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Education United States

Data Shows Boys and Young Men Are Falling Behind (nytimes.com) 241

Posted by msmash from the how-about-that dept.
Boys and young men in the United States are experiencing declining outcomes in education, mental health, and transition to adulthood compared to their female counterparts, according to comprehensive data analyzed by researchers. High school graduation rates for boys stand at 83% versus 89% for girls, while college enrollment of recent male high school graduates has barely increased to 57% from 54% in 1960, compared to women's surge to 66% from 38% in the same period.

Mental health indicators show 28% of boys ages 3-17 have mental, emotional, behavioral or developmental problems versus 23% of girls. Male suicide rates for ages 15-24 have nearly doubled to 21 per 100,000 in 2023 from 11 in 1968. Labor force participation among men ages 25-54 has declined to 89% from 94% in 1975, while women's participation rose to 78% from 55%. Additionally, 19% of men ages 25-34 now live with parents, compared to 13% of women. "The contemporary American economy is not rewarding a lot of the characteristics associated with men and masculinity," said Robb Willer, professor of sociology at Stanford.

Data Shows Boys and Young Men Are Falling Behind More | Reply

Data Shows Boys and Young Men Are Falling Behind

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  • Schools are designed for female students to close the "achievement gap". Female students get preferential admission. In stem, women get preferential hiring. Boys are shown they're second class citizens from the time they get into puberty. Women are taught to fear men, and men are taught they're hateful whether they're hateful or not. All this would be fine if society told them there's something good and unique about men, something to aspire to and be valued for. But "everything men can do women can do bette

    • Re:Since when do we care? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by ihavesaxwithcollies ( 10441708 ) on Friday May 16, 2025 @02:29PM (#65381425)

      Schools are designed for female students to close the "achievement gap". Female students get preferential admission. In stem, women get preferential hiring. Boys are shown they're second class citizens from the time they get into puberty. Women are taught to fear men, and men are taught they're hateful whether they're hateful or not. All this would be fine if society told them there's something good and unique about men, something to aspire to and be valued for. But "everything men can do women can do better". And now we're surprised at the fallout? Society won't be willing for the necessary reforms, especially giving men back their purpose, until things get a lot more shit than they are now.

      Do you even have a modicum of proof of anything you say? Other than the same old right wing, boring old tripe that all men are the victims?

      I'm sorry, you orange snowflake. No one cares.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Powercntrl ( 458442 )

      Some "boys" don't succeed when they can't get a free ride on male privilege - that's the gist of your argument. And here I thought the conservative mentality was to pull on those ol' bootstraps and work harder.

      It's still difficult to succeed as a woman. I just saw a thread on the HVAC subreddit today about a woman who was fired because she'd complained to HR about harassment. Women have to put up with a lot of shit in what is still a cisgender heterosexual male-dominated society (and no, I didn't put all

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Z80a ( 971949 )

        I don't think you can solve discrimination with even more discrimination, but "on the other side".
        It's not a zero sum game with a "limited number of slots", that you get to bump one side when you push the other down.
        Basically, pushing males for being males won't make the issues that women face go away, it will just means more people getting screwed by the system.
        The only ones that get any benefit from it are nepotists and similars, that have more tools to get rid of everyone they don't want, to put their un

        • Re:Since when do we care? (Score:5, Insightful)

          by flink ( 18449 ) on Friday May 16, 2025 @03:51PM (#65381663)

          It's still difficult to succeed as a woman. I just saw a thread on the HVAC subreddit today about a woman who was fired because she'd complained to HR about harassment.

          Basically, pushing males for being males won't make the issues that women face go away,

          If "males being males" means we get to sexually harass women without consequence, we should change our idea of what "being male" is. There's no genetic compunction that forces men to make sexually explicit comments to/around coworkers. It's purely a social construct and learned behavior that can be changed.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          It's not punishing males for being males, it's punishing them for toxic behaviour.

          If, instead of getting upset about it, you think about how you can improve yourself, be a better person. You know, like they do on Star Trek.

          The best part is that it makes you more attractive to the ladies too. Maybe not the instant magnetism you see some guys apparently have, but once they get to know you, and get to know them...

      • Wow you just proved his point. "Male privelege" throughout most of history has been men being sent off to die in wars, men not getting the lifeboats when the ship is sinking, boys being more likely to die of malnutrition or disease during hard times, etc.

        You notice the king and his advisors but pay little mind to the peasantry.

