So why are expectations for sons so much lower?
Mental illness usually begins in young men around the age of 18-20. It occurs later in most women. So thatās why a lot of guys flounder when they go to college while women seem to do well.
My son developed schizophrenia as a freshman engineering student. He had no risk factors or trauma. Iāve learned not to beat myself up about it - heās ill. We support him the best we can. Itās discouraging, though. DH was supposed to take him to a Celtics game in Boston tomorrow night, but our son just called and said it would be too stressful for him to go. I know itās not his fault, but ugh.
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I donāt know. Some of it seems cultural. I work with a lot of families where it is the norm culturally for women and girls to wait upon men and boys. Little girls get chores (cleaning, cooking, childcare etc.) at a young age. Little boys definitely do not. The behavior expectations in general for little boys in this group are low. The little boys not infrequently hit or kick their mothers or grandmothers. I have never seen a little girl do this.
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I donāt know that Iāve ever heard someone say, āGirls will be girlsā to justify antisocial behavior. Maybe possibly with regard to middle school mean girl behavior. Maybe. But I have heard it many many times to justify boys not following instructions or breaking rules or acting outside the social norms for a situation. As I once said (and was lambasted for it by parents of boys), whenever I go hiking it is boys who are off the trail, destroying flora, tossing rocks at people and animals, etc. And it is always excused.
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It was definitely the norm in our families of origin that little girls helped with all the housework and cooking chores, but the little boys had responsibilities for lawn care, pets, and house maintenance tasks. The boys definitely didnāt get a pass, it was just a different division of labor. (I only have a daughter but my nephew does plenty of chores and is very hard working kid).
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Thatās because boys will be boysā¦
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Question: are boys struggling equally across all classes? Because I am guessing the factors affecting working class young men are different from those affecting upper class/upper middle class kids. But I donāt know.
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Interesting questions. However I would argue āwomen in STEMā and other types of support groups originated as a response to restrictive cultural and institutionalized discrimination. It took a lot of time and energy from brave innovators to make such changes happen.
Regardless I understand the desire of limiting (not eliminating) the discussion of womenās historical disadvantages on this thread. Yet at the same time I hope the parallels are not ignored. Men who are struggling, need women as alliesā¦just as women have sought men as allies in the womenās movement.
I do not believeā¦and I sincerely hope that those who stand up and voice feminist ideology are empathetic. Imo we would do well to work together for solutions. Personally:
- I reject thoughts of retribution.
- I reject zero-sum gender bias.
With that said here are a couple of my thoughts on what can be done for males under 35 who are struggling.
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Male role models. Does that mean more male teachers at the elementary level? Perhaps. I agree with Scott Galloway when he says in the podcast from the OP, āwe need a new vision for modern masculinity.ā In general dads need to step up their involvement as opposed to checking out. He talks about how men who may not have a role model in their personal life often find questionable role models online. And yes, I agree that even if a dad is engaged in the care and upbringing of their child, there is no guarantee that all will be well.
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Raising awareness. As a former teacher I remember in-service programs designed to address a plethora of education topicsā¦from making us more cognizant of our own biases to educational research studies concerning the learner. Awareness doesnāt always mean encouragement. Sometimes itās being aware that our words ands/or actions may be interpreted as discouraging.
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I grew up doing āfemaleā chores - watching my younger sibling, doing dishes and laundry, cleaning, etc. My brothers cut the grass (seasonal and on a riding lawn mower) and not much else. We all shoveled snow.
I raised my 2 (D and S) differently. There were no male or female chores. Both cut grass, shoveled snow, cleaned their rooms/bathrooms, did laundry. Both are better cooks than I am. That was done intentionally.
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I get it. Similar situation with my D and S. And any mental health related issues were only during college. Actually Sās mental health is fine now. Itās actually D currently in counseling but still meeting the demands of grad school.
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Those parents are indeed letting their girls have that much screen time - itās just not videos games, but social media.
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Yep, D did about a year of counseling on her own initiative to help deal with the stresses of college. S is not at all interested in therapy. Honestly, heās cheerfully uninterested in any type of self-examination at this point. Weāre not pushing, since heās contributing to the household and meeting the obligations we set out for him when he decided not to return to school this semester.
I do wonder if young men in general are more reluctant to take advantages of resources like counseling or tutoring that would give them more support as they move through college.
