Best of 2023: Why the Modern Male is Struggling with Richard V. Reeves
We invited our community to vote on their favorite episodes of the year. This episode, featuring author Richard V. Reeves, was a huge hit and easily earned the most votes of all our episodes from the second quarter of the year.
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EPISODE RESOURCES
Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male Is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do about It (Amazon)
Why the Mental Health of Liberal Girls Sank First and Fastest (Jonathan Haidt Substack)
All Joy and No Fun: The Paradox of Modern Parenthood by Jennifer Senior (Amazon)
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TRANSCRIPT
Sarah [00:00:07] This is Sarah Stewart Holland.
Beth [00:00:08] And this is Beth Silvers.
Sarah [00:00:10] Thank you for joining us for Pantsuit Politics.
Maggie [00:00:33] Hello and welcome to a special episode of Pantsuit Politics. This is Maggie. I'm the Director of Community Engagement here at Pantsuit Politics. And today we're sharing a community favorite from the second quarter of 2023 as we continue our look back on the best of the year. Today's conversation, Why the Modern Male is Struggling with Richard Reeves, originally aired in June and was one of our most popular episodes of the whole year. Richard Reeves is a senior fellow in economic studies at the Brookings Institute and leads the Boys and Men Project. His research focuses on boys, men, inequality and social mobility. In 2022, he published his book 'Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male Is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do About It'. 2023 has been called the Year of the Girl. We've talked on this podcast about Barbie, the Taylor Swift Eras Tour and Beyonce's Renaissance. And I'm not even scratching the surface of the women and art, music and politics that have had a truly incredible year. But when I went through my life, I see two distinct eras. I have three siblings who are all girls. I have two daughters. I grew up with a beautiful community of aunts, bonus moms, strong women in my life, and a wonderful father who supported my mom's career and showed up for me by taking me to school, fixing lunches, putting up ponytails, coaching soccer teams, and helping me believe that I could be whatever I wanted to in my life. When I got married, I married a man who is one of three boys, and he has kind of pulled me into a much more stereotypically masculine world. He practices and teaches martial arts, and together we own a martial arts studio. And with that studio has come a steady stream of little boys into my life who have changed how I think of boys and masculinity. I have observed so many of the trends that Reeves names: boys being labeled as disruptive, being often rightly diagnosed with ADHD, but struggling to see themselves as good kids because our education system seems like it's not built for them to succeed. Richard Reeves names so many problems that men struggle with - meaning, identity and mental health - and seeks to acknowledge and address them without taking anything away from the hard earned struggles for women's rights and equality. As with so many issues, Reeves's work points to an idea that making school, family and work better for modern men could also make things better for women, children, teens, the labor shortage, and more. We hope that you enjoy hearing this episode again, that maybe you hear something you didn't hear before, think about it in a new way, and that you have the very best holiday season available to you. I look forward to being back with you with new episodes and conversations in the New Year. Without further ado, here is Sarah's conversation with Richard Reeves.
Sarah Richard Reeves, welcome to Pantsuit Politics.
Richard Reeves Thank you for having me on.
Sarah Thank you so much for writing this book. Now, you might not know this if Fred, our mutual friend at Brookings, didn't warn you. I cry a lot on this podcast, so I might tear up a little bit when I thank you for writing this book. As the mother of three boys, it was incredibly valuable to me. At this point, our audience might already be tired of hearing about this book because I talk about it so much. But it really, really was helpful to me in naming a lot of things I felt like I saw. And I know that's how this book started for you was not as a policy wonk, but was as (we share this in common) you are the father of three boys.
Richard Reeves Right. I have this view that all scholarship is at least a little bit autobiographical. Like, why do you end up studying that subject?
Sarah All good scholarship.
Richard Reeves I think so. And then some scholars will sort of pretend that somehow this subject area, well, that it just dropped on them from on high. That's not true. Something about it is intertwined with your personality. And in this case it was so obvious that looking at the world through my son's eyes-- they're all in their twenties now and I've raised them in the UK and the US. It just was an education for me and made me reflect a lot more on my own experience. And I think it was partly because of that that I started just looking more at the data. So I tend to say, "Well, I wonder what the gender split on that is? Or how are boys doing on that measure? Or have you broken that by gender?" And that then led me to other data points that sort of empirically underpinned the book. But I agree that there's there's no hard line here between empiricism and emotion. And I think you just have to be hands above the table about that and say, look, here's where I'm coming from. I think if you've got some sort of autobiographical element to your work and you know upfront about it, then people will always wonder. So I'm hands above the table. Yeah, I'm worried about my boys. They're all doing great, fortunately. But the world that they're in is so different. Even to the world I was in, let alone my my father, and it's astonishing.
