<p>I am glad to see some of those guys sticking up for themselves. I do think we have handed them a raw deal. The lack of jobs in this country is going to wreck the lives of many of these young men. Many of whom would have been doing great 50 years ago.</p>
<p>I do not see what zoosermom sees at all. I still see girls having more challenges than boys. In our school it was all boys taking Algebra in 7th grade, all boys in the robotics club, all boys doing envirothons, all boys getting science fair awards and taking that experience to Intel, etc.</p>
<p>The context the men described in this article live in is the reality that men still do earn more than women do. More men hold positions of political and corporate power than women do - by a LOT. </p>
<p>I have a son and a daughter. S is a college freshman, D is a HS sophomore. D spends a lot of time doing homework and writing papers and everything that one does to get high grades, S did what he needed to do but spent more of his time practicing music and hanging out (often both at once).</p>
<p>S had a lot of good college options in part because he applied to LACs where being male is now a hook, so his lower grades were OK as far as college went. In a sense he was rewarded for working not as hard as his sister did just because he is male. D may turn that on its head if she applies to a STEM program where she will have an admissions advantage, we’ll see.</p>
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<p>If men actually do this, and I absolutely deny that they do, blaming women for it is ridiculous.</p>
<p>PS: our school does have recess, and PE. More male teachers at higher levels than lower but honestly I think that’s because men see early childhood teachers as mommy types and mostly reject that role. I think we do have one male kindergarten teacher and more power to him…but it’s not that males aren’t “allowed” to teach these levels, it’s that they don’t want to.</p>
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Being male is a hook since there are so few who are competitive with females for admission. That’s a huge part of the problem, you know?</p>
<p>In my area, except in all boys’ schools, the vals/sals are almost exclusively female. NHS membership skews very heavily female, as well. The thing is that this is NYC, so there are a lot of poor kids of color who have pretty much three strikes against them from birth. Boys in that demographic are more likely to go to jail than girls, so whatever the girls do is a step up. Middle class kids with educated, competent, adult parents will often do ok. It’s the kids who don’t have those blessings who are almost assuredly going to fail. We can either say to them, though luck on you because boys have cooties, or we can acknowledge that there is a problem and give it the attention it deserves. And, again, supporting boys doesn’t mean that Ophelia faces a live of barefoot pregnancy.</p>
<p>As far as the pigs who posted disgusting things, some males act like animals because they don’t know any better and because no one expects more from them.</p>
<p>In our local high school, usually AT LEAST eight of the top ten are girls. Some years, there’s not a single boy in the top ten.</p>
<p>In our HS, nearly all the people in AP US history were females. S & one other male where the only males in the class. It was a very rigorous course, but S enjoyed it–the other male dropped out as it was too much reading & work. A lot depends on the kids involved. </p>
<p>In the world I live in, there are lots of good role models, male and female that our kids and those in their circle can work with and emulate–in some communities, it is largely matriarchial and there are not many role models for young men.</p>
<p>What we see and hear about a lot with the young men and women we know who are graduating is difficulty finding good full-time jobs, for folks in all fields, including some engineers S went to college with as well as many of the males AND females who graduated in 2012. I’m not sure what should be done about that and don’t have answers. I also don’t have the assets to employ them. A few of D’s friends have great jobs but many are doing unpaid or barely paid internships with their college degrees or being lab assistants, etc.</p>
<p>We also need to stop ridiculing men all the time. Not all fathers and husbands are doofuses who can’t function in society without women to roll their eyes and smile indulgently at their antics.</p>
<p>Which is why I don’t watch much television.</p>
<p>What I saw in public schools, was ( some) males who were not being held accountable, and given a lower bar- which they gladly took, at the same time, it was pretty insulting to them. ( by both male and female teachers- albeit most elementary school teachers are female- we really need more male grade school teachers, especially minorities. However, oldest attended private & by far the other parents touring private schools had boys)</p>
<p>Parents who thought their team practices should take precedence over homework, parents who excused their behavior by a " boys will be boys" attitude. They didn’t do their kids any favors, thats for sure. </p>
<p>*I always thought that women scrutinize other women much more than men do. When I was younger and still cared, I always said that I dressed for other women, not for men, because women would notice things that men never would. *</p>
<p>It has been a long time since I worked in an area where my clothes mattered, thank goodness.
