American Boys Are Not Doing Well
Boys were and, in fact, still are being socialized the same way they were in the 1950s to conform to traditional masculine norms.
cottonbro studio | Canva American boys are not doing well.
According to Richard Reeves, the author of Of Boys and Men, men are doing poorly relative to women on just about every educational, health, and social indicator that exists.
In terms of education, boys have long had more learning and behavioral problems in school than girls, and now men underperform women in college admissions and completion, as well as placement into graduate and professional schools.
As a university professor for almost 50 years, I have seen the composition of my classes shift from almost all men to almost all women, especially at the graduate school level. In terms of health, men die 6.7 years sooner than women and have more illness in every major category of disease, largely due to behavior that puts their health at risk.
Men engage in more than 30 deleterious health risk behaviors such as refusing to use sunscreen or seatbelts, not getting help for medical symptoms, and using dangerous drugs. Socially, we have anecdotal reports that younger men are not dating and many are still living with their parents.
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This did not happen overnight and resulted from a combination of female advancement and male stasis over the last half-century.
In the immediate post-World War II era, women had fewer rights than they do today and were not in the workforce in large numbers, especially mothers of children under the age of 6. But by 1985, half of all mothers of small children were in the workforce.
Having gained their financial independence, women started leaving bad marriages in droves, creating what was known at the time as “the Divorce Revolution,” whereby 1985, half of all marriages were expected to end in divorce.
During this period, young women were mentored on how to navigate a world of changing gender relations. For example, as a student at Berkeley in the ’60s, I knew women who were taking assertiveness training classes to overcome the effects of their gender role socialization to be dependent on and different from men.
Meanwhile, boys were — and in fact, still are — being socialized the same way they were in the 1950s to conform to traditional masculine norms, such as restricting the expression of emotions, self-reliance, aggression, and dominance, as well as a “playboy” orientation toward sexuality.
Most fundamentally, boys avoid anything that is stereotypically feminine. Most boys know that the worst thing they can do is walk, talk, act, or throw like a girl.
Coming back to the present, we are living in an era when masculinity is contested and was on the ballot this year. Competing versions have been framed in terms of the two types of alpha males, as described by the late celebrated primatologist Frans de Waal, in his studies of chimpanzees (our nearest primate relative): the dominant alpha and the populist alpha.
President-elect Donald Trump is the dominant alpha. A recent article from The Washington Post stated: “Trump has long valued being viewed as an alpha male who never apologizes or shows weakness.” In this light, his criminality may be a part of his appeal. Vice President-elect, JD Vance, meanwhile, takes the low road to being alpha by humiliating women who do not have biological children, calling them “childless cat ladies.”
Harris and Walz are both populist alphas who care for their constituents and promote their welfare, as can be seen in their string of new economic proposals focused on food prices, taxes, housing, and medical costs that they say will empower the middle class. Walz, as governor of Minnesota, supported GLBTQ rights and undertook an initiative to put feminine hygiene products in the schools.
Walz knows how to raise boys who are likely to grow up to be nurturing, confident men. His 17-year-old son, Gus, vividly demonstrated this at the Democratic National Convention when he stood up to give his father a standing ovation, tears streaming down his face, while he placed his hand over his heart and yelled, “That’s my dad!” Gus was immediately denounced by the conservative chorus, who called him weird and a puffy beta male and offered him a tampon.
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In my view, this episode highlights what is the central problem in traditional masculine socialization — namely, the prohibition against the expression of emotions.
I have investigated this problem over the last four decades and have shown that this socialization practice elevates the risk that boys will grow up to be emotionally inexpressive men, a phenomenon that I have called “normative male alexithymia.” Alexithymia is a clinical term, literally meaning “no words for emotions.”
“Normative male” refers to the fact that this occurs because of socialization according to traditional masculine norms.
A boy is likely to be introduced to this masculine norm if he cries. He then may be told, “Big boys don’t cry,” and in many cases, may be threatened: “If you don’t stop crying, I’ll give you something to cry about.” This message may have come from his father or other boys. He then learns to suppress his tears — when he is sad or even, as in the case of Gus Walz, overjoyed.
Consider the harm this does to this boy. First, all humans have tear ducts. Second, crying releases hormones, such as oxytocin and endorphins, which relieve feelings of sadness and make one feel better. And if you still think that crying is such a grave violation of masculine norms, consider the shortest sentence in the New Testament: “Jesus wept.”
I have counseled parents who want to raise their sons in a gender-neutral way, who have asked me: “In our house, we allow Jimmy to cry, but we worry about how other people might react to him if he cries in front of them.” I tell them they are right to be concerned because there are people who believe in traditional masculine norms and that they might react negatively to their son’s crying.
But they can protect their boy by telling him: “In our family, we think it is ok for boys to cry because it’s natural to cry when you are sad, and crying makes you feel better. But not everyone agrees. Some people think boys should not cry. So, you must be careful if you are around such people and not cry in front of them because they might get mad at you.”
Finally, socializing boys to conform to masculine norms does harm in even more general ways.
Personality traits tend to be normally distributed in the population so that on any given trait some people are low, and others are high, but most are near the midpoint. If your son happens to be low on the trait of aggression (a masculine norm), and you feel as a male, he must conform to masculine norms and, therefore, be more aggressive, and you tell him so, think of the harm that you may be doing to his personality.
First, in so doing, you are distorting his personality. But also, by making him be someone he is not, you are placing him at odds with the overarching theme of Western Civilization, which is Individualism (as contrasted with Eastern Civilization’s emphasis on Collectivism).
Individualism has been asserted as a central theme throughout the ages from Aristotle to Shakespeare to the present day: “To thine own self be true,” “Be the self that one truly is,” or as Oscar Wilde put it (tongue in cheek): “Be yourself, everyone else is taken.”
To sum up, a child-centered rather than a norm-centered approach to parenting is the way to raise boys who will grow up to be nurturing, confident men.
Dr. Ronald F. Levant (he/him/his) is a Professor Emeritus of Psychology at The University of Akron. A feminist scholar with 18 books and countless refereed journal articles and book chapters to his credit, he is widely considered one of the key people responsible for creating the new field of the psychology of men and masculinities. He recently published The Problem with Men: Insights on Overcoming a Traumatic Childhood from a World-Renowned Psychologist.