        Historically, women have been twice as likely to pass on their DNA than males:

        https://academic.oup.com/mbe/a... [oup.com]

        Meanwhile, most actual barriers against women fully participating in so

    • They are factories that create useful tools for large corporations and the extraordinarily rich people that own those large corporations (hint: that's not you)

      Women were targeted because the corporations and the billionaires want it to dilute the labor pool and lower wages and bargaining power. That is all..

      For men the jobs they did were the first that could be automated and we saw exactly that with massive amounts of factory automation and process improvement around what was previously middle class

    • Re: Since when do we care? (Score:4, Informative)

      by HnT ( 306652 ) on Friday May 16, 2025 @04:14PM (#65381701)

      Dont you worry, if history is any indication then things usually get very bad very quickly whenever there is a critical mass of desperate, hopeless and abandoned boys and young men without any perspective, purpose or support.

    • Re:Since when do we care? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by SvnLyrBrto ( 62138 ) on Friday May 16, 2025 @04:29PM (#65381753)

      Oh, bullocks. Do none of you people have decent enough memories to actually recall anything from your teenage years in the public schools? I do. And yeah... it was a miserable experience across the board. But not at all for the reasons you're trying to push in your narrative.

      > Schools are designed for female students
      ...
      > Boys are shown they're second class citizens
      > from the time they get into puberty.
      ...
      > men are taught they're hateful whether they're
      > hateful or not

      I never saw any of that "man-o-sphere" claptrap. Or, if I did, it was vastly, VASTLY overshadowed to the point of triviality by the regular student-on-student hate and bullying for being part of the "nerd herd," or a "band fag" (Nothing to do with being LGBT. There are far worse attacks in the schools than just "fag" for anyone remotely suspected of possibly being gay.), or an "AV dork," or "computer geek," or "AP asswipe," or "science shit." Not being fashionable enough or not liking the right music (Only mainstream pop, rap, and some country were acceptable. Being into punk, ska, or electronic also made you a freak or, in the last case, "rave trash.") was also far worse than anything gender-based. Hell... just being a skater in a coastal town where the cool kids were all surfers put me lower on the social totem pole than being male ever did.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by MobyDisk ( 75490 )

        I never saw any of that "man-o-sphere" claptrap. Or, if I did, it was vastly, VASTLY overshadowed to the point of triviality by the regular student-on-student hate and bullying

        Perfectly said! The "claptrap" came from the very people who are complaining today. Those who are screaming about teachers feminizing male students are the anti-intellectuals that defined masculinity to be violence and stupidity. They perpetrated that culture upon themselves, then when it turned out that punching the smart kid in the face wasn't a useful job skill, they blamed their failure on the schools.

      • Sounds like you were just a miserable sod to be honest.

    • Schools are designed for female students to close the "achievement gap". Female students get preferential admission. In stem, women get preferential hiring. Boys are shown they're second class citizens from the time they get into puberty. Women are taught to fear men, and men are taught they're hateful whether they're hateful or not. All this would be fine if society told them there's something good and unique about men, something to aspire to and be valued for. But "everything men can do women can do better". And now we're surprised at the fallout? Society won't be willing for the necessary reforms, especially giving men back their purpose, until things get a lot more shit than they are now.

      This is yet another expression of the myth of (white) male suppression, even though female suppression on a statistical and anecdotal basis are obvious. Perhaps the only accurate complaint is that the overwhelming discrimination against women is eroding in some areas.

      Almost everything said with the myth is false, but some of these men get to shout louder. 2+2=5. This is the theme of the current times.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by gtall ( 79522 )

      Listening to FOX and the MaggotVerse will definitely cause you to think that your ills are caused by Someone Else Who is Probably Female.

    • Absolutely. My daughter and son, and their spouses, all in their 20s agree. We saw it at every level in the education system. From high school to masters degree.
  • Read a book called "The Boy Crisis", and definitely visit the website: "https://boycrisis.org/".

    A quick explanation, we've over feminized education, social services and society, while placing blame on men and boy for issues that we aren't reasonable for. How can you send a boy to an education system that blames him for everything, well asserting if he doesn't feel shame, and disgust at being male, while subscribing to dangerous misandrist ideals such as feminism, what do you expect? When was the last tim

    • Wait, you have a young son living with you, and you haven't "sent him to an education system" because it's "feminized"? THAT'S why he's home without a job. Because you didn't SEND HIM? And he doesn't have a job because you didn't send him to a feminized uhh.. jobs.. or something? Is that how that works, your adult son is living with you because you didn't send him anywhere?

