Interesting charts. The last dip at 2020/2021 data I assume relates to Covid isolation / remote schooling.
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Or that is what we are socialized to believe and then feel disappointed when life and people turn out to be a lot more complicated than such a reductive way of seeing gender. I remember reading Arthur Chuâs discussion of incels and video games (Your Princess is in Another Castle), I didnât come out of it thinking oh the problem is that men have lost socially sanctioned outlets for 1:1 aggression or that the problem was boys playing too many video games. I came out of it thinking (as Chu suggested), we all need to grow up and learn how to treat each other well (recognize each otherâs humanity irrespective of gender).
There are plenty of outlets for gendered aggression and competition if that is what you want for your sons including sports like lacrosse, football, martial arts, boxing, hunting and so forth. Frankly, anyone who has raised a middle school girl has probably witnessed plenty of socially sanctioned outlets for girl aggression as well.
I would never wish for a return to the days in which there was one way to be a boy and one way to be a girl. Or when boys who were perceived as insufficiently aggressive were labeled not masculine enough because they were interested in girly pursuits. Those were extraordinarily painful times for some children and adolescents. I think that there are many ways that boys have been failed (and pressured) by adults recently, and I am interested in solutions that recognize the spectrum of different ways of being male and female. However retreating backwards to more rigid definitions of gender is not the way forward. Heck, I can think of many ways that lots of groups were failed and continue to be failed by our society but retreating to the past ways of doing things just disenfranchises people who have most recently gained rights once denied them.
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Which (other than truly elitist sport of lacrosse), are now attracting increasing amounts of derision and disapproval from the elites (Iâve heard no end of mothers saying âI wouldnât let my kid play footballâ). Its another case of luxury beliefs, kids of the elites are OK (we see plenty of articles about how Silicon Valley executives wonât allow their own kids to have smartphones or play video games or even have a TV in some cases), while poor children suffer the consequences of the changes in norms imposed by the elites.
Its like elites saying that it doesnât matter if couples get married before having kids and that single parent families can raise kids just as well as two parents. Thatâs true for educated elites with well paying jobs (although most of them get married anyway). It isnât for people without those advantages, where structure can be more important to successful outcomes than freedom. None of that means you can put the genie back in the bottle. But we should recognize whatâs happened, and not be surprised at the consequences of these social changes.
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Absolutely. Competition, which I believe many boys thrive on, is often discouraged. In our area (the PNW) many schools forbid even tag and foot races at recess and our public school system doesnât give grades until high school. There is no more honor roll and they donât give out academic awards in order to not hurt feelings. Iâve written before that my son loved his Lego Robotics team in middle school but the school decided only to allow girls on the team and kicked off all the boys.
I realize that itâs a little extreme here and our experience living near Boston was completely different. But, if youâre a boy (or a girl!) who wants to win and is driven by grabbing the gold ring, itâs disheartening.
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This is the type of thing that disadvantages boys and, at the same time, does not help the girls - eventually (in engineering for example) they will need to work with the boys.
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Wow. Talk about painting all young men with the same brush. My S has never been interested in risk taking or aggressive pursuits - never wanted to play football, never wanted to drive fast cars, didnât drink when he was underage. He is not interested in video games, nor is he into incel culture. He is involved in the music scene, and I guess the fact that he likes metal music & mosh pits might be considered aggressive ⊠except that plenty of young women participate, as well. There is more than one way to grow into a man, and not all of the ways involve being a bro.
Frankly, I suspect that many young men are uncomfortable with the âmanlyâ expectations society has of them. I really wish that gendered thinking would disappear. Maybe young men would struggle less if they felt valued for who they are and not who others want them to be.
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I have another Diary of a CEO with Steven Bartlett that I recommend. Itâs from March 7, 2024 called The Male Psychology Doctor. If anyone listens to it or reads the transcript Iâd like to hear your thoughts on it. It is similar to the discussion in the original post of this thread, but takes place with Alok Kanojia, an American psychiatrist and co-founder of a mental health coaching company.