Speaking about the girl-focused STEM initiatives, D was housed in a women-in-STEM dorm her Freshman year. The program provided her with a mentor and lots of social opportunities to meet like-minded young women. It was also one of the nicest dorms on campus. While other learning communities exist for male students, they didnāt seem to have the same level of support. I fully understand the need for the women-centered programs, but it would have been nice for DS to have a built-in mentor as well. He certainly wasnāt going out looking for one on his own!
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My thought (with no data to back it up) is that many girls who are great at math/science are great in other subjects too. So they have very high standardized scores and GPAā¦. can eventually go on to med school or law school (where I think they are 50% or more of the students). A lot of my male engineering peers (not at tippy top school) were ālopsidedā, with much higher math scores.
From a numeric balance standpoint, the traditional male fields canāt all be 50/50 unless traditional female fields (teaching, nursing) are also 50/50.
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I think you may be on to something here. In another group Iām on there is a conversation about college age sons being less willing to ask for help of any kind, social, professional and academic.
There was a strong message at my Dās school in orientation about needing supports to get through a rigorous program, but certainly not everyone takes that advice. Wonder if there is a true gender divide?
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Apparently itās being studied because men are less likely to seek help. This is a very small study but the references are interesting. Improving Mental Health Help-Seeking Among Male University Students: A Series of Gender-Sensitive Mental Health Feasibility Interventions - PMC
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NAMI Maine has a whole program devoted to encouraging men to seek therapy. Man Therapy - NAMI Maine - Mental Health Resources & Support
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Your Dās school is the school my D and S attend/attended. They definitely made the point repeatedly (as did we) before he started that help would probably be necessary at some point. And as he started to go off the rails, we encouraged him to reach out. Andā¦he didnāt. At the same time, his required meetings with advisors (academic and honors) werenāt scheduled until very late October/early November. I often wonder if there had been earlier contact with a supportive person, if he would have been more inclined to pursue help. He basically fell through the cracks of an overburdened system. (Also partly on him, though, because he refused to request earlier advising appointments since he āalready had something scheduled.ā)
My daughter was also loathe to reach out for help, but she had a weekly seminar with her advisor, she had her STEM mentor, she had this built-in network that had eyes on her and could provide support before she had to ask for it.
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I have a friend whose son is at a small school that is supposed to be known for more supports but he has blown off his meetings with his mentor and advisor. He ended up dropping out.
I donāt know what the solution is to help with engagement. More project teams in earlier grades? Required mentoring/advising in HS to get kids used to it?
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Thanks for sharing that link, @MaineLonghorn. These were some of the social media images that resonated the most for me in thinking about the males in my life.
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@momofboiler1, thanks for sharing that. From the abstract:
The interventions included the following: Intervention 1āa formal intervention targeting male students, Intervention 2āa formal intervention that adopted gender-sensitive language and promoted positive masculine traits, and Intervention 3āan informal drop-in offering a social space providing health information.
Apparently, all three worked, but the third option was the one that was most successful in reaching males who were less likely to seek support. So perhaps the idea of having a dorm parent or similar who would hang out in a lounge and be available to talk to students, and who might only be a door knock away if itās something more urgent and a level of comfort and sociability has already been established.
The abstract also had this description of the hard-to-reach males who preferred intervention 3:
male students who have greater conformity to maladaptive masculine traits, more negative attitudes to help-seeking, higher levels of self-stigma, who were less likely to have used mental health support before and belonged to an ethnic minority.
This seems like where the family comes in, perhaps especially with the fathers. For instance, I know of a family where the dad will take the kid to any dentist/orthodontist appointments, but itās the mom who always has to take the kid to see a mental health provider. So even if a male kid does get to see a mental health provider, thereās still an unspoken gendering of thinking that mental health is something that is more advocated by females.
The same issue can relate to crying. If a male never sees his father cry, even in the darkest and most terrible of times, but does see his mother cry, then crying is another emotional release that gets gendered (and viewed as out-of-bounds) for males growing up. The same thing holds true with the sharing of any deeper emotions, aprt from anger and excitement. Males seem to be much more limited in the range of emotions they can share without being accused of not being manly enough.
I guess identifying the āmaladaptive masculine traitsā and figuring out ways to have positive attitudes toward help-seeking are the areas that I think would make the biggest difference for males in this age range.
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