Title: Why Men And Boys Are Struggling

Micah Loewinger: Hey. I'm Micah Loewinger, and you're listening to the On The Media Podcast Extra. In the run-up to the election, Donald Trump was doggedly pursuing the votes of young men. He courted them, as we described on the show, through interviews with influencers like Joe Rogan and Adin Ross.

Joe Rogan: "Yes."

Donald Trump: "I think this is the far--"

Joe Rogan: "I mean, other than going to war and being a firefighter or being a cop-

Donald Trump: "Yeah."

Joe Rogan: -it's the most dangerous business because--"

Donald Trump: "It's the most dangerous-- Being president is the most dangerous--"

Joe Rogan: "Especially you. I mean-

Donald Trump: "Oh, much more so."

Joe Rogan: -you haven't even got to the election, there's been two assassination attempts."

Micah Loewinger: Donald Trump was on Adin Ross's live stream, where Adin gifted him a Cybertruck wrapped with the moment right after the attempted assassination.

Donald Trump: "That's an Elon."

Adin Ross: "It is an Elon."

Donald Trump: "Wow."

Adin Ross: "Shout out to Mr. Musk."

Donal Trump: "That's beautiful. That is beautiful."

Adin Ross: "Check out this wrapper. Let me know your honest thoughts."

Micah Loewinger: These personalities are part of the so-called manosphere, where anti-feminist often right-wing politics are the norm. While reporting on this corner of the internet, I've been thinking a lot about a conversation I had last year with Richard Reeves, author of the book Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male Is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do About It. He told me that the mainstream political discourse around men is fundamentally broken.

Richard Reeves: I should be clear at the outset that my focus here is on the approximately 95% of men who are cisgender and heterosexual. It's not that there aren't many, many other issues, some of which overlap for other men, but this is squarely focused at that particular group of men.

Micah Loewinger: You write about how many advised you against writing this book. I also want to acknowledge the cognitive dissonance of the thesis and the book that some listeners might identify, which is that men and boys are struggling at a time when men still very much run our society. There are many ways you could quantify this. There are three times as many men in Congress than women, less than 10% of the Fortune 500 companies are run by women, and casual misogyny is pervasive throughout our culture.

Richard Reeves: The way you ask the question depends on where you look. If you look at the apex of our society, it's absolutely true that there's still a long way to go. I would say, especially in the US in terms of female representation in politics, for example, and in boardrooms and in other areas of society. As it happens, I'm married to a woman who's trying to raise money right now for a startup business, so I know on a very personal level that only 3% of venture capital money goes to female founders. I'm reminded of that on I think a daily basis, but those challenges remain largely at the top of society.

If we look further down, then we see a very, very different picture. For working-class men, for Black boys and men, those with less economic power, there's a very different story. It can simultaneously be true that men at the top of the distribution are doing better on many fronts, including in terms of earnings. It can also be true that most American men are earning less today than most American men did in 1979. This is very much a class and a race story.

The problem is that if your world, let's say, is one of the upper middle class, right at the top of society and you're looking up, then it's hard to see the boys and men who are struggling. That's because you're looking the wrong way. You might be leaning in, to use Sheryl Sandberg's famous phrase, but you're not looking down.

Micah Loewinger: I want to kind of tick through some of the points of your research. Let's start with education. What are some of the markers that men and boys are struggling?

Richard Reeves: In 1972 when Title IX was passed to support women and girls in education, men were about 13 percentage points more likely to get a four-year college degree. Today, women are 15 percentage points more likely than men to get a four-year college degree. There's been this huge overtaking in education. We also see that in high school, where girls account for 2/3 of the top 10% of students ranked by GPA, whereas boys account for 2/3 of those at the bottom.

In the average school district in the US, girls are almost a grade level ahead in English and dead-even in math, and in the poorer school districts, a grade level ahead in English and quite a long way ahead in math as well. You don't see such big gender gaps in upper middle class, richer households, richer neighborhoods, partly because the parents with resources are able to actually invest more heavily in their boys, and so to some extent overcome some of the disadvantages they might otherwise face in the education system.

