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What Have We Done to Our Sons?
If you are a parent, like me, who has a boy you
know how difficult it is to raise him. I believe it
does take a village to raise a child and most
parents aren’t getting much help. In our
tribal past everyone in the village celebrated the
birth of a child and were responsible for his
upbringing. Even when I was growing up most people
in the neighborhood knew the kids. If I was doing
something I shouldn’t, someone would usually
notice and call me over for a little talk. My
parents would hear about it before I even got
home.
In many families there were grandparents, aunts,
uncles, cousins who lived in the same house or
nearby. Now extended families are a rarity. Nuclear
families, with a Mom, Dad and kids, are the rule
and even they are breaking down. Divorce results in
many children being raised by a single parent,
usually the mother. Even in “intact”
families the economic demands of our modern
life-style require both parents to work. Children
rarely get the physical, emotional, and spiritual
support they need.
This is having a devastating impact on children.
In the last 10 years there has been a lot of
attention paid to the stresses on girls growing up.
We are only recently beginning to recognize what is
happening to our boys. “Girls, our new myths
tell us, have life much worse than boys,” says
psychologist Michael Gurian, author of The Wonder
of Boys. In-depth research shows that girls and
boys each have their own equally painful
sufferings. To say girls have it worse than boys is
to put on blinders.”[i]
Boys who are having trouble now, grow into
troubled teens, and become adults who are much more
likely to suffer from IMS. “If there’s
one thing we’ve learned,” says Dr. Dan
Kindlon, of Harvard University and Dr. Michael
Thompson, a preeminent child psychologist,
“it’s that, unless we give him a viable
alternative, today’s angry young man is
destined to become tomorrow’s lonely and
embittered middle-aged man.”[ii]
Understanding what our boys are experiencing can
better help us deal with IMS in our teenagers. It
can also make us aware of the kinds of stresses
many adult males experienced growing up.
Understanding our boys can also alert us to the
kinds of stresses that will form the character of
the men of the future.
Schools Are Leaving Our Boys Behind
In 1990, psychologist Carol Gilligan announced
to the world that America’s adolescent girls
were in crisis. “As the river of girl’s
life flows into the sea of Western culture, she is
in danger of drowning or
disappearing.”[iii]
A number of other popular books focused on
the problems our daughters were experiencing in
school. “Something dramatic happens to girls
in early adolescence,” said Mary Pipher,
author of Reviving Ophelia. “Just as planes
and ships disappear mysteriously into the Bermuda
Triangle, so do the selves of girls go down in
droves. They crash and burn.”[iv]
These concerns were taken up by women’s
groups and organizations concerned about the effect
of society on the success of our daughters. As a
result money was poured into the schools to make
changes that would help the girls. Some researchers
feel that the data supporting the view that
girl’s are being shortchanged is suspect and
that many of the changes that are meant to be
“girl friendly” in fact discriminate
against boys.
Interestingly, it is a woman who has become one
of the strongest advocates for boys. Christina Hoff
Sommers has a Ph.D. in philosophy from Brandeis
University and was formerly a professor at Clark
University in Worcester, Massachusetts. “The
research commonly cited to support the claims of
male privilege and sinfulness is riddled with
errors,” she says. “Almost none of it has
been published in professional peer-reviewed
journals…A review of the facts shows boys, not
girls, on the weak side of an educational gender
gap.”[v]
I don’t find it helpful to get into a
debate of whether females or males have a worse
time of it. My experience raising both male and
female children is that each sex has unique
strengths and unique difficulties. Having worked in
the classrooms when my son and daughter were
growing up, it seems to me that both girls and boys
are getting shortchanged. Here I want to focus on
the boys since a great deal of attention is already
being focused on girls and educational programs
seem to be geared more to the success of our
daughters.[vi]
Data from the U.S. Department of Education and
from several recent university studies show that
boys are falling behind in their education. Girls
get better grades.[vii]
They have higher educational aspirations.[viii]
They follow a more rigorous academic program and
participate more in the prestigious Advanced
Placement (AP) program.[ix]
Christina Hoff Sommers notes that “A 1999
Congressional Quarterly Researcher article about
male and female academic achievement takes note of
a common parental experience; ‘Daughters want
to please their teachers by spending extra time on
projects, doing extra credit, making homework as
neat as possible. Sons rush through homework
assignments and run outside to play, unconcerned
about how the teacher will regard the sloppy
work.’ In the technical language of education
experts, girls are academically more
‘engaged.’”[x]
She also cites studies that have found that
“engagement with school is perhaps the single
most important predictor of academic
success.”[xi]
It should not surprise us then that girls read
more books.[xii]
They outperform males on tests of artistic and
musical ability.[xiii]
More girls than boys study abroad.[xiv]
Conversely, more boys than girls are suspended from
school. More are held back and more drop
out.[xv]
Boys are three times as likely as girls to be
enrolled in special education programs and four
times as likely to be diagnosed with attention
deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).[xvi]
More boys than girls are involved in crime,
alcohol, and drugs.[xvii]
We discussed in chapter 3 the huge difference in
the suicide rate between males and females.
