Richard Reeves: Why working-class men are facing the sharpest decline | Full Interview

Key Concepts:

• Issues of boys and men: Challenges and struggles faced by males in modern society.
• Zero-sum fallacy: The misconception that addressing the issues of boys and men detracts from efforts to support women and girls.
• Overlapping distributions: The concept that while there may be average differences between males and females, there is significant individual variation and overlap.
• Detachment of men: Disconnection from the labor force, family, and society, particularly among young men.
• Structural vs. individual responsibility: The debate over whether the challenges faced by boys and men are due to systemic issues or personal failings.
• Representation matters: The importance of having male role models and professionals in fields like teaching and mental health.
• Toxic masculinity: A term used to describe harmful aspects of traditional masculine norms.
• Positive masculinity: Identifying and promoting beneficial traits and behaviors associated with men.
• Learned nurturing behavior: The idea that men's nurturing abilities are learned and can be fragile.
• Shoulder-to-shoulder communication: The concept that men often communicate more comfortably when engaged in a shared activity.

1. Broadening the Conversation and Avoiding Zero-Sum Thinking

• The permission space to discuss issues of boys and men has expanded, making the conversation more straightforward, though still difficult.
• It's crucial to reassure people that addressing the challenges of boys and men is not at the expense of work for women and girls.
• Moving from an "or" mentality (women or men) to an "and" mentality (rising together) is key to unlocking the conversation.
• Once the conversation is unlocked, many people want to discuss it, particularly concerning sons, husbands, and brothers.

2. The Abandonment of Men: Feeling Lost and Disconnected

• Many men and boys feel lost, unsure of their place in society and how they're supposed to be.
• This sense of "What's my place in the world?" is a real challenge, not just an online idea.
• A barrier to discussing these issues is the fear of a zero-sum outcome and the unwillingness to imagine overlapping distributions.
• The analogy of height is used: men are taller than women on average, but this doesn't mean all men are taller than all women.
• Differences in learning style, risk-taking, and emotional vocabulary exist on average, but stereotyping should be avoided.
• It's important to respect and acknowledge these differences if they matter, such as the greater risk-taking among young men, which impacts public health and safety.
• There's a tendency to blame young men for their struggles, attributing it to laziness or video game addiction, which is less common for other groups.
• Gaming and pornography provide a retreat for young men, but it's a mistake to blame these outlets for the detachment.
• Entering the conversation with a blaming mindset is ineffective; it's crucial to consider structural issues in the labor market, education system, and dating world.
• There's a need to balance individual responsibility with structural problems.
• A decline in the share of men in the labor force, especially among young men, is concerning.
• Economists often don't know what these men are doing or where they're living, indicating a deeper detachment from society.
• These men are "lost" in both a data sense (hard to find) and a cultural sense (lacking an anchor).
• To get more men into work, better training and skills are needed, particularly in apprenticeships and vocational training.
• Encouraging more men into growing fields like healthcare is a win-win-win for the profession, service users, and men themselves.
• Trends in the economy and family life have been harder for working-class men, with stagnant wages and disconnection from family life.
• Men born into lower-income families are worse off than those born 15 years earlier.
• The sharp edge of these issues is felt by men with the least economic power, often missed in more affluent circles.
• It's important to focus not just on elite problems (e.g., lack of women CEOs) but also on the struggles of working-class men.
• The explosion in online sports betting is a huge cultural change, leading to increased bankruptcies and economic difficulties, especially for young, lower-income men.
• Men are more likely to become addicted to online gambling due to dopamine system responses and the "get rich quick" culture.
• There's a problem among young men who don't want to work their way up a career ladder, preferring shiny online objects that promise quick wealth.
• Entrepreneurship is overemphasized as a solution, while a good education and steady career progression are more likely to lead to success.
• Poorer young men are most at risk from these online traps.
• Men are disproportionately at risk of being unsheltered and without a home (70% of the homeless population).
• Men disconnected from children are at higher risk of suicide, drug use, and homelessness.
• The homeless population has increased, with most of the rise accounted for among men.
• Homelessness is an acute sign of disconnection, leading to a downward spiral of further disconnections.
• Feeling needed and being part of daily life is protective for everyone, especially men.
• Dating is challenging, partly due to the breakdown of stereotypes and women's rising economic independence.
• Both men and women want a partner who is with them shoulder to shoulder and has agency.
• Women are looking for someone who "has his act together," which is often signaled by success in the labor market.
• Men want that from women too, but many young men are struggling to develop these skills and feel thrown around by the cultural environment.
• It's important to have empathy for young men who feel like they're being told contradictory things about how they're supposed to be.
• The message from the cultural left can feel like turning their back on men, while the message from the cultural right is trying to turn back the clock on women.
• The difficult task is to positively talk about the role of men and the need for men in families and communities.
• The fear of being seen as anti-women creates a vacuum filled by more reactionary voices.
• If young men are poorer than their fathers and struggling to figure out what it means to be a man, the appeal of going back to the world of their fathers is understandable.
• There's a need for institutions focused on these issues to provide high-quality data and research.
• The goal is to move into solutions, not just lament the problems.