      But a Men's day, that would change your mind and you might ... release your son out to the world. I just want to get that straight, lol

      • What? When did I say I had a son, or that I didn't send him to school, or suggest he shouldn't get a job? If you don't want to use the resources I provided, then follow the research, which you can easily find, because people like Jordan Peterson show it, that men and boys are increasing disadvantaged. I don't care if you like JP, that's irrelevant, I'm only bringing him up because it's an easy way to find peer reviewed research on this topic.

        This isn't a grey area, or some hidden misogyny, this is a fa

  • Boys who work hard in school are called nerds and pussies.
    Girls who work hard get torn down less.
    The best boys tend to do better than the best girls.
    The girls, once they hit their careers, often quit or cut back to have kids. This especially happens with doctors.
    I'd like to see info on hours worked in professional, highly educated careers by sex.
    There were reasons that women were blocked from many fields, and it wasn't all sexism.

  • Controversial, I know, but we need role models who can lead by example and show young men how to be men, how to stand up to adversity, and preserve in life. Someone who'd show them how to accept and learn from failures and focus on success instead of dramatising insignificant adverse events.

    • This is victim blaming. Men did not forget "how to be", the systems are slanted against them.

    • Controversial, I know, but we need role models who can lead by example and show young men how to be men, how to stand up to adversity, and preserve in life. Someone who'd show them how to accept and learn from failures and focus on success instead of dramatising insignificant adverse events.

      Look, this isn't difficult.

      Put that in the perspective of a man or woman that has a young adult son living with them. You have a son. He is not entertaining college. You're wiping the sweat off your brow because that's expensive. He is not talking to any recruiters. You're not sure he'd qualify for anything after years of sitting around the house, but the thought of him deploying scares you. He is also not in the least bit interested in looking for a job.

      Who do you blame. "Feminists"? Male role models? A wo

  • Over prescribing of unnecessary ADD meds, brain rot instant gratification infinite doom scrolling apps, and the sheer number of children coming into the country that don't speak English and don't integrate into our society and culture are the 3 major factors if you combine multiple other reports.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by dfghjk ( 711126 )

      MAGA outrage. Always the victim, blame the immigrant and the deep state conspiracy.

    • I have great respect for immigrants who come in, knowing no English, overcoming obstacles and financial hurdles and xenophobia along the way. We need more people like these, not less.

      I'm pretty sure you aren't an expert on when ADD meds are necessary and when they are not.

  • The charts make it look pretty stable within noise starting about 2000. The labor force participation lines stay mostly parallel from that time on, and the college enrollment is similar but hard to see without confidence intervals. Reading about historical trades guilds in Europe, women participating would slowly become more common in times of wealth and then they'd get pushed out in times of economic distress to keep guild incomes higher. Machinery and robotics has certainly disrupted the labor power of

  • I know nothing about this topic, but I know a little about numbers and statistics. Hypothetically, what's described is exactly what would be expected **IF** there was a time when society was biased in favor of boys and men in certain contexts, and then that bias was reduced so that males and females were more equal.

    Totally fictional example: suppose there's a university that only admits male students, so 100% of their students are male. Then their policy changes to allow women students. Shortly thereafter,

  • What I learned working in K12 education (Score:5, Interesting)

    by thecombatwombat ( 571826 ) on Friday May 16, 2025 @02:29PM (#65381427)

    I worked for a major textbook publisher for years, the whole experience was summed up by one newsletter. How K12 treats boys was basically an open secret.

    I got two emails, this was maybe in ~2016, back to back. One was a general education newsletter. In it there was this article, about a study done in the UK. They asked boys to gauge how much they thought their teachers, specifically high school biology teachers I think it was, were biased against them. They audited the grading of those teachers in a gender-blind way and found the boys surveyed were shockingly good at estimating this. The researchers were suggesting that basically boys don't try very hard in school by the time they reach high school, because they are actually quite smart about where they choose to spend their effort.

    The next email was about yet another "Girls in STEM" promotional event we were running.

  • I really wish my fellow guys that also play games wouldnâ(TM)t be so defensive about the role they are playing in all this. I think a lot of people my age 40s) just assume itâ(TM)s the same criticism as the 80s and 90s which was largely unfounded hysterics. But modern games aimed at young boys are built on the same predatory, attention-keeping/destroying logic as the worst parts of social media or casinos.
  • I was Analyst in a company and have M.Sc. diploma.

    Then I visited a doctor because of small stress. I was given meds that I tried but when I discontinued them I was put into a ward and they diagnosed me to have "schizophrenia" although I worked full time (also from a ward using my phone) without problems in my work performance.

