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The Crisis of Masculinity in Modern America
In a world obsessed with gender equality, a counterintuitive truth emerges: men are falling behind. While women earn 82 cents for every dollar men make in the workplace, men receive only 74 bachelor's degrees for every 100 awarded to women. This startling reversal represents what Richard Reeves calls "the strangest and most profound change of the century." His book "Of Boys and Men" has become required reading among policymakers and parents alike, with figures from across the political spectrum-from Barack Obama to Jordan Peterson-citing its groundbreaking analysis. As male disengagement fuels political extremism and social dysfunction, Reeves offers a rare commodity in today's polarized landscape: a data-driven, politically balanced examination of a crisis hiding in plain sight, complete with practical solutions that neither demonize men nor disadvantage women.
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The Educational Gender Reversal
The transformation in educational achievement between genders represents one of the most dramatic social shifts in modern history. When Title IX passed in 1972 to promote gender equality in education, men received 13 percentage points more bachelor's degrees than women. By 1982, the gap had closed completely. Fast forward to today, and women earn bachelor's degrees at a rate 15 percentage points higher than men-an even wider gap than existed in 1972, but in the opposite direction.
This reversal isn't limited to higher education. Throughout the educational pipeline, boys are struggling. They're 14 percentage points less likely to be "school ready" at age 5 than girls-a gap exceeding differences between rich and poor children. By high school, girls account for two-thirds of students in the top 10% by GPA, while boys make up two-thirds of the bottom decile. Girls are more likely to take advanced courses and graduate on time (88% versus 82% for boys).
The phenomenon transcends American borders. In Finland, celebrated for educational excellence, success is driven primarily by girls-20% score at the highest reading levels compared to just 9% of boys. Across OECD nations, girls are roughly a year ahead in reading ability, while boys' advantage in math has nearly disappeared. Boys are 50% more likely to fail at all three key subjects: math, reading, and science.
The primary explanation for this gender gap is biological: boys' brains develop more slowly during critical educational years. The prefrontal cortex, responsible for impulse control and planning, matures about two years later in boys than girls. The cerebellum, which moderates emotional and cognitive capacities, reaches full size at 11 for girls but 15 for boys. During adolescence, when academic performance becomes increasingly important, boys experience both stronger sensation-seeking impulses and weaker impulse control.
As neuroscientist Frances Jensen explains, "In adolescence, on average girls are more developed by about 2 to 3 years in terms of the peak of their synapses and in their connectivity processes." The education system inadvertently favors girls not because of any conspiracy but because it fails to account for these developmental differences.
The consequences extend to higher education, where women now earn 57% of bachelor's degrees across most fields in the U.S. Women receive nearly half of business degrees (up from under 10% in 1970) and most law degrees (up from 5% in 1970). They earn three-fifths of master's and associate's degrees. This global trend appears worldwide-in gender-egalitarian Iceland, women make up an astonishing 77% of undergraduates.
Private colleges have begun quietly practicing affirmative action for male applicants as campuses become increasingly female. At schools like Vassar, male acceptance rates are significantly higher than female rates (28% vs. 23%). While this approach treats symptoms rather than addressing underlying causes, it reflects growing recognition of the problem.
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The Male Labor Market Crisis
As education goes, so goes employment. Men are increasingly struggling in the modern economy, with declining fortunes across skills acquisition, employment rates, and wages. This represents a structural economic problem rather than personal failings of individual men.
Male labor force participation has dropped 7 percentage points over the last half century, from 96% to 89%. Before COVID-19, 9 million prime-working-age men were not employed. Most concerning, one in three men with only high school education are now out of the labor force entirely-5 million men who aren't even counted as unemployed because they've stopped looking for work.
Contrary to stereotypes about middle-aged men being hardest hit, the largest employment declines have occurred among young men aged 25-34. While some blame video games for this trend, the evidence is limited-gaming increased only from three to six hours weekly among men in their 20s between 2005-2015, hardly explaining such significant labor market detachment.
