<p>^^Zoosermom I think you have some very valid points. I don’t live in an urban area and we have a high percentage of intact families and the area is pretty Waspy with only a few token Asians, Hispanic and Blacks and those families are pretty middleclass… so of course my generalizations are founded by my environment. is is what it is. I find the comments about percent of boys in the top of the class interesting, because in fact, for at least the past 8 years that I’ve paid attention our graduating senior scholars are about evenly divided between boys and girls and the top scholar has been a boy seven out of 8 years. I absolutely think environment, expectations and role modeling plays a big part in this. Deep inside though, the boys that are successful at our district learn what the (mostly female) teachers want and either chose to deliver the silly homework assignments, extra credit busy work etc. like my third or they rebel. My oldest when I step back had the most intellectual horsepower and excelled at humanities was also the most rebellious and wrote his college essay about what was “wrong” with high school. He did well in college. As I said, I have no idea how he feels about women but tended to eschew organized activities, clubs, etc. he was popular but not in the Mr. High School sort of way. But K-12 education had some negative impact on him absolutely. We are fortunate that the balance is we have some excellent male teachers that the boys tend to gravitate toward and fortunately they are teaching more of the AP and rigorous courses and those men tend not to give nor like to correct “daily homework.” The one female teacher that teaches a tough, tough class teaches it like a college level class…very little busy work and very few grades. All three of my boys liked her much and two had her do their recommendations. Male modeling is a big piece of this and, I didn’t intend to omit that in my looong first post.</p>
<p>Momofthreeboys, your son sounds like my kind of guy. My girls both had more of an ability to smile and nod than my son does, which is certainly something we need to work on. My son is the kind of guy who likes very little fluff and frill. Very barebones in all things, even his education. In a perfect world every kid would have a great environment, but the fact is that they don’t. We have three choices. We can give up on the kids who are at risk, we can remove them from their homes, or we can try to make the best of the school circumstances. For me, part of that would be to have male role models. If not teachers, then maybe volunteer mentors, sports coaches. Something. Boys need men. Even boys like my son who aren’t manly-men in the typical sense. (Although now that he is so much bigger than I am, his protective and care-taking side has come out, which amuses me greatly.)</p>
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<p>Don’t the girls who are successful have to do this too? Or are we assuming that girls enjoy silly homework assignments and extra credit busywork?</p>
<p>I think it depends on the girl, as it does on the boy, but girls are more likely to make the best of things and less likely to be disruptive.</p>
<p>My oldest daughter wrote a paper on how classes “should” be graded. She posited that there should be three alternatives, that a student should have to choose at the start of the class and not be able to change their mind partway through, and that they should choose between: 1. balance between papers/tests and homework/projects. 2. solely homework/projects. 3. solely papers/tests. </p>
<p>She felt that if every student got to choose between these three alternatives at the start of a class, they would do as well as they could do in terms of mastering the subject. clearly the test takers would still need to do the homework, and papers ARE homework, but you get the picture. Busy work for those types. Big tests for the other types. A mix for those who like to hedge their bets.</p>
<p>ETA: lately, it seems whenever we talk about how the “system” is letting the kids down, it is more and more clear to me it is because it IS a system that makes no room for individual styles and strengths. FWIW</p>
<p>I am longtime lurker here but felt compelled to post, bear with me.</p>
<p>It’s important to note that there are multiple issues at play, and they act at different levels. We can speak of gender achievement gaps, we can talk about failure in role models or family/societal guidance, we can talk about systemic failure in education system with regards to social class, race, etc. (cf. SFGate article posted above).</p>
<p>I want to touch only on the original article and the apparent trend of young men failing too “grow up”. If my evidence is too anecdotal, I apologize. Take it for what it is.</p>
<p><em>big breath</em></p>
<p>I am a 25 year old male, graduated two years ago, currently unemployed, living in my mother’s house.</p>
<p>Hold passing judgment! 
