around the house in some fashion it will get old quick. If you can’t look at your relationship as a team then it has a good chance of not being successful.

Everything I said here goes both ways for the people in the relationship.

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Like others have said, I think gaming is PART of the problem but not the main cause. I think social media is another part of the problem and isolation from others. And maybe a lot of men don’t and didn’t have strong role models in their lives.

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Higher incarceration rates are not a result of sexism - they’re a direct result of males committing far more crimes, and far more violent crimes, than do females. As for suicide, I think that the data is that women make more attempts (gestures), but they are more often not lethal, whereas men tend to have more access to firearms, and use them, to successfully complete a suicide attempt.

In a previous era, men had to marry to get to have sex, and then work to support the wife and subsequent children, or they had to pay for a prostitute and risk disease. The corollary of the men “not getting any” emergency is the far larger emergency that men aren’t working and supporting a family.

I’d say that part of that is that their parents are willing to support them, living at home, computer gaming, indefinitely. But there are plenty of other young men whose partners (often multiple female partners) are living on state assistance (Sec 8, WIC, SNAP, Medicaid, utility, phone, internet, SSI for the kids, sometimes cash benefits) and provide the man with a place to live, food, and often money. Those men are involved in one or more sexual relationships, but do not work. They may work in the drug trade, but then usually wind up dead or incarcerated. As they get older, the survivors may age out of the criminal world, may work under the table, so they appear to be unemployed, but are actually working - just not paying taxes, maybe are simultaneously collecting SSI for their back injury that doesn’t prevent them from doing off the books construction work.

So, what’s the solution? A two year national service requirement for ALL young people age 18-20! Choose military, or job Corp, or a supervised trade apprenticeship in the trades that we need, where the skilled workers are aging out, and not enough young people are entering. Something where ALL young people have to serve for two years. Sure, some young people (men and women) would not be able to hack it, would drop out. But many more would be exposed to the opportunity to learn a trade, accomplish something. It would serve as a unifying experience for our ever more divided nation. And it would get young people out of the house, out of the basement, out of the ghetto, out doing something useful that might give them a start on a skilled career.

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Interesting idea. It might mean that older, more mature college students (and trade school students) have better odds of graduating.

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Some stats on this issue:

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Interesting data, and these metrics are those that most health classes and public health professionals would probably be quite excited about. So high schoolers are engaging in less “risky” behaviors, which is what most people typically advocate for. Are you suggesting that risk-taking is an essential component of male development? Or…?

I think that it’s very important to hear men’s voices on this issue and that anything they share should be thoughtfully considered. But there are many moms of sons on this board and others who have insight into this age group, and I don’t want them to feel silenced. So though I hope to hear from more men on the issue, I don’t think that 99% of the comments should be restricted to one gender.

With that said, I’m going to answer some of the questions I originally posed.

I suspect that males in this age bracket are struggling.

Many here on CC are aware of how colleges are increasingly gender-skewed with more females attending (and graduating) than males. But it’s not just in 4-year colleges, it’s also at community colleges where one might expect men to be showing up in a higher percentage of the trades professions. And it’s also in the high school graduation rates, which I think is an area where we’d hope that everyone of all genders would successfully complete. So it’s not just a matter of video gaming males not having the social skills to ask someone out on a date or networking for a primo job. A lot of males are falling behind before they even finish high school. The question is, why?

In a thread I linked in the original post, I mentioned how many boys see education as more of a female thing as only 11% of elementary school teachers are male and 36% of secondary school teachers are male. I didn’t look for stats, but I’m confident that the percentage of male teachers for ages 0-5 is even less than 11%. I also cited an article that talked about how black students who’d had just one black teacher by 3rd grade were 13% more likely to enroll in college and those who’d had two were 32% more likely. If we switch that category from black to male, then it could be that if males had two male teachers by the time they were in 3rd grade, then it would be enough to help close the gap in terms of percentage of males going to college vs. females (original post).

In that same thread, I shared info about K-8 schools that have Girls on the Run, Girl Scouts, Girls Who Code, etc. But they had no coed or single-sex options for boys to participate in. When the administrations were asked to have coed options, they said that they had tried but that they couldn’t get teachers to sponsor any, despite offering stipends to do so.

Steps for families (based on many of the comments in this thread):

  • Establish and enforce screen time limitations, particularly for video games.

  • Ensure that there are positive male role models around (family, church, mentors, etc).

  • Have males participate in at least one activity that involves in-person social engagement.

Steps for schools:

  • Schools focus on providing coed ECs/outlets or have some kind of Title IX philosophy about making sure there are relatively equal opportunities for all students.

  • Increase the use of teaching methods that more heavily engage kinesthetic learners, which most boys have as one of their more dominant learning styles.

Steps for schools/society:

  • Get more males into the teaching profession, particularly in early grades. This will likely be made easier by increasing the pay (which should have been done decades ago) and also eliminating the outdated idea that teaching is a “feminine” profession (similar to how nursing used to be viewed, though that seems to be successfully shifting…likely due to the higher salaries that nurses get compared to teachers).

Steps for families/schools/society:

  • Eradicate the gendering of any activities (reading, sewing, crying, whatever) or any preferences (such as liking pink/purple, or design, etc). People should not be told that they shouldn’t do an activity because it’s for the “other” gender or that people are going to think negatively of someone if they engage in those activities (which, more often than not, are considered “feminine” activities).
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Given that public health professionals are heavily skewed to females, that’s worrying, but hardly surprising. A large part of public health regulation and outreach tries to suppress risky, traditionally male, activities.

Here’s an article on chess, examining why the best chess players are almost all male:

The conclusion is that males have an strong desire for one-on-one competition and are disproportionately drawn to intense practice and “rigid persistence in an activity”. That’s being channeled towards video games at the moment, instead of face-to-face competitive activities (dating, fighting and other risky behaviors).

This seems exactly the wrong diagnosis. Saying that males can’t do things that are typically male and instead have to pursue things in a gender neutral (i.e. women friendly) manner will simply cause males to retreat further into virtual activities like video games where adults will interfere less. In the article above, it notes that many girls give up on mixed gender chess clubs because of male behavior (which in large part stems from their competitive desires). If the solution is insisting that chess becomes an egalitarian activity, boys will do other things instead.

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Thank you for sharing the article though I will admit I only had time to read a bit more than half of it, as it is on the lengthy side. I do find it interesting that in chess there is an Open (coed), Women’s, Junior (open), and girls divisions.

In case my previous message gave the wrong impression, I want to clarify that I don’t object to single-sex activities or activities that are dominated by one gender. If males want to wrestle, or play football, or race cars, or play chess, more power to them. Just as females shouldn’t be told they shouldn’t do those activities because those are masculine domains, males who want to participate in reading, sewing, teaching, nursing, etc, shouldn’t be mocked/told to avoid those activities because they are feminine domains. That’s what I meant when I suggested the eradication of gendering any particular activity.

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Encouraging men to participate in traditionally female activities and encouraging traditionally male activities to be more welcoming to women are two sides of the same coin.

In both cases they restrict the outlets for male risk taking and aggression, and more men then end up addicted to video games or rejecting these new norms (incel culture etc).

It’s not surprising that the archetype of a hero’s journey is so popular in films and books, particularly stories for teenagers like Harry Potter or Hunger Games (and it’s notable that new cultural sensitivities gave the latter a female heroine) or further back the Lord of the Rings and even the Odyssey. That’s what boys are supposed to go through as part of growing up. And nowadays that’s what video games provide in a virtual setting.

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