    I continued to work 5 fulltime years but then lost my job because I was treated against my will in psychiatry and couldn't go to my work. Now I'm a jobless psychiatric patient and it's

    • Most people who suffer from psychiatric problems, don't believe they have a problem. The people around them are better able to assess the truth, than they themselves. This is especially true with those who have schizophrenia.

      It's actually *really* hard to have someone committed involuntarily into a mental hospital. I know, because I helped a close friend do so with her son, who was suffering severe psychosis. Eventually, she succeeded, but he was out within a week because he knew how to answer all the docto

  • We're still caught up in this big political/cultural war, where the more "liberal leaning" half of our population is still sold on the idea that we need to keep making more "opportunities" for women in the workplace, and secondarily? There was blatant sexism against women up till now, preventing them from obtaining workplace equality.

    I'm afraid I have to disagree. The core issue at hand is really a level deeper. In my lifetime, I've witnessed a big shift in focus away from valuing the "stay at home mom" and the idea of the man being the "breadwinner" of the relationship/marriage. Unfortunately, this resulted in a whole generation of women who believed they should/could "do it all". Raise the kid/kids but ALSO get the full-time demanding career job.

    If we're honest about it though? This results in basically doubling the number of applicants for given career job openings across the country. All of a sudden, the work that was traditionally done by men has just as many women applying to do it. The basic rules of supply and demand dictate this brings down wages and makes it harder to obtain a given job. So what happens next is, you get families who suddenly find they need 2 incomes instead of just 1 to survive. Both people go to work and wind up bringing in little more than what just the man would have earned if things were different. (And because women can't *really* give full focus to raising kids AND a demanding job, it results in more income spent on nannies, babysitters, daycare costs, etc. to get through it all.)

    I'm not denying there were women out there not interested at all in raising kids who got a raw deal trying to work in a career field. But I'm saying, we went too far in the opposite direction and we're collectively paying the price. Yet, a big chunk of the population still wants things to continue full steam ahead.

    • No. Your _feelings_ on the issue don't really matter. The numbers are the numbers. You aren't being honest about the numbers.

  • Another interpretation (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Austerity Empowers ( 669817 ) on Friday May 16, 2025 @03:51PM (#65381659)

    Because more women are entering the workforce and able to compete on equal footing, they're securing positions that substandard men were previously able to occupy. At the same time, opportunities for work are not growing at a rate that keeps up with supply of labor. This increased competition is simply an artifact of a competitive, elitist system with no safe-guards.

    We see this happening outside of the gender game as well in other elite fields where foreign entrants are able to secure places that domestic candidates are failing to achieve (although this is largely due to wage pressure rather than actual qualification in most cases, yet another billionaire created problem).

    We should stop talking about this problem as a gender issue, that's typical divide and conquer billionaire-speak, and start talking about it as an economic problem, and a social problem. And we should definitely be trying to figure out a permanent solution to billionaires.

  • It's Hard For My Fellow Liberals to Accept (Score:5, Interesting)

    by organgtool ( 966989 ) on Friday May 16, 2025 @04:07PM (#65381676)
    The response of many of my fellow liberals to stories like this is one of the biggest factors that is driving men toward MAGA. If more liberals opened their minds and paid attention to what these people are saying, we'd all be in a much better place. A big part of the issue is that many liberals find it impossible to perceive men as systemically disadvantaged in any facet of life since we've spent almost all of human existence so far on the other side of the spectrum.

    Society is at its best when everyone is contributing to the best of their abilities. It should be extremely worrying to everyone when so many people are simultaneously choosing to disengage from society. Nobody lives in a bubble and we're all going to feel the effects of mass disengagement eventually. It's better to get out in front of it and attempt to understand why it's happening so that we can fix it before we dig ourselves any deeper.

    I believe that we're all drastically underestimating the amount of social change that has happened in the past fifteen years and it will be a long time before we recognize the full extent of the damage. While everyone is affected by these changes, much of it has come to the detriment of men. Society is sending men extremely mixed messages and it's taking its toll, especially on young men. Masculinity has been vilified by many media outlets, leading young men to believe that it's primarily a negative trait. However, those young men later enter the dating world and find that most women seem to prefer masculine men. In addition to that, dating now is almost nothing like what it was ten to fifteen years ago, and as a result many young men have disengaged from that as well. In fact, it's likely not a coincidence that if a man disengages from dating, he has less need for a successful career since he doesn't have to worry about financially supporting a family.