Sarah I was a women's studies minor. I'm an only girl. I'm an only child. And so I had a very defined worldview about how I thought gender worked in the world. And then I had these three boys. And fun fact, my first son, they told me was a girl in two different ultrasounds. So I already had this--
Richard Reeves We had that with one of ours. It's weird, isn't it? We had exactly the same thing. We had actually named him. He was going to be Gabby.
Sarah Love it. Had a shower. Got some dresses. And I'll be honest, I had a lot of disappointment. I wanted a girl because I thought I knew what that meant. I thought I knew what that looks like. And it was very intimidating to me, I think, because probably subconsciously I had already observed some of these things of the difficulties of raising boys. And I think I had what you named very early, which is we individualize the problems with boys and we systematize the problems we see with girls. Tell us how you started to name that.
Richard Reeves Yeah, I observed that and I observed it across the political spectrum. This is not a left or right thing, which is there was a reflexive tendency if a boy is struggling or a man is struggling to say, well, "What's wrong with him?" To some extent. He's lazy. He's got A.D.D.. He's-- whatever. The level of judgment is applied differently. And and I guess for those on the left, it tended to be more about, well, almost to treat boys as defective girls.
Sarah Yes.
Richard Reeves And to just say, like, why can't you be more like your sister? Like, why are you so restless? Why can't you focus? Why can't you plan? What do you think about the future? And there are good biological reasons for those differences. But, nonetheless, it was all about "What's wrong with my son? Why is he struggling in school?" Not "Why is the school not serving my son very well?" And then on the other side of the aisle, there has been a tendency in recent years to sort of say, well, men are being emasculated, that the problem is they're not masculine enough and that they just need to kind of man up again and be real men again and that will be the solution. But what they share beneath those very stark differences, they do share an individualistic notion of the problem. The problem is of men to be willing to fix men one at a time, either they're too masculine or not masculine enough, depending on who you're talking to. But there wasn't enough attention to questions, like, is the education system working for men? Has the labor market become less friendly to men? Is our system of family law one that's being fair to fathers as well as to mothers, etc.? Those are much more boring questions, but they are about structures and laws and policies. And especially on the left, there's a tendency to look for structural problems. I think it's one of the things that comes instinctively to people on the center left, but with one exception, which is when it comes to Boys and Men.
Sarah And I think it's so heartbreaking. We had an expert in mental health, a listener to our show, and she was talking about how boys are punished with therapy. Like, there's something wrong with you so we need to go to therapy because you're not focusing or because you're too hyper. And you know what, I think you named so beautifully. And I was thinking about this when this last health mental health survey came out. Which is especially when we're going to start talking about the education system and how girls and boys operate inside of it, we're just really talking about two different problems because the teen girls are also not okay within that system. That's what we saw in that survey. And I think it's so tempting to say, well, we just want them to get good grades and then they'll thrive inside the education system and that'll fix it. But I think you see further out in higher education, it's more complicated than that. And you definitely see it when the girls who are "succeeding" inside the education system just come down with a whole other set of mental health challenges. It's like, you guys, we need to go back to the drawing room. The way we individualize this I think just presents in different kinds of mental health challenges, particularly when you're talking about the education system and teenagers.
Richard Reeves Yeah, I agree with the way you frame that, which is that there are young men and young women, boys and girls are struggling in different ways and to some extent for different reasons. But what's interesting, if you look at the work of Jonathan Hyde and he has just a great new Substack out actually on this, why it's particularly liberal girls who are really seeing this kind of spike in mental health problems and interestingly liberal boys as well. And that's something I'm very interested in digging further into. But when we're looking at what's happening with the girls, with this incredible spike, for example, in self-reported sadness and so on, it's like a percentage point jump in two years.
Sarah Yes, huge.
Richard Reeves Following an eight percentage point jump. So it's gone up by something like from 40% to 57% in four years of girls who are incapacitated for at least two years by these feelings. Okay, so what happened over that time period? And I'm pretty convinced by the evidence that social media does have a big part to play here. Not at least because girls consume social media very differently to boys. They are the ones who are on TikTok, Instagram, etc. They relate to that. There's much more. Social media can be weaponized against girls in a way that's very different against boys. And so, there's all this discussion now in Congress about age of consent, regulating social media. And so we are immediately saying, look, what is it about our environment? What is it about our culture, our system-- not the school system where the girls are doing okay in terms of their grades great. But our culture, what are we doing? What are we doing to these girls that's making them feel this way? That's our instinctive, reflexive way of thinking about it, to look for reasons why they're suffering.
Sarah Yeah.