Micah Loewinger: You cite, as one of the potential causes of this education gap, the different speeds at which our brains develop. You point out that men's prefrontal cortexes only catch up with women in their early 20s.

Richard Reeves: The way the education system is currently structured does build in something of an advantage for girls and women because the prefrontal cortex of girls develops earlier than boys, largely because that's triggered by puberty, which occurs earlier in girls than boys. The prefrontal cortex is an interesting part of the brain because it's the bit that helps you turn in your chemistry homework on time. It's the bit that is sometimes called the CEO of the brain. It's about non-cognitive skills, organizational skills, et cetera.

To turn your chemistry homework in on time, you have to take your chemistry homework home. You have to remember to take it back in. You have to remember that you have a chemistry class to go to. It requires a whole bunch of skills that are not really about smarts. It's not true that girls are smarter than boys, or the other way around. There's no evidence for a gap in terms of that. Interestingly, SAT and ACT, these standardized tests, there's really no gender gap there, but in GPA there's a huge gap because GPA rewards turning in your homework on time.

Micah Loewinger: Which I think sets us up to talk about some of the discrepancies that you've observed in the labor market, where men's participation fell by seven percentage points in the last 50 years. That's 96% employment to 89%. Notably, the largest drop has been among young men ages 25 to 34. That would be my age group. [chuckles] You point out that one in three men with no more than high school level education are unemployed, which is a staggering five million people. What happened there?

Richard Reeves: It used to be true that men could actually do pretty well even without much education for all kinds of reasons, including sexism, but also just because there were a lot more jobs around, or sometimes called strong-back jobs. You had high school education, you could go to a factory, et cetera. Those jobs just aren't there in the numbers they were anymore before, and so less skilled men in particular are really struggling in the labor market. Those are the ones also whose earnings have dropped so that even if they're in work, we've seen a stagnation of male wages in the middle and bottom half of the distribution.

Micah Loewinger: Sometimes this is crudely framed as like the brawny jobs versus the brainy jobs.

Richard Reeves: The Bureau for Labor Statistics actually has a measure of jobs that require physical strength. The number of jobs that require any kind of serious physical strength has now dropped to below 10%. It's not that there are none, but it used to be closer to 30%.

Micah Loewinger: Alongside this is a pretty striking mental health crisis. Young men are four times more likely to die by suicide. According to Pew, drug overdose deaths among Black men in the US more than tripled between 2015 and 2020.

Richard Reeves: I was very struck by a study published in The British Medical Journal by a scholar called Fiona Shand, where she and her colleagues looked at the words that men use to describe themselves before suicide or attempted suicide, and the two most commonly used words were useless and worthless. This sense of like use and worth, I do think it's an uncontroversial statement to say that it's a pretty universal human need to be needed. Your family needs you. Your employer needs you. Your community needs you. You have a specific role in society.

I see suicide rates and other mental health problems as symptoms of a deeper malaise which is, for many men, a loss of purpose, a loss of meaning, a loss of a sense of how should I be in the world. That's a crisis that we should take very seriously. The solution is not to say, yes, let's go back to the old world where men were heads of the household and the primary breadwinners, and that worked really well, because, guess what? It didn't work very well.

Micah Loewinger: Speaking of turning back the clock, now that we have a snapshot of these disparities, I want to talk about our albeit broken political conversation and how it's metabolized some of these data points. I think it's really clear how the American right has capitalized on this big time.

Senator Josh Hawley: "I want to focus tonight on the deconstruction of men. Not because I think men are more important, but because I believe the attack on men has been the tip of the spear in the left's broader attack on America."

Micah Loewinger: That's Missouri Senator Josh Hawley speaking at the National Conservatism Conference in November 2021.

