Why Everyone Is Talking About Boys Right Now

Lots of people are voicing concerns about boys - can it lead to real change?

Photo by azees math on Unsplash

What an interesting moment! As you might know, I think we need to be doing a lot more to support boys’ friendships and social-emotional growth. I’m currently co-writing a book called Talk To Your Boys that’s designed to help parents have deeper, richer conversations with boys, and I’m a big advocate for boys’ groups in schools.

I’ve become used to having “build a case” for this work. I regularly have to explain why working with boys is an important element of the movement for gender equity, and that empowering girls (while wonderful) is not enough on its own.

That’s why it has a been a heartening surprise to see a flurry of recent media coverage about boys - it feels like the world is starting to understand and focus on this issue.

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Boys Get Everything, Except the Thing That’s Most Worth Having

Much of the recent buzz around boys has centered around

Ruth Whippman

and her new book “BOYMOM: Reimagining Boyhood in the Age of Impossible Masculinity.” I was lucky enough to attend Ruth’s book launch in Berkeley, and I’m thrilled to see her work getting so much attention. I recommend picking up the book and reading this striking essay she wrote for the New York Times. Heres’s an excerpt:

I have spent the last few years talking to boys as research for my new book, as well as raising my own three sons, and I have come to believe the conditions of modern boyhood amount to a perfect storm for loneliness. This is a new problem bumping up against an old one. All the old deficiencies and blind spots of male socialization are still in circulation — the same mass failure to teach boys relational skills and emotional intelligence, the same rigid masculinity norms and social prohibitions that push them away from intimacy and emotionality. But in screen-addicted, culture war-torn America, we have also added new ones.

Ruth’s been doing a ton of interviews related to the book - here are a few worth checking out:

• Boys on the Fringe of Society Aren’t so Different From Yours (CNN)

• Desperately Seeking Answers on How to Raise Boys (New York Times)

• Reimagining Boyhood (Culture Study)

• A Better Story for Boys (Jill Filipovic)

• We Have an Epidemic of "Uncared" Boys (Liz Plank)

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U.S. Surgeon General Sounds Alarm On Men Facing 'Crisis'

It’s not just Ruth Whippman calling attention to these issues. U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy talked to The Ink about his concerns related to boys and men:

We have to recognize that the data is actually quite clear that young men and boys are actually falling behind on many metrics, including in education. And addressing that does not mean that we are somehow deprioritizing caring for girls and women: young girls and women have struggled for equality for a long, long time, for generations.

I have noticed that there has been resistance to acknowledging that from people who worry that we'll take attention away from the continuing effort to ensure that girls and young women also can progress and that we can close the equity gap for them. I would not choose or between my son and my daughter, and I would not accept that as a choice that any of us should make. We've got to do both.

Read the rest of the interview here.

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Why We Don’t Always See That Boys Are In Pain

Boys and young men are struggling with emotional pain, yet the current approaches to detecting it work better for girls than they do for boys. In this video,

Richard V Reeves

, President of the American Institute for Boys and Men, and Dr. Lisa Damour discuss why emotional suffering in boys often goes unrecognized.

They focus on this essay Damour wrote recently, where she addresses the worry that if we focus attention on the suffering of boys, it will come at the cost of caring for girls:

I don’t think this concern is merited. For one thing, this need not be a zero-sum game; our hearts and minds are expansive enough that we can be concerned about all teenagers at once. For another, if roughly half the population’s mental health is under-regarded and consequently under-addressed, that’s bad for everyone. We are doing a better job of noticing the emotional distress of our teen girls. It is time to pay the same attention to our teen boys. 

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6 Ways Parents Can Help End 'The Boy Crisis'

All this discussion about boys reminded me of this piece my “Talk To Your Boys” co-author

Joanna Schroeder

published last year. In it, she shares some of the things she tries to consciously integrate into her day-to-day interactions with her boys and their friends — not just to help them feel loved, but also seen, heard and appreciated.

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What I Have To Say

Some of the data about boys is very alarming, but the good news is that I think there is a lot we can do to intervene. I’ve been writing and speaking about this a lot - here are some highlights from the past year:

• ParentData: Why Adolescent Boys Are Struggling
  The popularity of Andrew Tate shows us that boys are looking for examples of how to be a  man in the world. Tate knows how to use boys’ insecurities to build an audience. If we don’t proactively provide guidance and a place for boys to talk about masculinity, power, and success, they may latch onto the ideas of people like Tate, or look for advice in the posts of radical online extremists. READ MORE

• How To Talk To Boys So They Grow Into Better Men (Vox.com)
  Keren Landman, MD writes: ”Men are not okay. They’re less likely to graduate high school and go to college than women, have dwindling circles of friends, and are sitting out of the labor market at startling rates. Compared with women, they’re two to three times likelier to die of drug overdoses and nearly four times likelier to die by suicide. The disadvantages are particularly marked for working-class men and men of color. The problem begins in boyhood — and so should the solution, says award-winning health educator Christopher Pepper. In his view, a future where men are healthier and happier starts with better conversations with boys.” READ MORE

  

• Talking About Boys (Wisconsin Public Radio)
  For parents, raising boys to be good men has always been a daunting task, and the Internet and other cultural factors have made it more challenging than ever. In this episode,

  Jennifer L.W. Fink
  and I join Wisconsin Public Radio to talk about raising boys in today’s climate. LISTEN NOW
  

• Talk To Your Boys (The Puberty Podcast)
  In this animated and wide-ranging conversation, I talk about raising and teaching boys with Cara Natterson, MD and Vanessa Kroll Bennett, the authors of “This Is So Awkward: Modern Puberty Explained.” WATCH/LISTEN NOW

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