I am unemployed because I voluntarily quit my job to finish a graduate degree, previously funded by my employer, now by myself, and have a contract waiting for a signifcantly higher paying position next year upon my graduation, incidentally when I will also finally move out of my parents’ home.</p>
<p>Am I grown up? Hardly. By this age my father, also college educated, was married and a year away from having his first child. I’m more inconvenienced with cooking breakfast for myself than worrying about last minute paediatrician appointments.</p>
<p>Let’s look at some of my male friends/classmates - we all graduated about the same time, all got hired immediately out of school (we’re in engineering/high-tech) and as far as I know all make around $75k-100k at the age of 25-26, some with graduate degrees, some without, also varying heavily on geographic location.</p>
<p>In some ways we are the opposite of the chronically unemployed and aimless male youth described in the article, but in other ways we are <em>exactly alike</em>.</p>
<p>Why?</p>
<p>Because if you compare any of us to our fathers (who were all by the way present and available in our youth as far as I am aware) we are years behind. None of my friends are married, only one is in a meaningful long-term relationship. It is probably fair to say there is some mild internet “addiction” across the board, moderate to heavy consumption of online pornography, and heavy drinking as a favourite pastime - all the terrible ills cited in the article.</p>
<p>Is this normal and expected at our age? I don’t know. I do have to say it seems rather hard to grow up these days. You move out of your parents’ basement only to pack a small San Francisco apartment with three or more ‘dudes’ because the rent is $4k a month and all of a sudden your six figure ‘jackpot’ salary doesn’t seem to go very far at all. Is that really growing up or just another college-like dorm?</p>
<p>How about relationships? Well, the stats I’ve accumulated don’t seem too encouraging there either. The article cites a 24-year-old woman complaining that “the majority of the guys my age that I meet are immature”. I’d love to introduce her to a buddy of mine, very successful professionally, who had dreams of the perfect married life with two children by his late twenties. Only that life was not nearly exciting enough to keep afloat a relationship he invested years of effort and emotion in - and he was promptly dumped, to become extremely skeptical of marriage at all these days. The maturity gap goes both ways (for both genders).</p>
<p>Another interesting aspect has to do with the personality types some of these successful careers attract. I know, and admittedly identify with, a fair number of introverted types who studied and now work in 90% male dominated fields. We might do oaky financially, but at what social cost? Since women don’t really seem to be part of these young men’s lives the frat-like male lifestyle continues well into our late twenties, and maybe beyond.</p>
<p>Somehow I’m not surprised to read that today’s twenty something males have dwindling sperm counts. Between the years of student diet and exam stress, followed by crazy work hours chasing those big bucks, increasing social pressure to be a successful high earner in a difficult economic climate with no end in sight, and substance abuse to keep it all going it’s no mystery. So whose fault is it anyway?</p>
<p>/rant-out</p>
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<p>Since you seem mildly intelligent, let’s just say that at your age, it’s not about “fault” but responsibility.</p>
<p>You are responsible for your own life and your own happiness and success at your age. If you choose to be single or whatnot? go for it.</p>
<p>PStudent, thanks for your thoughts. I continue to mull over this article and talk about it with all my friends with sons. Still not sure what to think.</p>
<p>PerpetualStudent brings up good points. While in some cases, one can blame a lack of a good father figure for the behavior of some young men, in many cases this isn’t at all applicable. I’m sure there are a multitude of factors playing here including: parents more willing to support their kids financially including to continue to live in their house, bad job market, and perhaps parents being less stringent with discipline when their kids were younger. Some of these are also applicable to girls. A lot of my daughter’s friends have similar behavior except playing video games etc. but they have the same view of marriage. When I was growing up, while parents might financially support their kids, it was definitely not at all assumed nor would many kids want to live with their parents.</p>
<p>I am with zoosermom on this one. Schools have always inherently favored those who can put their desires behind those of The Group, those who conform, those who get along and go along, and those who bend easily to authority. I feel like NOT doing those things is what we spent so much time impressing upon our young women (be strong, be assertive, be motivated, be intelligent, be active, question roles and authority) but still don’t like seeing from our young men. And I completely agree that the portrayal of dads, in particular, in advertising and TV/movies is something no gender should suffer – the dumb, clueless, hopeless guy who’s snappy, smart, clever wife is better than he deserves. Where’s the progress in that?