The primary causes are structural economic shifts. Men disproportionately occupy production, transportation, and construction jobs-occupations most vulnerable to automation. Additionally, men often lack the emotional intelligence and "soft skills" increasingly valued in today's economy. Meanwhile, physically demanding "heavy work" now represents fewer than one in ten jobs, and studies show men's physical strength declining while women's increases.
Despite persistent narratives about gender inequality, wage distributions between men and women have converged dramatically. Today, 40% of women earn more than the median man, up from just 13% in 1979. The more significant wage gaps now exist within gender groups, between high and low earners, rather than between genders.
The remaining gender pay gap is essentially a parenting gap. Among young, childless adults, the pay gap has virtually disappeared. Earnings for men and women track similarly until the birth of a first child, after which women's earnings drop and never fully recover. For most women, having a child is the economic equivalent of being hit by a meteorite, while for most men it barely makes a dent.
Women, especially mothers, have fueled economic growth for at least a generation, making the U.S. economy $2 trillion larger than it would have been had women's participation remained at 1970s levels. For middle-class families, women's rising earnings have offset men's economic decline. The most dramatic shift has been among married mothers-nearly three-quarters now work, compared to a minority in 1970.
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The Fatherhood Identity Crisis
As women have gained economic independence, men have lost their traditional family role, creating a cultural dislocation for fathers. While mothers' roles have expanded to include breadwinning alongside caregiving, fathers' roles remain narrowly defined by their provider status, even as this function becomes less necessary.
Historically, a man's primary role was defined as "providing for my family," creating what sociologist Geoff Dench called "chains of dependency" that incorporated men into social support structures. This traditional family model made both men and women necessary through a division of labor: mothers had direct caring relationships with children while fathers had indirect, provider relationships.
Women's economic independence has fundamentally altered family dynamics. Women are now the main breadwinners in 41% of U.S. households, and three in ten wives out-earn their husbands-twice as many as in 1981. Nearly half of dual full-time working parents see mothers earning as much or more than fathers.
Marriage and motherhood are no longer synonymous, with 40% of births occurring outside marriage (up from 11% in 1970). "Shotgun marriages" have virtually disappeared, particularly among less-educated women. While these developments represent progress for women's autonomy, they've left many men dislocated, as William Goode observed in his 1980 essay on "the decreasing marginal utility of males."
While mothers' roles have modernized dramatically, cultural expectations for fathers remain stuck in the past. Johns Hopkins sociologist Andrew Cherlin notes, "We have a cultural lag where our views of masculinity have not caught up to the changes in the job market." Less-educated Americans still overwhelmingly believe (81%) that financially supporting a family is essential to being a good husband, compared to 62% of college graduates.
This mismatch means men struggling economically also suffer in the marriage market. Marriages where husbands don't work are increasingly likely to end, and economists estimate that aversion to wives earning more than husbands explains 29% of marriage rate declines over thirty years. Without the traditional provider role, many men struggle to find purpose, as work has historically been central to male identity.
By 2020, one in five children lived with only their mother, nearly double the 1968 rate. While attitudes toward unmarried parenthood have liberalized, the separation of men from women too often means fathers become separated from children. Within six years of parental separation, one-third of children never see their father, and another third see him monthly or less.
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The Double Disadvantage of Black Men
Black men face uniquely acute challenges at the intersection of race and gender. Using the framework of intersectionality, pioneered by Kimberle Crenshaw, we can understand how different forms of oppression operate in combination. While originally grounded in Black feminism, this approach recognizes the "complexities of compoundedness" in how identities interact.
Tommy Curry challenges the assumption that Black men automatically benefit from patriarchy, instead describing them as "oppressed racialized men." Curry advocates for a new field of Black male studies to address the specific forms of gendered racism Black men experience that current feminist and intersectional scholarship might overlook.
The dire circumstances facing many Black men are illustrated through research from Raj Chetty's Opportunity Insights team, demonstrating that the Black-white intergenerational mobility gap is "entirely driven by differences in men's, not women's, outcomes." Black women have made significant educational gains, now outpacing white men in several metrics, while Black men lag dramatically behind. For every Black man earning a college degree, two Black women do the same.