Richard Reeves: It's pretty clear what he's doing here. He's taking this sense that men are struggling. Many boys are struggling in school, many men are struggling in the labor market, many dads are struggling to be in their kids' lives. Those are facts, true, and in many cases, getting worse. What Hawley is doing and many others are doing is channeling that and helping to turn it into a grievance, and then saying, yes, we see you're struggling. Guess whose fault it is? It's the fault of the left because they don't care about you. In fact they think you're toxic. They think you're the problem.

They think, to borrow a phrase from a lot of men's rights activists, that women have problems, men are problems, and they're turning that against the left. My take of this is that if real problems are not addressed by responsible people, by mainstream institutions, they metastasize into grievances. Once they become grievances, they can be exploited for political ends without any tangible solutions. The best that he can do or has done so far is to say we should bring back marriage and bring back manufacturing. Okay. Good luck with that, Senator. There hasn't been a single marriage promotion policy that's worked in the US, and bringing back manufacturing is a pretty tough thing to do.

Even Donald Trump couldn't talk manufacturing back into existence. It just goes against many of the trends in the global economy. That doesn't matter. The point is not to offer solutions that are actually workable. The point is simply to activate the grievances. Reactionary politicians around the world - it's not just in the US. Look at South Korea. Look at East Germany. Look at Brexit - are actually really working with the grain of this male malaise and turning it to their political advantage, but there are no policies. The cupboard is bare in terms of actually doing anything.

Micah Loewinger: Meanwhile, you believe that the left is basically in denial that this is even a problem. That there are these systemic issues affecting men. This is not the language that you often hear in the left, you believe.

Richard Reeves: I think the problem is that the response from the left has largely been one of an echoing silence. The left really hasn't engaged with these issues very much at all. It almost seems intellectually impossible for those on the left to say, "Well, actually, there are some inequalities going the other way now as well," and take seriously the issues of boys and men. I get it. There's this kind of visceral reaction. There's a reflex. Even perhaps among people listening to our conversation, there'll be this reflex, like, "Really?"

Micah Loewinger: Well, we're both white guys and we're speaking on behalf of all kinds of people in this conversation.

Richard Reeves: Sure. That "Really?" response is entirely appropriate. They say, "Yes, really. Look at these data points and then we can discuss it and so on, but don't suggest that it couldn't even be possible that there are these inequalities going either way." If the right is trying to turn back the clock, to some extent, on women, I think the left are too often turning their back on boys and men, or worse, sometimes suggesting that if there are problems that boys and men are having, it must be their fault. This is the rare occasion when the left is willing to use very individualistic diagnosis of what's happening.

Typically, the left is more comfortable with structural suggestions as to what's happening. There's this sense from the left of like even if we agree you're struggling, well, they're going to say it's your fault, you just need to shape up. Maybe you're a bit toxic as well.

Micah Loewinger: You've used that term "toxic masculinity." I'm sure it means different things to different people. I'd like to know how you define it and why you don't like the term.

Richard Reeves: It used to be quite a useful term in obscure corners of academia. It was used by people looking at very violent offenders, men, for whom their idea of what it meant to be a man had become psychologically very strongly connected to violence. Then it broke out into the mainstream in about 2016. My problem with it is twofold. One is it's just used completely indiscriminately to describe any kind of behavior that the user of the term disapproves of.

The other big problem with it is just by putting the word toxic next to the word masculinity, it gets very close to the kind of Puritan ideas of original sin. There is something toxic within you. It allows, again, reactionary. It allows us on the right to be able to plausibly claim, "Look, they don't like you. They're not on your side. They think you're toxic."