Richard Reeves I think that's the right reflex. But we don't always do that with boys. We don't always say, "Look, the boys are really suffering." So including among high school age boys, four times more likely to commit suicide than girls, failing on all kinds of measures of education, massive friendship recession among boys, much more isolation, obviously, potential issues around addiction to different kinds of technology, including pornography and video games, etc.. So it's playing out differently. But sometimes there's a tendency to say, what are we doing to our girls to make them feel this way? And then to say, what's wrong with our boys that they feel this way. If they weren't so toxic and they weren't bottling up their feelings so much and they could just learn to express themselves, etc., they'd be okay. And so even in that sort of teen mental health crisis space, I see us an asymmetry in our instinctive reaction to it. And there's this old saying that when girls are struggling there's something wrong with society; when boys are struggling there's something wrong with boys. And I still think we're a bit stuck in that mindset.
Sarah No, I totally agree. I thought of your point about we talk about toxic masculinity, but we don't talk about toxic femininity. Although, I'm happy to report on a Facebook post yesterday, I had a friend of mine use the term toxic femininity to describe, yes, the Will Smith, Jada Pinkett Smith, and Chris Rock. She was saying this idea-- and I want to get into this about particularly gendered racial discrimination. She kind of described her reaction to this idea you can never do anything wrong is toxic femininity and to claim victimhood. And I thought and this is a black woman who made this post and I thought that is not what I expected to see today on Facebook. But I think it's a move in the right direction to say there are toxic aspects of femininity. And I think we do this thing of like, well, that means you're criticizing being a woman. And we think we have this whole history of discrimination, we can't do that. We're opening it up to the people who have traditionally been discriminated against. And we're creating more ways for them to be discriminated against. And so there is just orientation, I think, particularly among the left, that perpetuates that reaction in ways and we're missing things, some really obvious things when it comes to the education system. You argue in your book pretty convincingly that, at the very least, we should start boys later. I have a lot of regret about not holding my middle son back. He was born in June. But in my mind it's because redshirting was like this perpetuation of toxic masculinity. We're holding them back because they can play sports better. That was what I understood redshirting to be.
Richard Reeves Yes, because you were thinking about athletic [crosstalk] as opposed to academic.
Sarah That was the orientation, right? And so in my mind I was avoiding toxic masculinity by putting him in school and letting him go. And now I'm like, man, he's so young. He's just so young.
Richard Reeves Yeah. We had a similar regard with our middle son where we sort of half started him late. It is the worst of all worlds where we started him halfway through the year because we couldn't get the school to agree. And my wife and I weren't in full agreement about it. And it's one of my big regrets that we should have just gone all the way because that in some ways may be the worst of all worlds. And, again, he was June baby, pretty young for his year and just wasn't ready. And all our instincts, and especially my wife's instincts were like, no, he's just not ready. And the system, and to some extent me, were just like, well, this is how it works, right?
Sarah Yeah.
Richard Reeves And I actually really dislike the term toxic masculinity. And I think rather than start to say, okay, so there also can be toxic femininity, it's true that we don't use that term just to get away from this idea of toxicity all together.
Sarah World.
Richard Reeves I think, a better way-- I sometimes talk about mature masculinity as opposed to immature masculinity or whatever. And the way I think about this is that there are certain traits and attributes, ways of being in the world that on average are more associated with men than women. Of course, the distributions overlap. So the average doesn't mean all women are like this and all men are like that. But there are some differences like risk taking, sex drive, potential for aggression, people versus things, etc.. And they overlap to different degrees. But I think rather than saying there's something about each of those traits could either be a good or a bad thing depending on how it's expressed, depending on whether it's balanced by other traits. So the tendency of women to be more agreeable, for example, in other words, to care a bit more what people think about them, to be more attentive to people's emotional reactions to them, to be less likely to upset people and offend them and so on. Women are a little bit higher on that personality trait on average. Is that a good or bad thing? No, it sounds like a good thing, but actually if you're too agreeable you never state what you want. You never actually push yourself out in the world and actually not upsetting someone is more important than getting justice from someone, etc., and vice versa. And so same with men and risk. Is it good or bad that boys and men have a higher appetite tendency towards risk. Is that good? Yes. Is it bad? Yes. It depends.
Sarah Right.
Richard Reeves And so, rather than saying these things are intrinsically good or bad, the real conversation is how do we find ways to express them in ways that are kind of more pro-social than others rather than try hard to somehow, I don't know, have a sort of rite of exorcism where we can suck all the masculinity out of the men. And we don't tend to do that for femininity. We don't tend to say femininity is bad. What we tend to do is to say, look, it shouldn't be determinative. And you shouldn't treat women differently just because they're more like this. And there are plenty of women who don't fit that mold. But I actually think one of the great triumphs of the women's movement was actually to pursue feminism without destroying femininity, without saying femininity is the problem. Now, there were moments-- is it rude to ask how old you are?
Sarah No, I'm 41.
Richard Reeves Okay, so I'm trying to think whether you can remember the eighties.
Sarah A little bit.
Richard Reeves We probably never had to wear shoulder pads.
Sarah No, I was too young. But, yes, I know exactly what you're talking about. And the limp ties and the blouse. Yes.