There’s a lot to think about here, but I will say that S1 often has opined that women his age (22-25ish) talk a lot about equality but are chasing athletes and rich guys with cars. He announced he was tired of being the safe, reliable friend who was picking up the pieces after girls made poor choices with glamour guys. Are more guys his age adrift than the girls? It does seem to be so. I’m not sure this article has any answers that count.</p>
<p>That reminds me of the lax bro video.</p>
<p>“Do I play lacrosse? Yes. Do I get lots of girls? Yes. Do I get lots of girls because I play lacrosse? No. I’m also affluent.”</p>
<p>:D </p>
<p>Or close enough …</p>
<p>I haven’t read all of the responses yet so I don’t know if this aspect has been brought up yet or not. My husband and I were discussing this whole issue this morning after I had seen the article yesterday. We have two sons in this age group. What we have noticed is when our sons come home to stay for a while they ten to revert back to a more teen aged approach to life. Old tapes and such. When they are on their own they show much more responsibility and ambition. One will be back from time to time due to the nature of his career and the other I don’t think will be back unless the bottom drops out of his life. </p>
<p>Can you see what I mean, one thing affects the other. Needing to come home to save money or job transition, etc. then old tapes kicking in to behave in a less responsible way, which effects their outlook therefore social life…and so on. I am sure that his dad and I have responsibility in this situation. We have been discussing how we can keep the old family dynamics from kicking in as it is not good for any of us especially not our son.</p>
<p>Consolation, I read your son’s response before you took it down. I agree it was like trying to drink from a fire hose. I have been thinking about what he said all day. I hope he gives permission to post.</p>
<p>My son’s Top 10% of the HS Class is usually split 50-50 between boys and girls. </p>
<p>The Marines used to be the easiest service to enlist in as it had the lowest standards…not sure if that is still the case. I knew many fellow Marines who chose to join the service rather than face jail time. I was faced with the choice of being drafted for four years, or enlisting in either the Army or Marines for two years. I chose the Marines, and the self-discipline and esprit de corps still guides me to this day. I’m sure the other services offer a “father figure” to their recruits too.</p>
<p>Is it me, or are most of the young men saddled with addictions of all types these days?</p>
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<p>My S went to the same school. I’ve been at the annual academic awards night more than most people, since after S graduated I started presenting a book award.</p>
<p>Every year, they give out about 13 book awards. Every year, almost all of them go to girls. S’s junior year, 3 boys got an award. I think that may have been a record. (His class had a large number of very smart, BWRK boys and girls.) The girls are accomplished, sure–but boys who are far more accomplished are routinely passed over by the guidance people, who pick the winners. I sit with teacher/presenters during the ceremony, and some of THEM have started to mutter about it.</p>
<p>As for the Top 10, the grades at our HS are unweighted. An a in AP Physics is equal to an A in freshman year non-honors general science. An A in AP-thread Shakespeare is equal to an A in the lowest level English class. The class is not officially ranked, but they do declare a val and sal. One year, the val was a girl who had never taken a single honors or AP class. In my S’s class, the only 2 boys in the top 10 were the val and sal. Kids who DIDN’T get into the top 10 included boys who attended schools such as Wesleyan, Penn, Dartmouth, Bowdoin, and Williams. The top 10 and the book awards are dominated by pleaser-girls. (Girls who are rebellious and/or introverted must exist, but if so they are invisible, just like the boys.)</p>
<p>@srw: Thanks. I’ve emailed him for permission. I have no idea what he’ll say. :)</p>
<p>A lot of good posts, a lot of thoughts. First of all, I think we have to be careful of what we are talking about, who we are talking about, it highlights the problems with statements like “sorry lives of today’s young men”, it is so broad a statement, it makes it seem like a)every young man is a problem b)that their problems are the same and c)that the cause is the same. When you are dealing with a rapidly changing world, when there are so many factors flying around, discerning cause from effect is very difficult.</p>
<p>Put it this way, comparing the plight of inner city minority kids (black and hispanic are usually the targets) with a white kid raised by divorced parents from a middle class background to a young man who grew up white in a rural place, is difficult because where you grow up and who you grow up with is critical. </p>