Working outside people mostly care about if you are warm/dry enough.
I generally dress for myself, but I have been known to wear some trampy thing my H likes. ( he can be really tacky sometimes ;))</p>
<p>Thirty years ago boys could get a well paying job with a high school diploma. They still can, only its in industries where the work is very cyclical and may not be year round. Possibly might explain why some parents/schools don’t stress academics enough.</p>
<p>The innercity high school my youngest attended has a gpa requirement for all sports & the football coach requires all players to take the SAT. You should hear the howls from parents.</p>
<p>I definitely don’t want to debate here–but I don’t see contempt for boys or men here. Two of the people I love best in the world are men! but I do see excuse making for them, and blame–using women as scapegoats to tell guys, who should know better, that a world where everything is harder, where societal structural changes that have nothing to do with gender have made old approaches to success obsolete, is stacked against them purely for their gender. It does boys no good. I have no contempt for men, but exasperation for those who hand them misguided excuses.</p>
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Isn’t that the truth? Boys don’t have to settle for mediocrity.</p>
<p>But there is more than one way to be excellent. I always post about this because to me it’s so representative. In my son’s middle school there was a school-wide science fair every year. The judges were always all women (the science teachers were all women) and you could walk around the auditorium after you had done it a couple of times and be very accurate in predicting who would win. It was always the glitteriest, flashiest, most color-coordinated showboards. And they were always done by girls or groups of girls. In the meanwhile, there were plenty of less pretty, less perfect showboards that reflected projects of real learning (as many of the girls’ boards did), but the utilitarian boards never won and they were always made by boys. In the second year of my son’s tenure, there were a couple of very advanced projects that showed real scholarship, creativity and learning by boys. They were totally black and white and were done by boys. They won nothing, but the done-to-death project about vitamin C tablets with a showboard in bright colors with a huge cardboard orange jumping out of the top,did win.</p>
<p>So Garland, you would tell the boys who are born to 15-year old mothers, with 30 year-old grandmothers and no men anywhere in their lives that they should know better? How should they know better? Who is going to model for them what better looks like? Who is going to set expectations that they should meet? 30 years ago, the illegitimacy rate was much lower as was the incarceration rate in some communities. That is the reality many boys live with and it shouldn’t be ignored.</p>
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I’m not going to go back and pick apart posts because I hate when other people do that, but the contempt is there, and respectfully, in your own post I see a certain closed-mindedness to the difficulties faced by boys who aren’t fortunate to have you for a parent.</p>
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<p>I think this does illustrate very well how our opinions are colored by our own personal experiences. </p>
<p>In our school, science fair is required for all students in 5th grade - that is the only year I ever see any substantial number of girls participate at all. In any other year, it’s almost ALL boys. Also, in our HS, only one out of 8 science teachers are female. </p>
<p>I think the idea that boys are good at math and science and girls are good and writing and social studies and language still hold in many schools - we see few boys in APUSH and few girls in Calculus. </p>
<p>Of course nationwide, we see few students of either gender taking these classes…</p>
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My D had the most amazing science teachers. It is because of those women that she is in a chemistry major. My son has a female bio teacher this year. She is tough and no nonsense, which is exactly what he needs. She set her expectations out in a class contract the first day of school and only deviated from it when the school was closed because of Sandy. He is thriving in that class.</p>
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Exactly. Unfortunately, there are too many kids whose experiences involve dysfunction and don’t involve support and opportunity. In that population, there is a lot of attention given to the needs of girls, to prevent pregnancy, dating violence, etc. (as there should be), but not much directed at boys who are at risk. Boys are at much higher risk of going to jail than girls and more at risk to become crime victims. Those things matter and should be addressed, even though they are gender specific.</p>
<p>All of the programs in recent years that were aimed at helping girls close the gender gap weren’t examples of making excuses for girls, and neither would providing support specifically for boys be about making excuses for them. Even in high school, they’re still kids and we have a responsibility as a society to all kids, regardless of gender.</p>