Micah Loewinger: I think my favorite version of the toxic masculinity critique, which you cite in your book, comes from YouTuber ContraPoints, aka Natalie Wynn, in her 2020 video titled Men. "We say, look, toxic masculinity is the reason you don't have room to express your feelings, and it's the reason you feel lonely and inadequate. While feminism tells women 'You hate your body and you're constantly doubting yourself because society did this to you and needs to change,' we kind of just tell men 'You're lonely and suicidal because you're toxic.' Stop it. We tell them they're broken without really telling them how to fix themselves. I think what we need--''

Micah Loewinger: In your book, you also point to moments where the political left, the Democratic Party, has missed opportunities to proudly use government to help men. Perhaps, as you argue, because of fear of what celebrating men might signal.

Richard Reeves: President Biden signed the infrastructure bill into law. More than 2/3 of the jobs from the infrastructure bill will go to men, predominantly working-class men, and a little bit disproportionately, working-class men of color it looks. Did the administration say that? No.

Micah Loewinger: Which would have prompted questions, you know?

Richard Reeves: Yes, but let's have that conversation. On the other hand, student debt cancellation was described as a gender justice issue because 2/3 of student debt is held by women because women go to college much more than men. The college debt thing was going to, by and large, help upper-middle-class women. The infrastructure was going to help working-class men, especially Hispanic working-class men.

It seems to me that it should be possible for an administration to say there's all kinds of problems. Some of these problems affect different groups. Actually, working-class men have not been doing very well in America in recent decades, and the infrastructure bill is going to help working-class men.

Micah Loewinger: When it comes to employment opportunities, you see potential in encouraging men to get into jobs that have been historically women-dominated: health, education, administration, and literacy, or the acronym that you use, HEAL. What would this fix about issues in the labor market, and what are some of the strategies you suggest?

Richard Reeves: What's really striking is that as we've desegregated most of the professions and occupations that were previously very male-dominated, that's not true for all. Things like law, certainly the higher status ones, a lot of the STEM jobs - most scientists in the US today are women - medicine, et cetera, really just become quite gender-equal now. Areas like social work, teaching, and psychology have become more gender segregated in recent decades. They've become much more female.

Those are professions that were pretty gender-equal in 1980, but now they're very strongly skewed towards women. It's gone from like 40%, 50% male representation to 20% male representation. If we think it matters, which I do, to be able to access male therapists or to have men in our classrooms, then the fact there are fewer and fewer over time should be something that we're paying attention to and maybe even doing something about.

Micah Loewinger: At the top of the conversation, we touched on the fact that men still largely hold the reins of power, especially if you look at, as you described it, the apex of society and that there has been such a large gender imbalance for so long. The playing field has barely evened out, and in many areas, it hasn't. The fight for gender equality has also made room for people in the LGBT community to succeed as well. I guess I'm trying to get at what's at stake here if trends continue and boys and men fall behind.

Richard Reeves: It turns out that it does matter if there's a big gender inequality in education, for example. Like for men as well as for women, actually getting a decent education is increasingly important in the labor market. Looking forward, if men are struggling in school and at college, they're not going to earn as much, and that's just bad. It's bad for families, it's bad for society. A world of floundering men is unlikely to be a world of flourishing women and children because we typically are in households and communities together. That's really what's at stake here.

I think that for a long time, it made sense to look at the world through one lens, which was let's look for the gender inequalities where women and girls are behind boys and men. Just keep looking for those, keep working on those. The idea of gender equality was synonymous with the cause of women and girls for, I don't know, let's say 10,000 years until yesterday, culturally speaking. The adjustment that requires, the mindset adjustment that requires is huge. I get it. I feel the cognitive dissonance myself.

There are now just enough signs in mental health, in employment, in education, where there just really are some growing problems for boys and men, that if we don't address them now, they're not going to fix themselves.

Micah Loewinger: Richard, thank you very much.

Richard Reeves: Thank you. Great conversation.

Micah Loewinger: Richard Reeves is a Senior Fellow in Economic Studies at the Brookings Institution. He's also the author of the book Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male Is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do About It. Thanks for listening to the On the Media Podcast Extra. Don't forget to tune into the big show this weekend to hear an interview I did with YouTuber and science communicator Hank Green.

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