3. Why Representation Matters: Mental Health and Role Models

• The term "crisis" is appropriate for mental health, with troubling trends for both men and women, boys and girls.
• More attention is paid to the mental health of teen girls and young women than to teen boys and young men.
• The mental health crisis is playing out differently for young men and young women.
• There's a huge decline in the share of male therapists and counselors.
• Since 2001, the rise in drug poisoning deaths among men has meant the loss of the equivalent of a world war (400,000 men).
• Men account for 70% of drug poisoning deaths and 80% of suicides in the US.
• Since 2010, the rise in suicide has been almost entirely driven among young men.
• Representation matters in mental health, with only one in five psychologists and social workers being men.
• The mental health professions are becoming female professions, which is a problem because many men may find it easier to talk to a male therapist.
• The whole field of mental health ends up being coded as female.
• If a young man is struggling with a mental health problem and only sees images of women on websites or in counseling places, it can be discouraging.
• Men are much less likely to seek help for mental health problems, so efforts should be redoubled to reach them.
• Reversing the decline in the share of men in these professions is one way to do that.
• Getting more men into traditionally female professions, especially in the care economy, is important.
• It's astonishing that the share of men in social work and psychology has dropped from roughly half to one in five.
• The psychology profession cratering the share of men is as big a problem as the lack of women in tech or engineering.
• These professions may be even more important in terms of representation.
• Alarm bells should be ringing when critical professions like teaching, psychology, and social work are becoming gendered.
• To have impact, people must realize there's a problem, build a permission space, and then start thinking about solutions.
• Governors are making commitments to doing more for boys and men without backing away from work for women and girls.
• They're looking at increasing the share of men in their mental health workforce, having targeted outreach programs for suicide prevention, and pushing for more male teachers.
• Male teachers are also often coaches, providing an additional benefit.
• There's a decline in the share of boys doing sports, which may be related to the decline in male coaches.
• It takes time to increase awareness, permission, and understanding.
• More research is needed to know how to tackle these problems effectively.
• There's a lot more awareness and willingness to talk about these issues.
• Private concerns are being recognized as public issues.
• Young men swung towards the Republican side in the last election, indicating that they are up for grabs culturally and politically.
• There's a general sense of confusion and rejection among young men.
• The term "toxic masculinity" has been a frame through which the gender debate has been played out since 2016.
• There's a need to call men in as well as calling them out.
• It was difficult for many people on the progressive side to accept that men might have problems because they were convinced that men were the problem.
• Young men and young women have been increasingly persuaded that their problems are the fault of the other side.
• Both sides have managed to politicize young men and young women against each other.
• These conversations can shut the conversation down with boys and young men, rather than opening it up.
• Parents often react negatively to discovering that their son is consuming content from misogynist influencers.
• Instead, they should have curiosity and figure out why their son is interested in this content.
• The reaction should not be one of immediate condemnation.
• Parents should take deep breaths, be open-minded, and try to become an ally and partner to their son.
• Uninformed reactions from policymakers can have a chilling effect on open conversations.
• Forcing boys and girls to watch fictional dramas in schools may backfire and be unhelpful.
• There's a danger that you take something that's fictional and assume that it's more true to life than it really is.
• The best antidote to an unserious online male role model is an in real life flesh and blood actual man in the lives of boys.
• The way to beat the online version of it is by having male teachers, male coaches, fathers, uncles, neighbors, et cetera.
• Boys will believe their eyes more than their ears.
• If there isn't enough of a sense of what it means to be a man in their community, it creates a vacuum filled by online figures.
• The way to beat the online world is offline, in real life.
• There are lots of guys online doing fitness and motivational stuff.
• You can beat an Andrew Tate video with a classroom exercise or a hike up a mountain with your scout group.
• If a young man watches misogynist content, he needs a man in his life to test those ideas on.
• There's a big question about whether we should have any single-sex spaces.
• Single-sex spaces, when done well, help to balance out stereotypically male or female characteristics.
• In Girl Scouts, there's a huge emphasis on leadership and going into STEM.
• In Boy Scouts, you work on teamwork, caring for others, and serving each other.
• Single-sex spaces help boys learn to love, learn to care, and learn to be of service.
• It's a mistake to move from the correct claim that we shouldn't have an old boys club to saying that we shouldn't have Boy Scouts.
• It's important to have some spaces where you're developing full human beings in a single-sex environment.
• The share of boys playing sports is going down, and team sports are a place where they learn to think about each other and be part of a bigger whole.
• Coaches are mental health professionals in disguise, noticing when boys are struggling and opening up conversations.
• Men communicate more comfortably with each other shoulder to shoulder as opposed to face to face.
• Create more spaces where men feel able to be shoulder to shoulder with each other, communicating in a way that is more friendly towards men.
• The men's sheds movement is an example of this.
• It's important not to treat men like defective women or vice versa.
• The right kind of male-only space is a good thing, not just for men but for women as well.
• Women want their partners and sons to have more opportunities to hang out with other men.
• Any spaces that have boys and girls in them should be safe.
• We can't let the very small risk of something bad happening in those spaces blind us to the overall positive benefits.
• It would be a tragic mistake to shut all those spaces down or to say that those spaces can only be co-ed.
• Men have been underrepresented in elementary school and are now dropping below half in secondary school.
• It matters if our entire K12 teaching workforce was female or male.
• The presence of men in schools acts as a way to have role models that are a good alternative to the ones online.
• You don't have to have a curriculum on positive masculinity if you've got positive men at the front of the classroom.
• It's important for boys and girls to see education as something that both men and women value and do.
• A teacher can bring to life the idea that words and literature are not just a female pursuit.
• It's just as important that we don't allow the love of language to become coded as a female thing as it was to break down the idea that math or science was a male thing.
• If there's a gender gap in high school education, it's one where boys are behind.
• Girls are just able to turn their homework in, and there's a set of skills where girls are just more advanced than boys.
• Girls aren't smarter than boys, but they are more equipped for the kind of coursework that high schools and college will require because they're more mature.
• In the average school district, girls are almost a grade level ahead in English.
• In the poorest school districts, the boys are behind in both English and math.
• There's an implicit message in schools that we need all this stuff for girls, but we don't need to do anything for boys.
• We have to be careful not to inadvertently send the message to boys that they're not as seen or heard or valued in the school setting.
• We have to update the way we talk about this and think about this in a way that in no way puts the brakes on girls and women but which doesn't inadvertently send this message to boys and men either that they don't matter as much or that they don't need as much.