In the labor market, Black men earn 14% less than white women and 33% less than white men, with minimal wage growth over decades. These disparities contribute to Black women being more likely to be family breadwinners than Black men, unlike in any other racial group.
Black men face unique stigmatization through the "threat stereotype," with deadly consequences. Black men are disproportionately targeted by the criminal justice system and face severe employment discrimination. Mass incarceration has created millions of workless men and fatherless families, with one in four Black children seeing a parent imprisoned before age 14.
Daniel Beaty's poignant poem "Knock, Knock" captures this loss, as he writes about waiting for his imprisoned father and missing his guidance on "how to shave, how to dribble a ball, how to talk to a lady, how to walk like a man." Research shows Black boys benefit especially from engaged fatherhood, and Black fathers are often more engaged than fathers of other races when not living with the mother.
Black women have historically played a more crucial economic role in families compared to white women, with inequality shaping racial differences in family structure. Half of Black women raising children do so without a husband or partner, compared to just 16% of white mothers. Black mothers are half as likely to live with a spouse (41% vs. 78%), and 70% of births to Black women occur outside marriage.
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Class, Gender, and the Cycle of Male Disadvantage
The connection between economic inequality and male struggles creates an intergenerational cycle of disadvantage. The communities with the highest rates of "deaths of despair"-mortality from drug overdoses, suicides, and alcohol-related illnesses-are predominantly male. Men account for nearly 70% of opioid overdose deaths, and almost half of prime-age men out of the labor force report taking pain medication.
Unlike drugs taken for confidence or illumination, opioids are taken to numb pain-physical at first, then existential-reflecting isolation and retreat. Men are approximately three times more likely to commit suicide than women in advanced economies, with suicide now the biggest killer of British men under 45. American suicide rates have risen fastest among middle-aged men but have also increased significantly among younger men.
When men struggle economically, families become poorer. Outside the richest fifth of households, all growth in family income since 1979 has come from women's increased working hours and earnings. As economists Heather Boushey and Kavya Vaghul note, "Women's contributions saved low-income and middle-class families from steep drops in their income."
Without clear scripts for masculinity, many men must improvise their identities. Kathryn Edin's research team found that working-class men have increasingly tenuous attachments to the institutions that once provided meaning and structure-work, family, and religion. The result is what they call "a haphazard self," with men oscillating between different priorities and struggling to stay on track.
Men also face a growing "friendship recession"-15% report having no close friends, up from just 3% in 1990. Young men are less likely to turn to friends during personal problems than in the past, with many instead relying on parents. By 2014, one-third of young adult men lived with their parents, more than lived with a wife or partner.
Boys appear to be like "orchids" rather than resilient "dandelions"-they suffer more from adverse environments but thrive when conditions are right. Boys raised in poor families are less likely than girls to escape poverty as adults and less likely to be working at age 30. Neighborhoods matter more for boys than girls, with high-crime areas and those with many single-parent households particularly detrimental to male development.
The educational achievement gap between boys and girls is much wider in disadvantaged families. Girls from the poorest families are 57% more likely to get a college degree than boys from similar backgrounds, compared to just an 8% difference among affluent families. Boys also suffer more from family instability, especially father absence, showing worse outcomes than their own sisters in single-mother households.
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The Failure of Social Programs for Men
Many social programs designed to help disadvantaged populations show a stark gender divide in their effectiveness, working well for girls and women but failing to benefit boys and men. This pattern appears repeatedly across education and employment initiatives but receives little attention from policymakers.
The Kalamazoo Promise, which offers free college tuition to local students, increased female college completion rates by 45% but had no effect on men's rates. Similar gender gaps appear in numerous educational interventions: preschool programs, summer reading initiatives, mentoring programs, and college scholarship schemes consistently show significant benefits for girls but minimal or no impact for boys.
Employment programs show similar patterns. The Paycheck Plus pilot in New York City, which provided wage bonuses to boost employment, had "a relatively large positive effect on employment rates among women" but "no detectable effect among men." This disappointing result has implications for national policy proposals to expand the Earned Income Tax Credit. Government-funded training programs that show any positive results typically benefit women more than men.