Richard Reeves Yes. And so there was this period women had to wear-- they literally weren't allowed to look like women, and had to do assertiveness training etc., etc.. So there was this risk for a period that in order to get equality, women were basically going to have to become quasi-men or at least pretend. And then enough women just went, "No, I'm not doing that. I don't want to be like them. I want to be like me, but I also want to be able to do that job."
Sarah Right.
Richard Reeves Which is exactly the right impulse. And so we managed to honor femininity without that becoming in any way an obstacle to women's progress. We need to, I think, pay the same courtesy to men and to masculinity.
Sarah Well, one of the most helpful things I read in my parenting journey really trying to think through the benefits of both approaches, masculine and feminine approaches, was Jennifer Senior's book All Joy No Fun. And she talks about like, yeah, the men are less invested and the women can learn from that. They could take some of the pressure off themselves by watching the fathers and saying they don't care, and maybe I shouldn't either. Maybe everything isn't the end of the world when it comes to this child. Like, let's ease some of the pressure on that. And I've learned that from my husband for sure. And I think that balance where you're saying, like, we're not trying to elevate one, we're not trying to eliminate the other, we're acknowledging the inherent strengths. And it's that self-awareness that I think is really valuable. And we need more cultural conversation when it comes to masculinity. One time we were in Michigan and on this port and there was a big warning sign about the tide. And there were two boys that had died. And I pulled mine over and I said, "What did these two people have in common?" And they're like, "They're teenage boys." And I said, "Right, So I want you to be aware of that instinct." I don't want you to quash it. That's why we're in Boy Scouts. I think Boy Scouts is an excellent way to channel that need to do some risk, to go out there, to sleep in the dark by yourself. I don't care. But I want you to be aware of that. In the same way that if I had daughters, I would say, "Hey, be aware of that need to please. Be aware of that desire to be liked." So let's just own that. Let's just be aware of it.
Richard Reeves Yep. And be aware of it and recognize them, particularly on something like social media. Like that's why the social media stuff has been so brutal for girls, I think, because it does tap into that psychology of being liked and shamed and mean girls and best friend and stuff. So I agree. And I think that's why, a) it was a historic mistake for the Boy Scouts to go co-ed and rebrand themselves BSA. We still have Girl Scouts, by the way, as a separate organization. But actually Boy Scouts has gone co-ed. But, also, I agree that's a great example of the risk thing. And on a personal level, I became a scout leader and went away to do some training. I was also in scouts all the way through. And this moment in the training really stuck with me. We do all this training before we go hiking and mountaineering and stuff. And then they told us these stories of these scouts that had died mountaineering or doing all these things. And and they basically saying, look, the leaders did everything right. They did all the risk assessment, did everything right, and still these boys died. Because if you do adventurous stuff, there's risk. Some people are going to die. And we got you. You're insured. You're backed. We have got your back. If something happens to a scout when you're here, we have got you. We are here for you. Because they're trying to say, "Look, you do everything you can, but by definition you can't eliminate that risk." And so, if scouting is being done correctly, then every year, tragically, a small number of scouts will die doing a scouting activity. If you don't want anybody to die or get hurt, then stay in the hole and just do paper mache or something, whatever. Just don't go out--
Sarah Or play Minecraft. That's why they play Minecraft, because they can go out and craft their own world and be independent and take on risk in a way that their parents... And then we complain because they're sitting and they want to be on these games all the time.
Richard Reeves Exactly. And we also complain that they're not very good at learning the skills of assessing risk and kind of when we're not. But on the other hand, the other thing I would say-- I don't know how you'll feel about this, but maybe I would show to your sons, is the work of the Carnegie Hero Awards for civilians. I came across this thanks to Carlo Hoover [sp] and the quote in my book.
Sarah I was so incredibly touched by that portion of your book, because I thought the thing I always argue-- because I want to get into this, like in the new conversation around gender and non-binary and dropping these very cultural understandings of gender, which I'm specifically naming separate from sex, is we are different. Why do men commit all the crime? But I'm doing what I'm accusing other people doing. I'm taking just that one version of that. Just the sort of manifestation of that, that is a cultural negative. And I thought the way you talked about the risk men take often in saving other people's lives. I was thinking about that just two days ago with that flight when those men tackled that guy who was going after the flight attendant. And I thought that's who rushed forward without thinking about it.
Richard Reeves Same with the young guy that Biden actually called out in his State of the Union who tackled the gunman etc.. And also, like, if you want to get really visceral about this, what you see is that in mass shootings situations, those tragic situations, the shooter is almost always male.
Sarah Right.
Richard Reeves It's also true that if there is somebody using their body to protect somebody else against the bullets, they're all almost always male.
Sarah Yeah.