4. The Positive Aspects of Masculinity: Risk-Taking and Fatherhood

• It's hard to get people to answer the question, "What do you like about being a boy or a man?"
• A straightforward acknowledgement of the ways in which men can be good runs the risk of somehow being seen as a claim that they are therefore better than women.
• The term "toxic masculinity" has problems, including the fact that non-toxic masculinity is not a hugely aspirational goal.
• The danger is that non-toxic masculinity is actually just an empty set, presenting boys with a choice between being toxic and being female.
• The difficult challenge is how to articulate positive aspects of masculinity without coming across as seeing it as better than or as elevating it.
• Men take more risks than women on average, which is both a good and a bad thing.
• It's good when it leads men to take risks to save the lives of others or to take risks around business.
• It's bad if it means that they blow all their money gambling or take crazy risks and end up dying.
• We need both a more stereotypically female and male approach to risk.
• We need a society that recognizes and honors both.
• We won't get to equality through androgyny.
• Unless we have a better story to tell, especially young men, about what it means to be a good man than the one they're hearing online from reactionaries, we're gonna lose them.
• Most of what parents do is completely interchangeable, but dads really come into their own when it comes to helping their kids leave the nest.
• Moms have a competitive advantage around building a nest, while dads are good at helping kids fly the nest.
• Fathers get the same burst of oxytocin, the love hormone, that mothers can get, but they get it from something different.
• Moms get it from close contact, while dads get it from playful activities with a little bit of risk involved.
• Don't treat moms like defective dads, and don't treat dads like defective moms.
• They're each bringing something a little bit different to the party, and that's a wonderful thing.
• We can't back away from the central cultural, personal, biological importance of fatherhood simply because we don't want to undermine the central importance of motherhood.
• Fathers basically saved humanity because they went out and got more calories brought to mom.
• We still need dads around in that kind of group setting and in a more of a group-based way.
• When men engage with their kids, it's the newer bit of our brains that light up, while when moms interact with their kids, it's the most ancient parts of our brains that light up.
• The central importance of fatherhood, not just for kids but increasingly for fathers too, for their sense of connection and neededness is something that we should be very careful not to dismiss.
• If dads start to feel like they're surplus to requirements, we're in a very dangerous place culturally speaking.
• Everybody needs to be needed.
• We have to work a little bit harder to ensure that we're sending the message and creating the structures within which men feel needed.
• We've always had to find ways to help socialize and integrate men into our community and family life.
• We've got to update our model of manhood for this new and much better world of gender equality, but we've also got to make sure that we continue to send the message to men, "We need you."
• "We, the tribe, not just anyone needs you, and we need," not it will be nice to have you, we'd like you but need and not just anybody but you.
• Unless we can find a way to send a message to men that we need you, that they are much less likely to show up.
• There's a huge gender gap in volunteering, with not enough men showing up in civic institutions.
• We have this weird situation where we have this huge lack of men volunteering and a huge number of men who are a little bit lost and lacking a bit of purpose.
• We've got to find a way to signal to those men, "We still need you."
• There's a really big difference between thinking about an issue that might break differently along gender lines and saying that that's an identity issue.
• The wrong way to think about identity is to invite people to lean more into that aspect of themselves.
• The goal is not to make men think of themselves more as men.
• There are a bunch of issues and challenges and differences facing men and women, which we should have a good faith conversation about.
• We don't have to lean hard into identity politics to think that the gender pay gap is an issue.
• In the push against this idea of over-emphasizing individual identity, we're gonna lose the idea that there are genuinely some issues that play out differently by race and by class and by gender.
• The argument is not for masculinity but for us to pay attention to the issues that are disproportionately affecting boys and men.
• What we want is policies and solutions, and weirdly, if we get better at having actual solutions and actual policies, that will de-emphasize identity.
• A gender-sensitive approach to policy and solutions is an antidote to an overemphasis on identity, rather than an extension of it.
• A world of floundering men is not likely to be a world of flourishing women or vice versa.
• If men are struggling economically, that means that almost all of the increase in the incomes of middle class households has been because women have worked more.
• It's not good for women if their husbands are struggling with mental health or with a lack of purpose.
• There's a hunger now for a real partnership between men and women, one that acknowledges the huge gains that women have made but which also builds men into family and community life.
• If we can't get to a point where we recognize that in every actual family, in every actual community, we have to rise together, then we're in real trouble.
• There's a growing recognition among those who have worked on behalf of women that we need men to do well, too, and that it's not a choice.

