Having worked in the trades when I was younger I guess I haven’t experienced this. Is there some data to back this up?
Yes, it’s an intriguing topic but I don’t actually see it as related to young men struggling.
It’s an absolutely different topic. Of course there are many more women here participating so maybe it’s natural to veer in that direction and away from concerns regarding men?
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Sure, if the mods think that mentioning women’s educational and career outcomes is off-topic in a thread about men, I would be glad to have this split off. I suggest the new thread be named “Why are men’s labor outcomes considered to be in crisis when their labor outcomes are better than women’s?”
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Are men struggling? Absolutely. In our suburb over the last decade the number of suicides is staggering for young men, as is the accidental drug overdose rate. I obviously don’t know why this is happening, but it is concerning.
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This topic hits home for me, as I have a DD and a DS.
DD is a Junior in college at a challenging state school, currently thriving after overcoming some struggles and unhappiness during her first year there. I also have a DS, who should be finishing up his Freshman year at the same school. Instead, when met with similar struggles as his sister, his mental health declined rapidly and he chose not to return after the first semester. I (and my husband) parented both of these children, presumably in the same way. Being individuals, one responded to challenges by persevering, and the other decided the challenges “weren’t worth it.” He’s home, working, and seems quite content. And I’m in therapy to learn and understand that his life is not my life, and my expectations for him can’t overcome what he himself wants. At this point, we’re emphasizing with both “kids” that the goal is to be kind, relatively happy, self-supporting adults. They each need to figure out how to get there for themselves.
But, yeah, when folks ask what’s up with my kids, I definitely feel a lot of judgment toward my parenting when I tell them about DS. The vibe is that we must have done something wrong.
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I agree that there continue to be issues that are facing women that should be addressed. As such, I’ve created a thread for that discussion. I will also share a passage I included in the other one with one word changed:
I am not a mod, but I would prefer that there be no “what about” comments about the other gender. Individuals can mention the other gender as in, this is also an issue here, or this was an issue for this other group and this is how it was improved. But minimizing the negative impacts of what’s happened (and continues to occur) toward men should be avoided. We can be supportive about more than one group at a time; this is not a zero sum game.
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I completely understand your situation is different due to mental health issues. When I say expectations I mean for children of similar abilities and in the absence of extenuating circumstances such as mental health issues or disabilities.
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I appreciate your post in regards to the situation @FunnyPup described. Would you have the same reaction to the type of kids I described in post #83? Because I’ve seen kids like that both in real/personal life as well as when I was working with middle school students, and sadly, it seems to be increasingly common.
He was as mentally stable as his sister when he went off to college. His response to being challenged was basically to opt out of the whole thing, which brings me back to the topic. Is there something we’re not doing right to equip young men like my DS to persevere through difficulties? Or is it all down to personality?
I have heard a lot of stories of young adults floundering. With one exception, they’re all male. Why is that?
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I’m not seeing that in my extended circle. The young adults who have failed to launch and are struggling are equally represented among both genders.
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I created this graph to show the labor participation rates of men and women between 1950-2022 (various sources used…BLS reports from 1999 with projections through 2025, 2002 with projections through 2050
So there’s been a definite upward trend for women and there was no correspondingly big drop for men, so this is not a zero-sum issue that what is good for one gender is bad for the other. But there’s definitely been a decline for men, particularly over the last 22 years (from 93.4% in 2000 to 88.7% in 2022 for males 25-34 and similar numbers for males 35-44). Over the same period women’s labor participation went up 1% for 25-34 and down 1% for 35 to 44, so the impact over this time period primarily seems to have been effecting males.
Interestingly, between 1999-2002, the BLS projections had a shift for the period of 2015-2030, with a slightly lower projection for men (only by 0.1%), but an increase for women of about 2.5-3%. So perhaps there was something that occurred in this time frame that altered these projections, though I don’t know what it is. Unfortunately, the projections for women were too optimistic for what ended up happening.
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I wonder if some of the male decline in the work force was the shift to men taking on the caregiving/stay at home parent role. When I was growing up, I knew no stay at home dads but now, in my circle, there are quite a number.
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No, it is because the male participation rate has dropped sharply and the female rate has not. Any sharp drop by any subset is cause for great concern.
I would like to think the drop is partly attributed to men engaged in childcare, but the statistics do not bear that out. Women with small children are less likely to work and their participation increases as their children age; that is not true for men.
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When it comes to the labor participation numbers for young men (25-34), one thing that has changed is the parental response from past generations. I remember my Grandmother letting my unemployed and always underemployed uncle live on the streets in his car for periods of time and I don’t see parents today ever choosing that level of “tough love”. Parents today will tend to support their young adult male children financially and with housing a lot longer today IMHO. I was also raised under that “sink or swim” mentality, but I don’t believe as many Millennials/Gen Z men are.
I have asked my wife (HS Chemistry Teacher) what are the biggest general differences between the young men and young women that she teaches and she always cites a laziness (or lack of work ethic to study in many more boys). She believes part of it is that some of the 15 year boys have never really had to work as hard in a class before her Honors/Gifted level Chemistry classes. She sees the same thing in some young women as well, but a larger percentage of young women start to adapt to the challenges of her class (by studying more).
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The decline in college attendance and workforce participation in young men is fascinating. But there don’t seem to be legal or even societal obstacles to males participating in either college or jobs like there were for women prior to the 70s. There’s something else going on. I did think this article was interesting, even though it’s pre-Covid. The male college crisis is not just in enrollment, but completion | Brookings (I don’t think we are even close to figuring out which affects of Covid are long lasting and which are just a blip.)
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I was born in 72, and heard demeaning things about women every day and in my house from close family. I was told all of the things about men being biologically better at math, that women were weaker and fit first and foremost for child raising and house life. Our “P.E.” In the South was a joke (for girls), and any girl who played basketball was a social misfit. There were no other girl sports but cross-country and tennis. People were socially warned or disciplined for being friends with Black people. Girls’ “helper” status was reinforced in most churches. This still happens in Southern and religious communities today. Women wait on men at table. Please don’t be fooled by advanced regions of the country.
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I realize you opened a different thread about women, but I had to respond directly to a claim from someone born in 74 that discrimination only happened for earlier generations of women.
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Could we please stay on topic?
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Here’s something on topic about young men. I work at a regional college (community-college-like population). In my experience, most of the young men have been either indulged or “benignly” neglected. I don’t think most parents of girls would let their kids be on screens 6-8 hours a day. Girls have household duties, or are actively formed by the social pressure of their parents and communities. Parents of my male students are grateful that they haven’t dropped out of school or worse, and most of them who are cisgender and/or at all physically prepossessing think that the world is their oyster–without any great effort being necessary. The young women are used to being noticed in this world only for effort or actions. Moderately successful young women are a dime a dozen. if psychologists/sociologists would really tackle what is happening with gendered upbringing in the national demographics in which men are failing, I think we’d have a lot of statistical evidence pretty quickly.
P.S. These male and female students react positively to my boundary-setting and relatively challenging teaching. They react well to being seen as accountable individuals even if they are failing!
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The most recent statistics I have seen say that about 1/5th of all stay-at-home parents are now men. The increase has occurred mainly in the last couple of decades.
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