<p>With the plight of inner city boys, especially young black males, it isn’t because schools have become ‘feminized’, it isn’t because of anti male bias, it is because there have been problems within that community for a long, long time, going well back into the so called 'Good old days". Daniel Patrick Moynihan wrote about the issue in the late 1950’s and into the 60’s, when he pointed out that the state of the black family was critical and deteriorating and pointed out the costs of that and predicted what would happen, and he was right. Those kids are failing because they are born to single mothers who themselves have come from a bad background and they live in places where that is the norm, not the exception. I think Zoosermom is correct that these kids are being failed and things that could help them cannot or will not, but it is way off the issue we are talking about, because the roots are incredibly different.</p>
<p>Likewise, to claim that boys who end up living at home after school are obviously lazy slacker types, who don’t want to grow up, is ignoring the background. After WWII in NYC, a lot of kids and even married adults ended up living with parents, in part because there was a severe housing shortage in NYC after the war. They weren’t lazy, it was that affordable housing wasn’t available, for a number of reasons. Eventually as programs built housing the moved out to their own places, but if you looked at it, would you call them lazy?</p>
<p>Comparing against prior generations is kind of dubious, because circumstances were different and people are looking at today with the eyes of the past. First of all, young people are coming out of school with huge debt loads, which were not common in prior generations, the cost of college has gone nuts in recent decades, and these kids are bearing the burden of it. Entry level jobs pay more in many cases then they did back then, but scaled against the debt burden, not that much. Then, too, housing has become very expensive in many of the places that have jobs, even with this housing crunch the cost of renting an apartment is much, much higher then it was when I got out. Back then, you could find a roommate and in a decent area of NYC rent an apartment and work in the city, these days when a one bedroom on the lowest east side (aka tenement row) is 4000/month, talk to me, salaries haven’t gone up that much. </p>
<p>Too, we have seen in the last several years that it is difficult to even get a job, and a lot of the time it is for jobs that traditionally wouldn’t even require degree yet still don’t pay that well. Faced with that and the cost of living, living with parents is an option where they can hopefully get out from under their student debt and maybe save some money to be able to get an apartment when a decent job comes along. Sure, I had my own apartment after I graduated college, but I had a decent paying job, too, that allowed me to afford it, but it was better times then. </p>
<p>The other issue I think is in prior generations if you didn’t want to go to college there were paths to well paying jobs, in my dad’s era until probably the 1970’s you could come out of high school and find a decent paying job that could grow into something that would support a middle class lifestyle, that doesn’t really exist any more. I just read a blurb in the Times that said almost 70% of high school graduates plan to go on to college, that is staggering, ti is not a number seen in prior generations, which is probably forcing a lot of kids who otherwise wouldn’t go to college to do so, and it may be part of the problem. We don’t have the alternate track towards vocational careers, so kids and their parents figure the only thing to do is go to college, and schools are now geared around that. Looking at the curicula in schools these days, it is pretty much all geared towards getting the students through standardized tests, to take AP tests and SAT’s and the like and get into a ‘good college’, which I think proportionally leaves more male students in a lurch then female ones, so I think there is some truth to ‘lost boys’. The boys today who would be considered ‘losers and slackers’ in a generation or more past, would be the archie bunkers of the world, they would find a decent job and have a decent life, because it was relatively easy to do so, today for boys of a similar bent there isn’t much for them, and it is because society has changed. </p>
