The Boy Crisis: Why Our Boys Are Struggling and What We Can Do About It

by Warren Farrell

In 2016 Brad returned from his third tour of duty in Afghanistan with a reasonable amount of economic security. But he felt like a stranger to both his wife and himself, and quickly alienated his children with his temper. His PTSD and the tension at home left him feeling like a burden. One day, after losing his temper again, Brad bought his wife her favorite flowers and their children the newest PlayStation, gave his wife and kids especially long and loving hugs and kisses, and took out the older of the family cars. He said he was going shopping; instead, he sped quickly down a curved road and “skidded” off a cliff.

I have money therefore I am worthy of... fill in the blank. PTSD is the problem.

Might the 700 percent increase in the 93 percent male prison population in the last half century mean that the way we our raising our sons in the last half century is leading to a deterioration in their mental health?

Jonathan suffered from bigorexia, the body dysmorphia that occurs when a young man like Jonathan continues working on his physical strength, often temporarily magnifying it with steroids, in the hope that it will fill the black hole of his psychic wound.

The more you know.

Suppose your son is employed, but trying to save for a down payment on a home, or graduate school, and hopes to split the dinner bill. Should he go on a dinner date with a woman? As we saw, 72 percent of women feel the man should pay the full bill on the first date.14 While he doesn’t know the statistic per se, his life experience validates it. And he is probably part of the 82 percent of men who agree. So while just talking with a woman he hopes to ask out can catalyze his fears of rejection and being unworthy—he may fear looking like a fool for taking a nice conversation to a romantic level—the thought of not being able to pay the full bill magnifies those fears.15

What’s a boy-friendly way for a nonacademically inclined boy to use his mind? Having a concrete goal. If a boy has a concrete goal of being a welder, that catalyzes motivation to study the physics and chemistry necessary to become a high-paid welder.

Even when emotional intelligence is so undeveloped that hate becomes an unchecked bonding mechanism, as among hard-core white supremacists, Life After Hate groups have successfully reversed the hatred of thousands and replaced it with empathy, love, and self-forgiveness.12 There are, then, ways emotional intelligence and empathy can be learned even by those we might assume are hopeless. There is a second application of training for emotional intelligence and empathy. If the haters can learn empathy, maybe we can learn empathy toward the haters. When our only response to haters is to hate, we increase our brain’s training to hate and decrease its training to empathize. We become a bit of the enemy we hate.

Life After Hate groups

Well, actually, the boys got more than lunch. Instead of a feeling of entitlement toward their lunch money, they got the “holy trinity” of gifts: game playing, boundary enforcement, and postponed gratification.