Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male Is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do about It

by Richard V. Reeves

in discussions about gender, sex, and masculinity, we need less froth and more facts. Fewer discussions of Tinder, more on technical high schools; less attention to the Barbie movie, more attention on the tragic loss of the 40,000 men who take their own lives every year.

You may be skeptical that what America needs right now is another think tank with more wonks and webinars. Certainly, that is the position of Senator Josh Hawley. In his own book, Manhood: The Masculine Virtues America Needs, published in 2023, Hawley criticizes me as one of those “experts safely ensconced in their think tanks.”5 What provoked his ire was my call for a national effort to increase the share of men in professions like psychology, social work, counseling, and education. Hawley’s view is that men are “ill-suited” to such roles, which is just as sexist as claiming that women are “ill-suited” to science or engineering.

When I argue with conservatives on this issue, part of the challenge is to persuade them that there is still much more to do for women and girls, even as we do more for boys and men. Feminism has not “gone too far” in terms of empowering women. There is no upper limit on how far women should be empowered. When I argue with progressives, on the other hand, the difficulty can be to persuade them that paying more attention to boys and men does not mean backing off the cause of women. In fact, the opposite is true. A world of floundering men will not be one of flourishing women, or vice versa.

In other words, we need to redesign jobs to be fairer to women and reform schools to be fairer to boys. We can hold two thoughts in our heads at once: that is, we can be both passionate about women’s rights and compassionate toward vulnerable boys and men.