A Better Story for Boys

American boys are suffering. Can we help them?

Photo by Rich Smith on Unsplash

Young people in America are generally not doing well. They’re lonelier and more isolated; they’re anxious and depressed. But these ills have manifested differently in girls and boys. Girls, and especially liberal girls, are experiencing higher rates of anxiety and depression. Boys, on the other hand, are lonelier, more isolated, and spending more time on screens; they’re more likely to have substance abuse problems and to end their own lives. They’re less likely to seek help for mental health challenges. And they grow into men for whom these problems are magnified: Men who are less likely to marry, less healthy, more socially isolated, more addicted, more violent, more likely to wreak havoc on their families and communities, more likely to die young.

A new book by Ruth Whippman addresses just this. You can read Whippman herself in a book excerpt in the Times, and write-ups of it in the Times and the New Yorker.

The reviews are mixed, but most people at least seem to agree that the problems she points to are real. The questions are: What’s causing them, and what should we do?

The typical answer either suggests or flat-out says that this is fundamentally a female problem, or at least a problem for women and girls to fix. Women should be more forgiving, more willing to date, marry, and ostensibly reform less-than-great men (while of course not being so stupid as to date, marry, or reproduce with a bad guy who will only bring them down). Mothers of boys should raise them better, although what exactly that means is unclear. We should be less enthusiastic about championing girls, lest we take away from boys.

And even the progressive and feminist answer — including often from me — has been to simply say that boys and men need to get their act together themselves.