From school and work to fatherhood and friendship, we need a vision of manhood that both sexes can celebrate.
Years ago, a friend told me about an awkward conversation with a female coworker. In between meetings, he had mentioned a Wall Street Journal article about declining college enrollment for men across America, a trend so advanced that men now trail women by record levels and colleges are ramping up their efforts to recruit men. Expecting a sympathetic response, he was caught off guard when she declared, in a nonplussed tone, “And now whose fault is that?”
At this point, he remembered that his coworker was a strong advocate for women’s rights. He guessed her harsh response was pinned to a belief that sympathy for men would detract from women’s longstanding struggle for gender equity. Yet he didn’t want to picture these causes as locked in a zero-sum contest. As he put the question to me one afternoon, “Can’t we care both about women’s rights and vulnerable men and boys at the same time?”
It’s a good question.
Richard Reeves’s groundbreaking book Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male Is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do about It makes a convincing case that men across the modern world are indeed struggling and need our attention.
Losing ground
Reeves, a Brookings Institution scholar, marshals an array of eye-opening statistics to make his point. For instance, did you know that girls regularly outperform boys in education? Girls are 14 percentage points more likely than boys to be “school ready” at age five, and by high school, girls now account for two-thirds of students ranked in the top 10 percent, according to GPA. The gender gap widens even further in higher education: In the US, 57 percent of bachelor’s degrees are awarded to women, ...
from Christianity Today Magazine https://ift.tt/cLKYqxz
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