Young women appear to seize opportunities with greater enthusiasm than young men. Female students are more than twice as likely to study abroad as their male peers across all academic subjects. Even when researchers control for factors like subject of study, the gender gap persists. The same 2:1 gender imbalance exists in service programs like Peace Corps and Americorps.
Today's young women show greater spirit of adventure and wider horizons than men, who aren't taking available opportunities. This reflects declining agency, aspiration and motivation among men, stemming from structural challenges and the obsolescence of traditional masculinity without clear replacements.
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Biology, Culture, and Masculinity
Understanding the biological foundations of sex differences is essential for addressing them responsibly, while acknowledging their complex interaction with culture. Males begin as "genetically modified females"-the Y chromosome disrupts the default female plan around 7 weeks after fertilization, triggering testosterone production that masculinizes the brain.
This biological process results in greater male physical aggression across all cultures and age groups. Boys show five times more frequent aggression than girls by 17 months, with the gap widening until early adulthood. While men commit over 95% of homicides worldwide, testosterone doesn't directly trigger aggression but amplifies it depending on circumstances.
Males demonstrate greater risk-taking across all societies throughout history-from hunter-gatherers to modern CEOs. This difference stems from evolutionary history and reproductive strategies. Men historically have been much less likely to reproduce than women (humans have twice as many female ancestors as male ones), creating what Joseph Henrich calls the "math problem of surplus men."
Men's biology creates a fundamentally different sexual drive than women's-more frequent, intense, and less discriminating. Evolutionary pressures made men "hardwired to be in a state of near-perpetual readiness" for procreation given their historically higher chance of reproductive failure.
We aren't determined solely by biology nor free from it-we're products of nature and nurture in constant interaction. Our environment shapes how genetic predispositions express themselves: stressful childhoods affect serotonin metabolism, father absence impacts telomere length, and marriage acts as a "testosterone suppression system" with levels dropping sharply among men who settle into fatherhood.
Unlike womanhood, which is anchored in reproductive biology, manhood must be continuously achieved through behavior and performance. Anthropologists observe this pattern across cultures-masculinity requires "coaxing" and "nurturing" rather than naturally emerging. As psychiatrist Anthony Clare noted, what a man does matters more than who he is. This explains why we experience "crises of masculinity" but never "crises of femininity."
The STEM paradox research reveals that gender differences in occupational choices are actually larger in more gender-equal societies. While some STEM fields like mathematics (40% female) and biological sciences (45% female) show good gender balance, engineering significantly underrepresents women-only 15% of engineers are female when interest patterns suggest 30% would be expected. These patterns suggest that when economic necessity recedes and personal freedom increases, innate preferences emerge more strongly.
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The Political Failure to Address Male Struggles
The political discourse around gender has been characterized by hostility since at least 1975, when Margaret Mead observed the "atmosphere of the greatest bad temper" surrounding changing roles. Today's political extremes create a destructive dynamic: the Left dismisses biology while the Right overemphasizes it; the Left sees a war on women while the Right sees a war on men; the Left pathologizes masculinity while the Right pathologizes feminism.
The term "toxic masculinity" exploded from academic obscurity into mainstream usage around 2015, coinciding with Trump's rise and the #MeToo movement. Despite lacking consistent definition, it's now applied to everything from mass shootings to pandemic mask resistance. This indiscriminate labeling poisons the concept of masculinity itself, leaving many young men unable to identify positive aspects of being male.
While progressives typically look for structural causes behind individual struggles like obesity or unemployment, they uniquely blame men for their problems. As YouTuber Natalie Wynn observes, the message to men is essentially "you're lonely and suicidal because you're toxic. Stop it!" The concept of "toxic masculinity" focuses attention on individual character flaws rather than structural challenges.
Progressives fail to recognize that gender inequalities now run in both directions. The White House Gender Policy Council's 2021 National Strategy on Gender Equity and Equality addresses no inequalities affecting boys or men. It notes women outnumber men in college only to highlight women's greater student debt, ignores boys' K-12 education gaps, and emphasizes health insurance access for women while ignoring men's higher uninsured rates.