Although the difference increases with age, it is
significant during the school years. Between the
ages of 5 and 24 males kill themselves nearly six
times more often than females.[xviii]
The Horatio Alger Association is a
fifty-year-old organization devoted to promoting
and affirming individual initiative and “the
American dream.” In 1998 they released a
survey that contrasted two groups of students: the
highly “successful” (approximately 18
percent of American students) and the
“disillusioned” (approximately 15 percent
of students.
They noted that the students in the successful
group work hard, choose challenging classes, make
schoolwork a top priority, get good grades,
participate in extracurricular activities, and feel
that their teachers and administrators care about
them and listen to them. According to the report,
the successful group is 63 percent female and 37
percent male.
At the other extreme, the disillusioned students
are pessimistic about their own futures, get low
grades, have minimal contact with their teachers,
and believe that there is no one they can turn to
for help. We would certainly say the disillusioned
group has become demoralized. According to the
report, “Nearly seven out of ten are
male.”[xix]
These are the young men who will suffer from the
Irritable Male Syndrome. They will more likely
become involved in violent or suicidal behavior,
drop out of school, get involved with alcohol and
drugs, have difficulty finding good employment
opportunities, and have a very chaotic family life
when they marry.
Although these statistics can just seem like
numbers on the paper, they are very real to me. I
work at a health clinic where I see the real people
behind the statistics. Although we serve both males
and females, I am always struck by the numbers of
males that I see. I am rarely called to the school
for problems with the girls. It is almost always
with one of the boys. If you think about it I
believe you will recognize real people you know
behind many of these statistics.
Many of these boys are sinking below the surface
and calling out for our help. Will we be there for
them? If we pay attention to our young men, they
will have a better chance to grow up to be
responsible and loving adults. Whether or not we
help them, they will grow up and the great majority
will find a partner, start a family, and likely
pass on their experiences to the next generation of
young males.
[i] Michael Gurian. The
Wonder of Boys. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons,
1996, p. xvii.
[ii] Dan Kindlon and
Michael Thompson. Raising Cain: Protecting the
Emotional Life of Boys. New York: Ballantine Books,
1999, p. vii.
[iii] Carol Gilligan,
“Prologue,” in Making Connections: The
Relational Worlds of Adolescent Girls at Emma
Willard School, ed. Carol Gilligan, Nona Lyons, and
Trudy Hammer. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University
Press, 1990, p. 4.
[iv] Mary Pipher. Reviving
Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls. New
York: Putnam, 1994, p. 9.
[v] Christina Hoff
Sommers. The War Against Boys: How Misguided
Feminism is Harming Our Young Men. New York: Simon
& Schuster, 2000. p. 14.
[vi] I am indebted to
Christina Hoff Sommers for gathering a great deal
of the data on the educational system and our
boys.
[vii] See Carol Dwyer and
Linda Johnson. “Grades, Accomplishments, and
Correlates,” in Gender and Fair Assessment,
ed. Warren Willingham and Nancy Cole. Mahwah, N.J.:
Erlbaum, 1997, 127-56.
[viii] Higher Education
Research Institute. The American Freshman: National
Norms for Fall 1998. Los Angeles: Higher Education
Research Institute, University of California, Los
Angeles, 1998, pp. 36, 54.
[ix] See Hoff Sommers. The
War Against Boys., p. 24 and U.S. Department of
Education National Center for Education Statistics.