<p>I don’t think it is ‘feminization’, I think it is that schools have become even more monolithic then they were in my time, and it wasn’t great back then, that in reaction to changing times and expectations, they make certain things worse, and I think some boys have trouble with that, more then girls do. I think there are issues with schools that instead of figuring out why a student has problems, has some schlub of a school psychologist saying they have ADD…and yes, I do think the lack of physical activity, where schools have cut back on recess and gym classes, hurts boys, but then again, I think it hurts girls too, the same way cutting arts programs and music programs and such hurts them, but I think as a root cause of some wider phenomenon, doubtful.</p>
<p>Are there young men living in their parents basement like a Judd Apatow movie? Are there young men who spend their time playing video games and the like and acting like perpetual teenagers? Yeah, but want to know something, I also see a lot of very hardworking, driven kids who live at home because it makes sense to, to help them get their feet wet, to get out from under debts and such. I don’t necessarily think that it is ideal, I am glad I didn’t do it, but it doesn’t mean all young men are wastrals, I think it is a sign of the times that is being misconstrued, deliberately, to make a political point that is part of the old “in my day” crap old farts like us love to put out there;). </p>
<p>I think the media has exacerbated the problem, movies and tv shows do tend to show the type of young man we are talking about, and while they exist, they aren’t the mainstream, either. But movies and tv shows have never been particularly good at portraying real life, 1950’s tv, despite what people who grew up then claim, don’t talk about the realities of the 1950’s either, Robert Young, the smiling dad of “Father Knows Best” was a serious alcoholic who wasn’t a great dad, and read memoirs of kids growing up in the 1950’s and you start realizing that what was on tv was an illusion, too (one that certain types point to as proof the 1950’s were a ‘golden age’ or something…ironically, at the time, newspapers and writers were hyping that the youth of America were degenerating into juvenile delinguents, movies like the "Wild Ones’ made it seem like the youth of America were psychopaths…)…today we have ‘reality’ tv that ya gotta wonder at, how many young people resemble the gaffones on “Jersey Shore” or the lives of that family of families, the Kardashians?..btw, if you went from "reality tv’ as to what women were like, there would be no marriages, men would become monks or something…:). I think media has always portrayed the outrageous, the difference is in prior generations men were often left alone (other then the occasional Ed Norton), it was women and non whites that were denigrated, it is how the media operates, just is these days guys are now the open target, kind of goes in cycles. Might also be a bit of payback as women actually have positions of authority…</p>
<p>I think there are real issues, I would be the last person to say there aren’t, we have real issues like in a globalized world (aka find the dirt cheap labor anywhere you can), what is the role going to be of workers? How do we maintain living wages in the face of that kind of competition? How do we train people for jobs they are capable of and want? I think things changed faster then society does, and it has left more then a few in the lurch…</p>
<p>In terms of relationships, if you want my honest answer, I think it isn’t that boys are immature only, I think both girls and boys are having trouble navigating the waters based on what I see. Young women now have expectations on them that weren’t there a generation or two ago, they are torn between the world of today where most women work outside the home, where they are looking to make a career, and then still have the expectations of finding the right guy, getting married…and adding a new dimension to complex lives and I suspect their own doubts, their own worries, make it hard to find a guy (or gay if oriented that way) to establish a relationship with. Without meaning to sound like an old fart chauvinist, it wasn’t that long ago that many women when dating were looking for a guy to settle down with, in many cases leave the work force, raise families and then maybe go back when the kids were older, that no longer is the norm, and I think it is changing things, plus I also suspect that a lot of young people today have grown up already seeing the strains of modern family life, and they are a lot more picky about who they will choose, and to be totally honest, I think young men even in my day weren’t always so mature either, but I think the stakes are a lot higher now. I suggest looking back at what writers and stuff said about gen X (that I may or may not be part of, depends on who you talk to), and you see young men described the same way:)…again, I think a lot of this is being played against the back drop of changing times that make old ways of looking at things a bit obsolete.</p>
<p>“Kids who DIDN’T get into the top 10 included boys who attended schools such as Wesleyan, Penn, Dartmouth, Bowdoin, and Williams.”</p>