Yes, the article notes that many girls gave up on chess club because of male behaviorâthe specific behavior being that the males were harassing them.
(I donât care what the natural competitive desires of males may or may not be, they can learn not to harass girls.)
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To get back to the main theme of this thread:
No, Iâm not convinced that males under 35 are struggling, or at least not more than they historically have. The suicide rate has always been higher for men as far back as I can remember. Same for incarceration rates. As for substance use, the concern Iâve been reading about in recent years is the relative increase in womenâs addiction now that womenâs use of substances is no longer as stigmatized as it used to be (e.g. âmommy needs her wine.â)
And Iâm not concerned about the dropping ratio of men/women in college and especially not in trade school. Currently in our economy there is a big shortage in the trades such that many young men are stepping directly into these jobs with their employers promising to train them on the job. Last spring a couple of my young male relatives applied to some schools, but decided at the last minute to take offers to join a construction crew instead because it paid so well. If there were stereotypically female jobs that paid $30/hr for entry level workers I bet a lot of girls would be choosing to work too!
So I donât think that schools or society need to do anything special to lift boys specifically. I think a more important focus would be to improve instruction in reading and math for all students, no matter the gender. If individual families hold a belief that boysâ and girlsâ innate needs differ so much that they need very different opportunities, environments and supports, then they can seek this out on their own time and dime.
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I agree @fiftyfifty1
In my experience many parents now are setting different expectations for boys and girls. I had the experience of having sent my kids to different HSâs with totally different parent expectations. Child #1 (D) attended the local public HS in NoVA. It was/is a good school academically but not one of the âtopâ schools there. I heard many parents talk about how accomplished their daughters were, but then talk about how there sons were âimmatureâ and using this an excuse. The parents were very vested in the sonsâs sports accomplishments, though.
My younger child (S) attended a magnet science and tech school (you know it). It is majority male (59% this year). The parents at that school were definitely âacademics firstâ for boys and girls. Many of the parents at that school were immigrants and came from cultures that prioritized academics over athletics. That was what those boys grew up with and they thrived academically.
I would like to add that I hear that boys who do not attend college have limited opportunities (i.e. lack of factory jobs). There are opportunities in trades - why are the young men not taking advantage of that?
I donât believe lack of male teachers (especially in elementary schools) is a factor. There were very, very few male teachers in the lower grades when I was growing up,
I think families need to step up and expect the same from the sons as the daughters.
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I agree about the importance of expectations. âBoys will be boysâ becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy.
You can even see the influence of expectations when it comes to what children are interested in. A good example is the above link re: the Polgar sisters. Their father decided before they were even born that he would do an experiment to see if he could create chess âgeniusesâ out of his children, no matter the gender, even though girls were thought to naturally lack the interest (not to mention the brains and competitive spirit) needed for chess. And it worked. He got them interested in chess at an early age, encouraged them, and expected them to do well, and all 3 grew into champions who love chess.
You see examples of it going in the opposite direction with âfeminineâ activities which people will claim are naturally uninteresting to boys (unless they are gay.) But when parents set expectations that artistic activities such as dance, figure skating etc. are desirable pursuits for both girls and boys you can get somebody like Ilia Malinin.
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How many groups do we see for boys similar to the support groups set up to encourage girls? Whereâs the male equivalent to âwomen in science and engineeringâ? If anything, traditionally male social groups (Elks, Masons, Rotary, etc) are seen as outdated and anachronistic nowadays.
And why expect the same from sons and daughters? Itâs ironic, but more egalitarian societies actually have larger differences between men and womenâs preferences:
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I just got around to reading the article. I found the headline âThe more equal women and men are, the less they want the same things, study findsâ fairly misleading. I expected to read that in an egalitarian society (where all are considered equal, regardless of gender, race, religion, or age with relatively equal access to income and wealth) there was found to be large, significant difference between what men and women desired.