Richard Reeves There's exception as mothers sometimes who do it for their children. But then you'll very often see that they're the guys that literally getting in the way. And the Carnegie Civilian Hero Awards, very quiet organization, basically rewards the people who risk or give their own lives to save the lives of a stranger. It's not their job. They don't being paid to do it and it's not their family. So it's the young man who run into a burning building to save someone, who dive into a river to save someone, and a lot of them lose their own lives in the process. And then they get this hero award. It's a very, very understated operation. And they're very hard even to get on the phone, these kind of folks. But I do know that they have look hard for women and they just don't find very many women who run into burning buildings to save strangers.
Sarah I mean, heck, Cory Booker has done it like twice. He's a United States senator.
Richard Reeves He should get to civilians awards.
Sarah He should get two civilian awards.
Richard Reeves So on the one hand, like 95% of violent crime is committed by men. So men do have more potential for aggression. And the more they take risks around that for reasons that are probably ancestral. At the same time, violent crime rates, with the exception of the last couple of years, have really dropped in recent decades. And they're very much lower in, say, Singapore and Malaysia. And so the idea that the culture doesn't matter is crazy, right? Obviously, whether that tendency to violence is expressed is depends on the culture. And, in fact, I just came across this-- I don't think it was the same CDC survey. It might have been actually, but there's a showing that the number of high schoolers who'd been in a physical fight has halved in the last 20 years.
Sarah Wow.
Richard Reeves And I've noticed that with my own sons, they have not got into physical fights at school. And I'm honestly like, really? I feel like I brawled my way through school. And I just take a step back and think, "Wow, that's so great. The culture has changed in such a way that they haven't had to learn to use their fists." And there would be some versions or some people would say, "Well, that's the problem with society. Men aren't punching each other enough anymore or whatever. And I'm like, what a wonderful world we live in that my sons haven't had to learn how to fight. Great.
Sarah I think what's happened is though that we've done that, we've really tried to bring some awareness to the more negative manifestations of masculinity. We're doing the work there, but I think the best argument in your book is that, yeah, but we didn't get rid of patriarchy. We didn't get rid of an organization in our culture and society that sort of has this vision of masculinity. We worked on some of the negative aspects, but we didn't replace it with anything positive. So we're telling men you should really still be the main provider when the economy changed around them. We're telling them you should succeed at education when the education system is really not built for their brain development. As you're writing this, you do this so masterfully but I know it had to be difficult to piece apart some of this cultural from biological. I thought the parts you write about hormones and how those play out in men and women differently, not only was I impressed by your skill at talking about that, but just the bravery because that is a very, very touchy subject, particularly on the left, particularly with our new conversations around gender and sex.
Richard Reeves Yeah. And it's against these weird things where it becomes something of self-fulfilling prophecy that anybody in their right mind doesn't go near these subjects.
Sarah Yeah.
Richard Reeves And what that means is the only people going near the subjects are people who are not in their right mind.
Sarah Right. Jordan Peterson. Lord.
Richard Reeves Take your pick. And I actually mean Andrew Tate is blowing Jordan Peterson out of the water. And Jordan Peterson is an intellectual guy.
Sarah Well, I want you to know that my friend's son, who was intrigued by Jordan Peterson and reading his book, we got him your book and he likes it a lot better. So there you go.
Richard Reeves Thank you. Well, also there's a tone to these things. One of the things that happens is that people get angry because they just feel like their sides are not being taken seriously, that these issues are being ignored. And I see that. And a lot of men who end up in this space is that they get angry. And honestly, sometimes I can understand why because you can see these examples of just these injustices or these unfairness or these double standards. But it's an incredibly unattractive thing to see a guy getting angry on behalf of man. And I approach this genuinely much more in sadness than anger. What I see is just a lot of unnecessary human suffering and among women and girls, for all kinds of reasons that we can talk about and I think talked about a lot, and among a lot of boys and men that are perhaps not talked about enough. And that's just straightforwardly bad for society if we have boys and men struggling. And one of the moments that sort of stopped me in my tracks along the route to this book was discovering-- I knew that the suicide rates are higher among men. I didn't know there were four times higher among men. And even today, I'm amazed by how many people say, "Are you sure that's right? Because I saw a New York Times piece that girls were having more suicidal thoughts." I said, "Suicidal thoughts."
Sarah Yeah, it's also an increase, not a doubling or quadrupling.
Richard Reeves Correct. And it's still this massive gender gap. And that doesn't mean we shouldn't worry about the gender gap at the other end, but we have four times higher. Then there's this work by Fiona Shen, this Australian researcher, with this really interesting analysis, a textual analysis of the words that men use to describe themselves in their last notes of posts or whatever before suicide. And the two most commonly used words by men to describe themselves before suicide were useless and worthless. And I thought, actually, of course this is a particular group, but if as a society we've genuinely managed to make any of our people feel that way, that's a colossal failure.
Sarah Yeah.