The Condition of Education, 1998, p. 90.
[x] Ibid., p. 28.
[xi] Ibid., p. 29.
[xii] Higher Education
Research Institute. The American Freshman: National
Norms for Fall 1998. Los Angeles: Higher Education
Research Institute, University of California, Los
Angeles, 1998, pp 39, 57.
[xiii] National Center
for Education Statistics, NAEP 1997 Arts Report
Card. Washington, D.C.: National Center for
Education Statistics, 1998.
[xiv] Of students
studying abroad, 65 percent are female, 35 percent
male; see chart “Study Abroad by U.S.
Students, 1996-1997.” Chronicle of Higher
Education, December 11, 1998, p. A71.
[xv] For suspension
rates, see U.S. Department of Education, Conditions
of Education. Washington D.C.: U.S. Department of
Education, 1997, p. 158. For data on repeating
grades, see U.S. Department of Education,
Conditions of Education, 1995, p. 13. For
information on dropouts, see U.S. Department of
Education, Digest of Educational Statistics 1995.
Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Education,
1995, p. 409.
[xvi] For data on special
education, see U.S. Department of Education, The
Condition of Education. Washington D.C.: U.S.
Department of Education, 1994, p. 304. For
information on ADHD, see American Psychiatric
Association, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of
Mental Disorders, Vol. 4. Washington D.C.: American
Psychiatric Association, 1994, p. 82. According to
DSM-IV, the official diagnostic guide for all of us
who work in the mental health professions,
“The disorder is much more frequent in males
than in females, with male-to-female ratio ranging
from 4:1 to 9:1, depending on the
setting.”
[xvii] For statistics on
alcohol and drugs, see “National Survey
Results on Drug Use,” in National Institute on
Drug Abuse, Monitoring the Future Study, 1975-1995,
vol. 1, Secondary School Students. Rockville, Md.:
National Institute on Drug Abuse, 1996, p. 20. See
also U.S. Department of Education. The Conditions
of Education. Washington D.C.: U.S. Department of
Education, 1997, p. 300, Table 47-3,
“Supplementary Tables.” For crime
statistics, see U.S. Department of Justice, Female
Offenders in the Juvenile Justice System:
Statistics Summary. Washington, D.C.: U.S.
Department of Justice, 1996, pp. 28-29.
[xviii] The male rate is
47 per 100,000, while the female rate is 8.1 per
100,000. Summarized from R. Anderson, K. Kochanek
& S. Murphy. Report of final mortality
statistics. Monthly Vital Statistics Report, 45
(11), Hyattsville, MD: National Center for Health
Statistics, 1997 and from G. Murphy. Why women are
less likely than men to commit suicide.
Comprehensive Psychiatry, 39, 1998, 165-175.
[xix] Horatio Alger
Association. State of Our Nation’s Youth
1998-1999. The survey conducted by NFO Research,
Inc., was based on two small but carefully selected
samples of students (a cross section of 2,250
fourteen- to eighteen-year olds as well as a
computer-generated sample of 1,041 students; see p.
4. The researchers are careful to note that this
study is not definitive and provides only a
“snapshot in time.”
©2010 Jed
Diamond
See Books,
Issues
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* * *
Wealth can't buy health, but health can buy
wealth. - Henry David Thoreau
Jed Diamond
is the internationally best-selling author of seven
books including Male
Menopause, now
translated into 17 foreign languages and his
latest book, The
Irritable Male Syndrome: Managing. The 4 Key Causes
of Depression and
Aggression. For over
38 years he has been a leader in the field of men's
health. He is a member of the International
Scientific Board of the World Congress on
Men’s Health and has been on the Board of
Advisors of the Men’s Health Network since its
founding in 1992. His work has been featured in
major newspapers throughout the United States
including the New York Times, Boston Globe, Wall
Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, and USA
Today. He has been featured on more than 1,000
radio and T.V. programs including The View with
Barbara Walters, Good Morning America, Inside
Edition, CBS, NBC, and Fox News, To Tell the Truth,
Extra, Leeza, Geraldo, and Joan Rivers. He also did
a nationally televised special on Male Menopause
for PBS. He looks forward to your feedback.
E-Mail.
You can visit his website at www.menalive.com
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