    Even young women are complaining about how society's depictions of men have misled their own understanding of the nature of men, which has caused many issues in their relationships. Many modern women have come to believe that men are interested in a woman's financial success and that men like to be challenged by a strong woman. However, after some time in the real world, they have to learn the harsh reality that most men don't care how much money a woman makes (unless she's in ton of debt) and that men prefer serenity rather than constantly being challenged.

    I'm confident that we'll figure it out eventually, if only because we won't make it if we continue in the direction we're headed. It's just a matter of how long it will take for people to open their minds and understand something that seems overwhelmingly counterintuitive. Since nobody wants to listen to men complain about men's problems, I recommend listening to the TED talk of Cassie Jaye, a former feminist that made a documentary with the intent of portraying champions of men's causes as members of hate groups and, spoiler alert, she ended up drawing a drastically different conclusion.

    • How many first dates will a young man pay for, with no second date following, before he realizes that paying for first dates is a losing proposition and that he's being used as a free food and entertainment service for women?

      How will the failure of the "do better' and "self-improve" messages from media, politicians, "dating coaches", etc. help improve the man achieving life goals?

      Turning dating into an online shopping experience for women hasn't worked out well.

  • All of you wanted this to happen (Score:4, Insightful)

    by HnT ( 306652 ) on Friday May 16, 2025 @04:12PM (#65381691)

    Is this not the end goal of every pseudo-improvement of the last 1-2 decades of a culture war that was exclusively led by the self-titled progressive woke? They wanted to dismantle the âpatriarchyâ(TM) by systematically giving unfair advantages to everyone else, so congratulations, it worked, you destroyed the helpless and the defenseless boys! Your BS was not ever tackling real issues and will never affect the actual wealthy and really powerful, but you WANTED to tear men down - and you did it!! And now we got proof.

    You systematically took away every role model and never gave them any new ones to look up to, so in confusion and desperation they ran to psychos like Tate who filled that void. You left them helpless and hopeless AND told them they all somehow âdeserve itâ(TM) for being by-birth toxic males.

    Who knew, if you treat people differently and blindly follow a toxic, destructive narrative that âtemporary injustice is okâ(TM) as long as serves the one true âgood end goalâ(TM), then there will be consequences and it will not make things better for society as a whole.

    In case you were wondering, your elections are a reflection of every insanity and injustice you people have been oh so cheering for: People rather elected the lunatic than another one of your savior-complex progressives.

    And if history is an indication, when so many young boys are without perspective and hope, bad bad BAD things usually follow.

    You wanted this. Now you are getting the consequences.

  • So? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by dskoll ( 99328 ) on Friday May 16, 2025 @04:23PM (#65381727) Homepage

    28% of boys ages 3-17 have mental, emotional, behavioral or developmental problems versus 23% of girls.

    Is this new, though? Or has it always been the case? Especially among adolescents, testosterone can do quite a number on their thinking, especially with as yet under-developed frontal cortexes.

    Labor force participation...

    Ah, so men still participate at a higher rate than women, 89% to 78%. How is this falling behind?

    Additionally, 19% of men ages 25-34 now live with parents, compared to 13% of women.

    Sure, but how many of the 87% of women who don't live with parents are still economically dependent on someone else they're living with? I bet a higher proportion than men.

    Male suicide rates for ages 15-24 have nearly doubled...

    This is indeed a disturbing statistic. I think it has to do with unrealistic expectations and conflicting messages given by society to young men (just as women are given unrealistic expectations about body image, for example.)

    The contemporary American economy is not rewarding a lot of the characteristics associated with men and masculinity

    "Characteristics associated with men and masculinity" are stereotypes. Men and women can both be gentle, kind, nurturing, and other "feminine" things, and men and women can both be rough, assertive, cruel and aggressive and other "masculine" things. Men should forget about these stereotypes and not try to live up to them, but just be themselves.

  • As bricklayers. We need to force women into those roles until the brick laying profession is a microcosm of society. Same for miners, loggers, arctic fishermen, etc.

    When you decide to punish men for the actions attitudes historic whatever, they will take note and this is the outcome. Not rocket science.

  • after all they have to get the cannnon fodder ready for the next war. It's the tried and true conservative (small 'c') solution!
  • Boys and young men today are whiny fucking pussies. Geezus Christ you wouldn't have lasted a Gen X week.

  • natural ratio is the.problem (Score:4, Interesting)

    by _0x0nyadesu ( 7184652 ) on Friday May 16, 2025 @07:11PM (#65382101)

    For every 100 women there are 105 men born.

    This built in natural competition is what leads to our wars in general. There's always going to be some boys left out.

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