5. Notable Quotes:

• "Once you get past the 'or,' it's women or men, and you get into the 'and,' that we have to rise together, then that's a big unlock."
• "We are going to make marriage a choice rather than a necessity." - Gloria Steinem
• "In every known human society we have relied on the learned nurturing behavior of men, and this behavior being learned can be fragile and can disappear quite quickly." - Margaret Mead

6. Technical Terms and Concepts:

• Zero-sum: A situation in which one person's gain is equivalent to another's loss, so the net change in wealth or benefit is zero.
• Overlapping distributions: Statistical distributions where the ranges of two or more groups overlap, indicating that while there may be average differences, individuals within each group can have similar values.
• Detachment: A state of being disconnected or separated from something, such as the labor force, family, or society.
• Toxic masculinity: A set of socially-constructed attributes often associated with the male gender that are considered harmful, such as repression of emotions, violence, and dominance.
• Positive masculinity: The promotion of beneficial traits and behaviors associated with men, such as courage, leadership, and responsibility.
• Oxytocin: A hormone associated with social bonding, love, and trust.
• Learned nurturing behavior: The idea that nurturing abilities are not innate but are learned through socialization and experience.
• Shoulder-to-shoulder communication: A communication style where individuals are engaged in a shared activity, making it easier to communicate.

7. Logical Connections:

• The initial discussion about broadening the conversation about boys and men leads into the challenges they face, particularly the feeling of being lost and disconnected.
• The discussion of structural vs. individual responsibility connects to the need for better training and skills to get more men into work.
• The importance of representation in mental health connects to the need for more male therapists and counselors.
• The discussion of toxic masculinity leads into the need to articulate positive aspects of masculinity.
• The discussion of fatherhood connects to the importance of men feeling needed and the need to signal that through policy.

8. Data and Statistics:

• One in seven men are over six foot compared to one in 100 women.
• Teen boys are three times as likely as teen girls to be playing video games.
• Wages for men without a college degree are no higher today than they were in 1979.
• Only about half of men without a college degree in their thirties and forties are living with children.
• Only 10% of CEOs from the Fortune 500 are women.
• Men account for 70% of drug poisoning deaths and 80% of suicides in the US.
• Since 2010, the rise in suicide has been almost entirely driven among young men.
• One in five psychologists and social workers are men.
• Men accounted for 56% of people doing a psychology undergraduate degree in 1971, now it's 20% and falling.
• About 1/3 of the men who are teaching K-12 are also coaching.
• Men account for 70% of those who are without a home and are unsheltered.
• In the top 10% of students, 2/3 of them are girls, and in the bottom 10% of students, 2/3 of them are boys.

9. Conclusion:

The video emphasizes the importance of addressing the challenges faced by boys and men in modern society while avoiding zero-sum thinking and recognizing the value of both masculine and feminine traits. It highlights the need for better representation, role models, and policies to support men's mental health, economic well-being, and connection to family and community. The key takeaway is that a world of flourishing men and women is essential for the well-being of all.