What Happened To Healthy Masculinity And Our Boys?

There is a boy crisis in America. What happened to healthy masculinity? By any objective measure, from Pre-K to College, boys are less resilient and less ambitious than they were a short time ago. Worldwide, boys are 50 percent less likely than girls to meet basic proficiency in reading, math, and science.  And, by virtually any objective measure, girls are thriving more than ever.

It’s simply a bad time to be a boy.

The Gender Gap

Across the US, alarm bells are going off at two- and four-year colleges. According to the National Student Clearinghouse, for every four men enrolled, there are six women enrolled. It’s the widest educational gender gap in history, but it isn’t limited to undergraduate study. Women earned more than 60% of all master’s degrees in 2020. That’s a new record. Women earned 151 master’s degrees last year for every 100 degrees earned by men.

This gender gap was first revealed in 1980 when female enrollment outpaced men for the first time in history. It marked a watershed in the evolution of education, as women finally gained equal access. But, the trend isn’t slowing down and it’s shining a spotlight on boys. According to the Wall Street Journal, the overall rate of college enrollment is dropping, down 1.5 million students compared to just five years ago. And, 70% of that reduction is attributable to men.

So what is driving this sudden lack of ambition in young men?

The Emasculation of Masculinity

As Ian Black opines above, we no longer know what it means to be a man. There is so much confusion and mixed messaging around masculinity. Toxic Masculinity has become a virtue signaling device for some. 

All that virtue signaling is great until your roof is on fire. You’ll want the firefighters to be more like The Marlboro Man and less like a Calvin Klein underwear model. You’ll want a guy straight out of a Hollywood casting department. A super-masculine guy who isn’t afraid of anything. He’ll drag you out of the burning house with one arm, stopping to light his Marlboro on your flaming couch.

The Identity Crisis

But in today’s world masculinity is frowned upon. That kind of messaging is tough enough for an adult male. It’s nearly impossible for a boy to understand:

• Men should be strong but not too strong. 

• Men should be in control but not controlling. 

• Men should be masculine, but not too masculine. 

While nobody is going to feel sorry for men, it is important to recognize that men today are feeling more confused and isolated than ever before. The traditional measures of masculinity: strength, independence, courage, bravery, and assertiveness are toxic in many circles. And, it’s creating an identity crisis.

Yes, these are confusing times for men. And, that’s making it harder to raise boys to be good men.

Must-See TV

Roll the clock back a few years to the time when the nation’s most popular television shows were all about family. Shows like The Brady Bunch and Father Knows Best. These shows, and many others like them, presented the typical American family. And they presented Dad as the source of wisdom and a sprinkling of tough love, when necessary. It’s different today. Replace Mike Brady with Homer Simpson or goofy Phil Dunfey. Could either of them raise six children in a three-bedroom house? Mike Brady managed to support a wife, six kids, and a maid. Despite his chops and killer 70’s get-up, he was quite remarkable. He was wise, calm, and demonstrated a strong moral compass. Where would those Brady kids be without him?

Eat What You Kill

Since it’s just you and me talking, I’d like to share an example. I’m a hunter. I love to be out in the woods in a deer stand or walking through the crisp, early morning fog with a pack of overeager bird dogs searching for Quail. There’s nothing quite like it.

But I’m extremely careful about telling people that I’m a hunter, until now. It’s frowned upon these days. The senseless and violent taking of a life for sport, etc. Except that same frowning, judgmental person waits in line at Chik-Fil-A for twenty minutes for their kid’s chicken sandwich.

Historically, hunting and fishing have been wonderful adventures. Opportunities for men and boys to be ……men and boys. To share a time-tested and healthy tradition. To be out among nature. To smear your face with camo paint and crawl on the forest floor. To overhear a dirty joke. To sneak a first sip of cold beer at the end of the day. But, these days boys aren’t exposed to any real adventures. Because adventures are just too “dangerous” for our boys.

But, deep in the soul of every young man beats the heart of a warrior. A man looking for adventure, for danger. An opportunity to slay the dragon snd rescue the damsel in distress.

See, as John Eldredge so eloquently writes inWild at Heart, “adventure, with all its requisite danger and wildness, is a deeply spiritual longing written into the soul of man.” And, further, “deep in his heart, every man longs for a battle to fight, an adventure to live, and a beauty to rescue.”

The Dopamine Addiction

Instead of a real adventure, boys are growing up with less-involved fathers. They’re more likely to drop out of school, drink, do drugs, become delinquent, and end up in the basement. Instead of real adventure, boys spend time with their digital drug of choice: video games. Because when we do something we enjoy—like playing video games, the brain releases a little bit of dopamine and we feel good. Dopamine release causes adolescents to gravitate toward thrilling experiences and exhilarating sensations. (Source: The Atlantic.)

Teens can literally become addicted to that little jolt of dopamine. This explains why many teens feel “bored” unless an activity, like school, includes a commensurate release of dopamine. Perhaps that research partially explains why a growing number of boys are not pursuing college degrees.

Boys play violent video games like Mortal Kombat, a blood-soaked fighting game with its graphic displays of human decapitations, beheadings, and other over-the-top bloody carnage. Not the blood of a small bird that will be eaten for dinner, but the spurting and gurgling blood of a fellow human being that you just beheaded. And, that human kill comes with an enormous jolt of dopamine. Dopamine is a tough competitor for algebra homework.

All this screen time has another downside. Boys today are four times more likely to be obese (having a BMI at or above the sex- and age-specific 95th percentile) than they were in 1971-1974. https://www.childtrends.org/indicators/overweight-children-and-youth

According to Dr. Leonard Sax, author of Boys Adrift, “…boys who have been deprived of time outdoors, who have spent more time interacting with screens rather than with the real world, sometimes have trouble grasping concepts that seem simple to us.” To put it bluntly, boys who spend most of their free time looking at screens continuously, and don’t spend any time outside in play, begin to lose motivation.

Dr. Sax argues that a combination of social and biological factors is creating an environment that is literally toxic to boys. “Because these games give boys the feeling of power and control: the power of life and death,” writes Sax, MD. And, at some point, the virtual world becomes more real than the real world. And the real world, including school, becomes boring.

Failure to Thrive

So how is this playing out for us, college enrollment notwithstanding? Well, according to Statista, 60.1% of all men ages 18-24 are still living at home with their parents. Many bereft of purpose, feeling alienated, withdrawn, and addicted to immediate gratification. I like to call this group The Meatloaf Generation. It’s a recipe for disaffection, isolation, and alienation.

Let’s Reinvigorate Healthy Masculinity in This Generation

So what’s the answer here? How do we re-think masculinity and the role of young men in our society? How do we reinvigorate the drive and motivation of the “man-child”? We’ll be exploring more on this topic-and some potential solutions-in the coming weeks.

So, what do you think? Have we unintentionally created a generation of uninspired and unmotivated young men? Do you have any ideas on how to fix this? Either way, leave me a comment below and let me know your thoughts. I promise you’ll hear back from me.

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