<p>Sounds to me like they had the last laugh in that one. Reminds me of the story of Mark O’Connor, the musican/composer (and helluva fiddler), and the story he has on his website about growing up in a rough Washington area and the way the school music teacher treated him. If I was him I would go back and find the twerp and rub it in, Mark is a lot nicer then I am…</p>
<p>It is part of the problem of ‘top 10’ rankings and such in general. In instrumental music (specifically violin) there are these fantastic international competitions, that have these young musicians who can play Paganini at warp speed, have technical flash that wows the panels, they win or place highly…then next are seen advertising themselves as teachers who won this or that competition, parents send their little prodigies there, etc…meanwhile, of the top violin soloists out there, very few of them won major competitions (a few may have won one or so), Yo Yo Ma the cellist delights in saying he entered one competition and finished dead frigging last:). </p>
<p>I am not saying the people running the school are doing things right or that it reflects reality, just saying that schools often are run by stupid people doing stupid things. I loved my dad dearly, and I think the time I appreciated it most was when he deflated the gasbag who was principal of the school, who was bragging to a group of parents about the SAT scores, kids going to college…and my dad asked him “so tell me, what exactly did you do to make sure that happened? How did the school have influence in doing that? You have a school full of middle to upper middle income kids, most of whom have college educated parents, look at what you started with, did you improve the product, or are you taking credit for kids who were bound to do well?”…and he was right. </p>
<p>Understand, I am not going to defend schools for doing things right (or the people who push them to do idiotic things), or that they are necessarily doing the right thing, it is just that I think the hype about schools being only for girls is as silly as some of what schools themselves do…</p>
<p>"Is it me, or are most of the young men saddled with addictions of all types these days? "</p>
<p>@tony, I had to laugh, not at you, but that sounds just like Ray Walston’s character of Mr. Hand in “Fast Times at Ridgemont High”, who assumed they all were on drugs <em>lol</em>. </p>
<p>Actually, I think the answer can be found in “West Side Story”</p>
<p>Dear kindly Sergeant Krupke,
You gotta understand,
It’s just our bringin’ up-ke
That gets us out of hand.
Our mothers all are junkies,
Our fathers all are drunks.
Golly Moses, natcherly we’re punks! </p>
<p>My father is a b****rd,
My ma’s an S.O.B.
My grandpa’s always plastered,
My grandma pushes tea.
My sister wears a mustache,
My brother wears a dress.
Goodness gracious, that’s why I’m a mess! </p>
<p>C1956…:)</p>
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<p>It exists in many places. [C-TEC</a> High School](<a href=“http://www.c-tec.edu/HS/]C-TEC”>http://www.c-tec.edu/HS/)</p>
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<p>Completely agree. From hardworking Ricky and stupid-crazy Lucy to…well I don’t know, I haven’t watched sitcoms for years. Family Guy, 2 and a 1/2 men?</p>
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<p>This gets at one of the big problems. Back around the 50’s many poorer working class families had to have two incomes to get by but many middle and upper middle class families didn’t. Now most families feel it’s hard to afford a decent home, college, whatever without both spouses working. Our workforce has done something like double…but incomes haven’t, and I don’t believe jobs have.</p>
<p>One of the issues is that thanks to media, folks see a LOT of stuff that it appears that “everyone has” without any sacrifices–cool job, cool friends, nice clothes, nice place to live, nice new car, nice everything. People all want to live like that but all of those things require trade-offs and the TV shows & other things perpetuate the myth that everyone can “have it all” and SHOULD.</p>
<p>There are no or very few shows that promote truly simple pleasures and values. THINGS take money, time, resources, etc. As was said, costs have gone up but wages and jobs generally haven’t kept pace.</p>
<p>Sorry, didn’t read every post, but I think it has to do with women’s empowerment and changing gender roles. In prior generations, men were expected to be the protectors and breadwinners and aggressors in relationships, so they grew up with pressure to fulfill those roles and the stress of those expectations motivated them to achieve. Now that we no longer rely on them to do those things, there is less stress and need for action. Men can sit back and the women will do everything now. (Not all men are this way of course).</p>