<p>"Some of the people I know have encouraged their daughters to be manipulative princesses since birth. The sons would never think of behaving the way such girls are encouraged to be: the tattling, the whining, the drama. As a woman, THAT makes me sad.</p>
<p>Luckily, most of the people I know treat their children like individuals, not simply as members of a gender."</p>
<p>I haven’t seen anybody encouraging that, but bemoaning it. And tolerating it, so maybe that could be considered encouraging. I couldn’t stand that behavior, wouldn’t know how to deal with it, so I think we’ve had it a lot easier with boys.</p>
<p>I don’t know any of these young men this article is talking about. They sound fictional to me. All my friend’s sons, my kid’s friends, family…are working very hard, and are quite successful. The few that I’ve heard of that are trying to find good jobs are still trying like crazy, diligently working towards that process, and are not lounging around viewing porn and watching video games. I think these young men are either fictional or the number is highly exaggerated.</p>
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<p>I’d have to agree. Though among my son’s cohort I know high achieving types who are doing great and slacker types who are not. Same for my D’s cohort…</p>
<p>I don’t know any of the slacker-types, but I do know more than a few young men who are in prison. More even that who are fathers without contact with their children.</p>
<p>It always seems to me that the ones who graduate from college and then regress need nothing so much as a swift kick in the butt. Or have needed it somewhere in their lives and didn’t get it. Parenting can be tough sometimes.</p>
<p>“I don’t know any of the slacker-types, but I do know more than a few young men who are in prison. More even that who are fathers without contact with their children”</p>
<p>I don’t know any, but I spend plenty of time in the mid-South and get to see the results of fatherless children. Particularly sad, especially the young men joining gangs for acceptance. I’ll bet out of all factors considered in life success, such as happiness, poverty, and accomplishment… having a father around would be the #1 contributing factor to success.</p>
<p>Though I do know some women who are able to do a remarkable job without the dads around, they are all women of means and are highly accomplished themselves. They are miracle workers and try twice as hard as most everyone else.</p>
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<p>Or perhaps need to know that moving home is not a good option? We don’t have the type/size of home that has a space for an adult child. A bedroom, maybe, and a shared bathroom…but that’s it.</p>
<p>When I went to college my parents moved to a new city. When I came home from a residential college early, and returned to a different one as a commuter, I was able to take over their apartment (the one I grew up in). Not for free, though, I got a job, assumed responsibility for the rent and got roommates and made it work.</p>
<p>I can’t imagine offering my kids a finished basement or apartment within our house…I don’t have it and even if I did I don’t think I would.</p>
<p>My oldest D is living in my attic right now while finishing her master’s degree. However, she is working more than full time at a job in her profession while going to school, has worked full time since she was 16 and is saving buckets of money. She will move out when she has finished school and will expect to buy a condo. We are glad she stayed here during grad school because she drove my son to school every day last year which was a huge burden lifter for me.
But we will be very, very glad to get her room back when she moves out!</p>
<p>I thought this was interesting.
[Black</a> boys see bleak future at school - SFGate](<a href=“Black boys see bleak future at school”>Black boys see bleak future at school)</p>
<p>This is a pretty interesting thread and I’m fairly busy at work so I can’t read every post but there does seem to be a systemic problem here given the numbers. I have one nephew that could be in this category (his parents support him in a shared apartment and he is marginally going to school and doesn’t have a job). This is in California where I think that finding work is a lot harder than in our area.</p>
<p>I’m mostly just reading some of the posts here as there are a number of interesting topics.</p>
<p>"There are very, very few male teachers in the grades prior to high school and it definitely has an impact. "</p>
<p>Zoosermom, I don’t know what schools you went to, but that was my experience all through school, and I graduated high school 30+ years ago. In grade school I think I had one male teacher, in middle school 1 or 2. In high school I had a bit more, the band directors, the shop teachers (not that I took much), and several of the science teachers, but most of the teachers were women, too. </p>
<p>Teaching in schools traditionally was very heavily weighted towards women, and that is true in private or public schools across the board, and i am pretty certain it was true in my parents generation before WWII in NYC in most cases.</p>
<p>NYC during the depression may have been the one exception, because of the great depression men who otherwise might have taught at the college level or out in industry went into teaching because the jobs were there (Malcolm Gladwell talks about this in “Outliers”, plus i have my parents testimony, my mom’s high school in the south bronx had a math department where many of the members had phd’s…).</p>