Richard Reeves And at that point, it's not a question of race or color [inaudible] people are suffering. And let's figure out why they're suffering and see if we can help them. And that's absolutely where I come from on this. I don't have an ax to grind. It's just like, for God's sake, if we're allowing our ideological sensitivities or our worries about the trip wires to get us in the way of speaking truth in a way that could alleviate even by a small amount genuine human suffering, then shame on us.
Sarah Yeah.
Richard Reeves If we're allowing fear of the reaction from some people from really raising the subject to stop us from calling it as we see it. And what I see is a lot of human suffering. And by the way, that's why people like Jordan Peterson and others get such massive audiences, because he just says, "Yeah, I hear you, You're suffering."
Sarah And Donald Trump.
Richard Reeves Yes. I mean, just play into that pain.
Sarah Yeah.
Richard Reeves It's not that it's made up pain. It's real pain.
Sarah You probably saw I was 100% tearing up. I have a half brother that died by suicide, and it was a classic death of despair.
Richard Reeves I'm sorry.
Sarah You look that up and if there was a checkbox, he checked every single one. He was underemployed, he was under-educated, he was suffering with alcoholism. He had a child. He was not in a relationship with that woman. So I don't think he had a good model of fatherhood. And even my own father at one point during the 2016 election when we were talking about all this, because he's a Trump supporter, he said on a phone with me, I'll never forget it, he said, "I still have worth." And I said to him, "Hey, I don't think you're worthless." But that's what he felt even from me. And it just broke my heart. And I thought, oh my gosh. And if you care deeply about issues of race or poverty, well, that just compounds exactly what we're talking about. Right after I finished your book, I was reading Dr. King's last book, Where Do We Go From Here? Chaos and Community. You should read it. He has a section in there about exactly what you talk about inside the black community that we have a very patriarchal idea and a matriarchal reality. He talks about that in his book.
Richard Reeves Really? So Interesting.
Sarah He is naming this. Listen, he was a human person at a certain point in time. He's not great on gender, like, he never even uses a female pronoun in the book, basically. But he names that. He says the idea in a black man's head is hyper masculine and the reality basically is that the women are the leaders in our community. And that is hard. And I think that's particularly true in lower income communities that we have this hyper masculine idea that pushes back against some liberal ideas that are improvements, like we said, the sort of self-awareness and even toxic masculinity. We have this idea that pushes up against that. And the reality is no one can meet that idea inside the confounds of these economic, educational, mental health, addiction. Of course, those are the words people are using before they're taking their own lives.
Richard Reeves Yeah. And the way I increasingly think about this is in terms of like a social script almost, that's like what's the script that we follow? And the good news is that these scripts have become much freer than they were in the past. But, nonetheless, I see us tearing up the scripts that my parents had of the dad breadwinner, provider, mum stay home, carer, which was unquestioned. There wasn't a discussion about that it was just like this was the way it was. And we tore up those scripts and gave women a very powerful new script, which is economic independence, empowerment, you go girl, etc.. Very liberating. Very powerful. It's been very effective and it's wonderful. I love it.
Sarah Yeah.
Richard Reeves We also tore the old script for men, which is, yeah, you're going to be a breadwinner and provider and your role in society is going to be very clearly delineated by that providing and protecting role. We tore that up, now that's not true anymore, and didn't replace it. And then the result is that without a script, the men are left to improvise. It's haphazard. It's difficult. They have no idea what to do. As this young man said to Peggy Orenstein, terrific book, Boys and Sex. She asked all these young men what's good about being a boy? What's good about being a man? None of them could answer. And a number of them said-- one in particular said, "That's interesting. I can't think of anything actually." You hear a lot about what's wrong with guys, and I fear that for understandable reasons we have presented boys and men with a long list of don'ts. Don't do this. Don't say that. Don't look at this, etc.. Not very many dos because do we need them? It's not clear you're going to be needed any more, by the way, because the women are kicking their butts in the classroom, doing pretty well on the labor market. So it's like, well, they're not quite sure they're going to be needed. So kind of figure it out, basically. And we just left them adrift in ways that I think are profoundly damaging to their sense of self, their sense of worth, their sense of value in the society. And I've really changed my mind about things that previously I might have thought of as good or even innocuous, like the idea that the future is female. The slogan the future is female, which is plastered across my kid's high school walls by the way. And I just started looking at it in a different way and just sort of thinking because I had all the right feminist credentials, and I'm saying, "Yeah, that's great; the future is female." And then I was like, "Wait, what are my sons supposed to think when they look at that and they see the girls killing it in the classroom?" What message does it send to one sex to say that the future is of the other sex? If we said the future is male, well, we wouldn't think that was a great message to our girls. It may have been it had its moment, it had its time, but that time has passed. And now we've got to re-calibrate our mindsets for the reality of the current situation rather than 50 years ago.