Then I read the article. The study just refers to gender differences in the following six key personality traits â altruism, trust, risk, patience, and positive and negative reciprocityâŠnot exactly what I was expecting but as I thought about it, I could imagine why it may be the case.
From the article*:
âWhile these findings were statistically significant, Hermle cautions that the size of the effect is not that large.
For each of these preferences, âthere is a huge variation within genders,â he said. âIf you randomly take a woman or man from the U.S. or some other country, knowing this personâs gender would tell you very little about their preferences.â
âThe work does not address why women and men overall scored differently on these traits â for instance, whether this gender gap is biological or if it is imparted by the culture.
But Hermle said the results do rule out a theory that suggests these personality traits are dictated entirely by genetics and evolutionary biology.â
âWe find enough variability across countries to indicate that people respond to the conditions in which they grow up,â he said.â
The article concludes with:
âPrevious work has shown that higher female empowerment can improve child welfare and lead to a more democratic decision-making process,â he said. âIt is important to have a plurality of preferences represented.â
(*note: I put in bold the points I felt were important)
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This. Competition between peers from a very young age is being stifled in all aspects.
From the no grades you experienced or what I heard from my son-- âMom, I donât know what grades my friends make because itâs impolite to askâ. Sorry but my reply (after initial shock) was to find out and see if you are still happy about your poor performance among your peers. Turns out finding out his friends made "A"s did the same for his report card also. Nothing like lighting the fire.
Maybe my views are skewed because I grew up around the space program. Everyone from elementary school forward thought about becoming an astronaut either male or female. Nobody ever said âonly men become astronautsâ (which was true at the time but of course changed). Science was encouraged for everyone. We spent class time designing space stations for fun.
When Spassky vs. Fischer played the newspaper printed all the movesâand we all dove into chess. Nobody said what gender the game belonged to. It wasnât even a topic of discussion.
The school playgrounds were always open. You could go play on the fields, outdoor courts anytime and kids did. The school pools were community owned. We had some great spaces to go play.
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Here is a different article that shows how career selection differs by sex in the egalitarian Nordic countries.
LOL. SoâŠwomen tend to want to stay home raising the kids while the guys go to work.
But if you want a job somewhere and you donât fit that mold then youâre still good to go.
Okay then. Sounding good.
My views are likely skewed because my own experience was largely the opposite. Very few professional role models for girls other than teacher/nurse/secretary. The guidance counselors in HS encouraged all of the girls to take typing as âsomething to fall back onâ. Same advice was not given to the boys. I was one of about 25 students in the highest math class in my HS senior year (my class had about 550 students total) yet even in that class the girls were not encouraged to pursue any sort of STEM careers (the boys were).
Even when my own D was in elementary school about 25 years ago almost all of the students selected to test to be advanced in math were male. I fought to have her tested and lo and behold - she scored in the 99th percentile. A few friends had the same experience with their daughters and the school ended up overhauling the entire system and testing everyone. Suddenly a whole bunch of girls were found to qualify to for math advancement.
We had community playgrounds and pools in my hometown which welcomed all, however all of the organized sports were open only to boys. There were none (zero,zip, nada) for the girls. Sports for girls came to my high school in my senior year - because of Title IX. Again, decades later the girls teams at Dâs high school were poorly funded and got the lesser practice locationsâŠ
Your experience was much more fortunate than mine. But I wonder whose was more typical?
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@Twoin18 - I read that article and while it was interesting, I donât see what it had to do with having fewer expectations for academic success for boys than for girls which was the point of my previous post.
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I could have written your post.
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This conversation is fascinating to me. Probably because I never remember being told I couldnât do something (or at least anything I wanted to do) or achieve just because of my sex. Ever. Everything was open. It just depended on how good you were at something and your interests. The focus was on merit.
Maybe it was the environment. We were a homogenous group. Our family lives (for the most part and as far as I knew) were fairly stable. I think that is huge. The community had similar goals. Our school system had many brilliant people (both male and female) so good role models abounded. Many were professionals in their fields. Expectations were very high no matter who you were.
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