Cathy reads books: Of Boys and Men Part 1

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Here at Sex and the State, we are all about VALUE. To save you time, I’m going to give you the TL;DR for Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male Is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do about It: Feminism gave the average women more freedom to choose the ideal role for her — in her community, in her family, and in society. Increasingly, women are doing a better job at traditionally masculine roles than men are. Meanwhile, men are increasingly finding themselves with no role to play in their communities, families, and in society.

This is bad for men and bad for society (unless you like authoritarianism, deaths of despair, and violence and dislike economic growth and family formation — in which case maybe we should talk about that).

Okay, TL;DR over.

This review is going to be a two-parter because this book is a lot.

I like that author Richard Reeves is a feminist. As he writes in the epilogue, "The problem with feminism is not that it has 'gone too far.' It's that it has not gone far enough. Women's lives have been recast. Men's lives have not." The goal of feminism isn’t to promote women over men. The goal of feminism is to eradicate sexism, including the sexism that disproportionately hurts men.

Of Boys is a great follow-up to The Hazards of Being Male. Basically every social problem facing men in the 1970s is still with us, along with a slew of new economic problems which in turn are causing their own social problems.

One of the biggest problems facing men is that of rolelessness.

“A man who knows he must provide for a wife and children has a clear sense of how to be ‘purposeful’ and ‘whole,’” Reeves writes. Today, women are breadwinners and carers. But men are increasingly neither. They’ve stepped out of the breadwinner role but haven’t stepped into a new one.

The economic relationship between men and women has changed drastically over the past 50 years. According to the Council of Economic Advisors, “Essentially all of the income gains that middle-class American families have experienced since 1970 are due to the rise in women’s earnings.” All growth in household income results from women’s increased earnings and hours (except for in the top-fifth highest income households).

Today, a woman is the main breadwinner in 41% of households. 30% of wives out-earn their husbands. In almost half of families where both parents work full-time, almost half of mothers out-earn the father. Meanwhile a third of high-school educated men aren’t in the labor force and men between the ages of 25 and 34 have seen the biggest decline in labor force participation.

These trends are even more pronounced among Black Americans. There are more Black women than Black men in the labor force, in contrast to every other racial group. Black women are more likely than Black men to be the family breadwinner, in contrast to every other racial group. A quarter of Black men born since late 1970s have been in prison by their mid-30s. That number is 7 in 10 among Black high school dropouts. A third of white Americans rank almost all or all Black men as violent while just one in ten say that of white men. Police arrest three times more Black men for drugs, even though they use drug at equal rates.

Men, by and large, aren’t taking this rolelessness well. At all. They’re adrift without the institutions that once gave them a framework for how to be men: work, family, and religion.

Men are three times more likely to die deaths of despair than women. Men account for almost 70% of opioid overdose deaths. Almost 1/2 prime age NEET men had taken pain meds the previous day, mostly prescription. Men everywhere are more likely to commit suicide, but the gender gap is largest in more advanced economies.

One huge problem is that while the economy is in 2022, the culture is stuck in 1950. This is especially true of people with lower incomes and levels of education. For example, while 81% of high school grads say it’s important for a man to provide financially, just 62% of college grads agree. Working hours, labor force participation, and wages are lowest among men in the bottom half of earnings and education. Which means the men least able to be breadwinners also are under the most pressure to be breadwinners. No wonder that aversion to female breadwinners explains 29% of the decline in marriage over past 30 years. And it’s interesting to note that marriage is only declining among low-education, low-income adults.

Reeves includes a few case studies. “Quamari supports [gender] equality but is part of a Christian denomination teaching that men should be the head of the household. He is torn between being the kind of man he has been told to be, and the kind of man the world needs now.” Yeah, that shit isn’t helpful.

Declining marriage rates and declining labor force participation among the lower class is very much a two-way street. Causation runs in both directions. Men who don’t work or work but don’t earn more than the women they run into don’t get married. And men who don’t get married and have kids who depend on them and don’t expect that to ever happen to them tend to work less. It’s not in the book, but immigrant men have higher labor force participation rates than native-born men (which is why I specify that native-born men are in a bad way). Some theorize that’s true because immigrant men are much more likely to marry and have kids young than native-born men.

“The success of the women’s movement has not caused the precariousness of male social identity, but it has exposed it,” Reeves writes. “The question is where we go from here.”

I like that Reeves points out that it’s not like the male breadwinner “organization man” life, isolated from extended family and community, working 50 weeks of hell for two weeks of vacation, was all that to begin with. It’s a point The Hazards of Being Male made repeatedly and very aptly described.

Alright. So that’s roughly the first half or maybe 2/3 of the book. Tomorrow we’ll wrap this b up. Thanks for reading my sweet babies.

This is part-one of a two-part series. Find part two here.