Sarah Well, and again, back to the same point I made with teen girls in the education system, it's not like American women or women participating in the workforce all over the world are like, "This is paradise. We did it. Utopia." There's this great moment in the TV series about Phyllis Schlafly, Mrs. America. Cate Blanchett plays Phyllis Schlafly.
Richard Reeves I love that series.
Sarah It's so good. And there's this moment where she was, like, "I don't want this. Then I'll have to do both. I'll have to do all the home and all the work." And my friends and I are like, yes, that's the moment. That's it. That's what happened. It's imbalanced. And I love all your stuff about we did a good job of inviting women into STEM. Let's invite men in to HEAL, into these health and education and learning environments. My favorite part that I've been quoting to everyone, because all everybody talks about in my community and a lot of places is the staffing shortages with nurses and teachers. When you're like, well, we're not going to fix it with just half the population. We're not going to fix the staffing shortage with half the population. And so pushing men and giving them another vision of what this could look like and what their careers could look like and their participation in the economy, I think is so important, so important.
Richard Reeves And it's part of this expansive model too. I think this idea of expansion of roles that are possibilities I think that's really what the women's movement was great at doing. It was just to expand. We're are just going to add to the role. They're not really going to take roles away.
Sarah I used to always say, if you want to vacuum in your pulse go forth and prosper. Don't tell me I have to. I don't care. All these tradwife peoples on TikTok. I don't care. Great. You don't want to go to the gym by yourself? Go with your husband. I really don't care.
Richard Reeves Right. The glorious thing about a more equal and more liberal society is that we do get those choices. And so we've multiplied the ways in which you can be a woman. I'm not saying that hasn't come with all its attendant challenges and risks, and you've talked about that. But meanwhile, actually, I sometimes think we've actually reduced the number of ways in which to be a man. Just when it needed to expand as the role of women into provider. And actually so fewer and fewer men in those caring professions, for example. So I have this acronym HEAL, (which is the opposite of STEM) it Health, Education Administration and Literacy. So it is teaching nursing, social work, psychology, etc. and those jobs that require more of those skills. Which I was slightly shocked to discover that most of those professions are getting more gender segregated, not less. And the other direction we're seeing medicine, law, science, engineering, etc., getting less gender segregated. Not to say that all of them are where we need them to be, but, wow, done pretty good job. The other side, massive gender segregation and it's happened quite quickly. So even since like if you go back to 1980, the gender composition of psychology, social work, and elementary and middle school teaching was roughly 50-50. A bit higher more men psychologists, more like 40% of social workers and elementary, middle school teachers were men. Now it's 20%. It's halved. And it's dropping like a stone in areas like psychology. Among psychologists under the age of 30, five percent are men.
Sarah Dang!
Richard Reeves Psychology has just become a female profession. In my lifetime it didn't used to be, but it is. And then we wonder, could that be a reason why it's harder for men to seek mental health care? Is it a great idea for all our school counselors to be female? Maybe not. And, again, you wouldn't want it the other way round for sure.
Sarah And with boys feeling divested in the education system, never having a teacher that's male.
Richard Reeves The lack of male teachers again. And it's interesting because I've yet to find anybody that will seriously oppose the idea that it would be a good idea to get more male teachers. It's not that there aren't some issues that get raised, but there's now 24% of K-12 teachers that are men, 10% of elementary school teachers, and 3% of early years educators are male. And this is a great line for the women's movement. You can't be it if you can't see it. And the message that we're sending around appropriate roles is a big problem, I think. The evidence that it's good for boys, especially in subjects like English, where they're really struggling to have a male teacher. And it's definitely true for me. I had an English teacher in high school who was a Korean War veteran and part time bus driver, all grizzled old guy. And he would have a class-- we were co-ed-- but he'd have a class of 16 year old, mostly working class kids, including the boys, in tears reading 17th century love poetry. Now try doing that if you're not a guy, right? And he opened my eyes to literature and to the beauty of words and so on, because I was like, well, if he's into it, it's not a girly thing. And exactly the same way, by the way, having women teachers in STEM subjects is awesome for girls.
Sarah And, again, it's also awesome for girls to have an English professor that's doing that. like the grizzled male English professor. The three teachers I had, one was my high school English professor who's a man. And it was good for me too. Like, if it's good for the boys, it's good for the girls. That diversity of seeing what's possible and seeing different gendered perspectives is valuable. And I think speaking to this and trying to name it, and then you have this great section of the book where you talk about the mistakes on the right and how they want to turn back the clock. That's just easy to write about. But you also have a chapter on the left and the mistakes we make. And, again, it's not just even avoiding it, it's the way we talk about it. I mean, I do feel like I can hear the emails. My co-host calls it the chorus of 10,000 voices. I can hear the emails being written right now as we're having this conversation. But what about this? But what about this? But what about this? But what about this? As if you are naming suffering around boys you don't care around the suffering of girls. Or my younger cousins who are basically really interested in this idea that just gender is a construct. My 13 year old son. Gender is a construct. All of this is a construct. We're harming ourselves by putting ourselves in boxes at all. Let's just move forward in a way where there is a spectrum of availability to everyone, which I'm not necessarily opposed to. I think easing into a spectrum of behavior is always beneficial in a multicultural democracy because we have a lot of humans and there is always a spectrum of behavior. But how did you work through that?