Meanwhile, conservatives frame these issues as a "war on men," fueling victimhood despite the fact that male problems stem from structural economic changes rather than deliberate discrimination. They weaponize transgender rights issues despite affecting only 0.6% of the population, using them to defend traditional gender categories.
Conservatives' most serious mistake is assuming men can only be helped by restoring traditional gender roles at women's expense. Nearly 40% of Republican men believe women's gains have come at men's expense-a zero-sum mentality exploited by politicians. While conservatives correctly identify men's vulnerability when stripped of traditional roles, their solution of turning back progress is misguided.
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Solutions for Boys and Men
Redshirting-delaying school entry by a year-could help close gender gaps in education. Currently, about 12% of parents delay kindergarten for their children, with boys more likely to be redshirted than girls. However, this practice shows significant disparities: affluent parents are twice as likely to redshirt their children as low-income parents, and white children are redshirted more often than Black children.
Research strongly suggests that universal redshirting for boys would help close gender gaps in education. Studies show redshirted boys experience dramatic reductions in hyperactivity and inattention, higher life satisfaction, lower chances of grade retention, and higher test scores. Research found that being a year older benefited boys at least twice as much as girls through 8th grade, with only boys seeing gains by high school.
We need massive investment in male-friendly vocational education and training. Our educational system overemphasizes the traditional college track despite evidence that 16% of high school graduates and 28% of associate degree holders earn more than the median bachelor's degree holder. The singular focus on college readiness undervalues vocational skills and harms boys particularly, who often thrive with hands-on, practical learning approaches.
Career and technical education (CTE) has declined precipitously-credits earned dropped 17% between 1992-2013 and federal funding has diminished. This trend must reverse. Studies show CTE particularly benefits male students: career academies boosted earnings for Hispanic and Black males by 17% ($30,000 over eight years) with no similar benefit for females; Connecticut's technical schools increased male graduation rates by 10 percentage points and wages by 33-35% by age 23.
The labor market has dramatically shifted away from traditionally male-dominated sectors toward fields overwhelmingly occupied by women. While women have successfully moved into previously male-dominated professions like pharmacy, law, and accounting, men have not made similar transitions into female-dominated fields. This one-way gender desegregation leaves men increasingly disadvantaged in today's economy.
The solution lies in getting more men into HEAL occupations-health, education, administration, and literacy. HEAL encompasses education (teachers, librarians), healthcare (nurses, doctors, dental hygienists), healthcare support (home health aides, medical assistants), and specific roles like social workers and mental health counselors. While STEM accounts for 9% of U.S. employment among prime-age workers, HEAL jobs represent 23%.
We should set a national "30 by 30" goal-30% female representation in STEM and 30% male representation in HEAL by 2030, requiring over 3 million more men in HEAL jobs. While billions are invested in getting women into STEM, the men-into-HEAL movement barely exists. We need a $1 billion national investment over the next decade to create a pipeline of male HEAL workers.
The traditional male role in the family must be replaced with a more expansive role that includes caregiving on equal footing with mothers. I propose fathers and mothers each receive six months of nontransferable paid leave at 100% wage replacement (up to median earnings). This radical proposal has three key elements: lengthy leave periods, generous wage replacement, and equal, nontransferable benefits for fathers.
Our legal system treats unmarried fathers primarily as financial providers rather than parents. While divorce laws have evolved toward more egalitarian co-parenting, unmarried parents face a different system entirely. In every state, unmarried mothers are presumed sole custodians while fathers must prove paternity and petition for visitation-all while being obligated to pay child support regardless of access to their children.
Widespread private anxiety about boys and men exists across the political spectrum, with parents more worried about their sons' future success than their daughters'-particularly among liberal parents. Addressing these challenges doesn't require abandoning gender equality but extending it. The problem isn't that feminism has gone too far, but that it hasn't gone far enough-women's lives have been recast while men's haven't. We need a positive vision of masculinity for a postfeminist world and recognition that progress creates repercussions requiring adaptation.