Richard Reeves Yeah, well, the first thing is-- so I agree. And, yeah, the emails are being written and I'm getting plenty of those, but maybe many fewer than you might fear.
Sarah That makes me feel better.
Richard Reeves Because I think the appetite for a good faith conversation about these issues is enormous. I'm so pleased by the fact that if you frame it in the right way and you just said, look, this is in no way to say there aren't issues facing girls [crosstalk].
Sarah It's not a zero sum game. We're not picking winners and losers here. I know we are often in society. I get that. But we don't have to frame every conversation that way.
Richard Reeves We should be honest about where that is the case. And so, for example, I've written for Brookings about the case for quotas to get more women into US politics. The under-representation of women in US politics is pretty shocking, frankly. When Mexico and others are just way ahead of us in terms of gender represents it's embarrassing. So 25% still. And obviously Biden's done better with his cabinet, but still no female president. I'm just like what is happening to US politics. We really need some sharper interventions, I think, to get more women. And now is that zero sum? Yes, because there are only so many of those slots available. Does it justify strong action? I think, yes, because those are literally the people passing the laws that affect us. In a representative democracy, they should be represented. So I think there's a huge problem of the gender imbalance at the top of the US society, especially in politics. Now, I'm going to talk about how most men in America today earn less than most men in America did in 1979. Now, I'm going to talk about the fact that male suicide rates have risen by 25%. Now, I'm going to talk about the fact that the single biggest risk factor for dropping out of college is being male. Now, I'm going to talk about the fact that 15% of young men now say they don't have a close friend five times as many as a few decades ago. Can I talk about that stuff now? Because we can hold two thoughts in our head at the same time. We are not creatures of such simplicity that were only allowed to have one thought or be on the side of one group within society, rather than just looking [inaudible] and saying, "Well, they're struggling with this and they're struggling with this and let's help them with that." And in some ways make it a bit more normal.
And my frustration with some of the people in professional politics. This is not normal people. It's not normal. It is just a zero sum framing. I think, for example, that the White House has a gender policy council, which I criticized briefly in the book, which replaced the Council on Women and Girls, but it doesn't do anything for the gender gaps facing boys, literally nothing. You read the whole strategy, you read everything I've done just on an update report. I've spoken to some of the people involved and it is like nothing. And so their view is gender equals women. Gender inequality is for women and that's for the right. That's for the conservatives to talk about. And I'm saying to them, you are leaving so much capital on the table, you are just playing into the hands of the people on the other side who say you don't care about boys and men. It would be so easy to have a male mental health strategy to look at what's happening. We have a bigger gap on US college campuses today, gender gap than we did in 1972 when Title Nine was passed. It's the other way round. So we passed Title Nine, men with 13 percentage points more like to get a degree than women. Today, women are 15 percentage points more likely than men to get a college degree. So we have slightly wider than Title Nine level gender gap in colleges just the other way round. But the only mention of that in the White House Gender Policy Council strategy is to point out the unfairness of the fact that women have more college debt than men.
Sarah Come on...
Richard Reeves It's so annoying. I'm like, come on. First of all, that's just empirically stupid. It's like men complaining about how they pay more income tax.
Sarah Yeah.
Richard Reeves It's just like there's this kind of intellectual stupidity to it, but it's also just politically, it's like, really? Like, why do you think that is? Oh, it's because there's a gigantic gender gap in terms of who's going to college and they think the risk is so high and it's not.
Sarah And I think too strategy is dumb because I always think of that-- there's a Bell Hooks quote where she talks about the difficulty of dealing with race versus gender. And she's like, it's one thing to think differently about the people who live on the other side of town. It's different to think differently about the person that sits across the table from you. Now, that's the inherent challenge, but it's also the inherent opportunity, right? Like a lot of the things when we talk about systemic issues in the United States, we're talking about them, right? We're talking about them, but not when we're talking about boys and girls. Everybody has a member of the opposite sex in their life. Everybody.
Richard Reeves Almost everybody. It's hard to find someone who doesn't.
Sarah Everybody, right? I think you'd be hard pressed, right?
Richard Reeves Really. Yeah.
Sarah So that's the opportunity, right? It's like you don't have to be afraid because everyone-- I don't have a lot of male friends. I have a lot of female friends. I don't have a parent in my life who has not struggled with ADHD either with a nephew or with their own son. Like that statistics you have where it's like 25% of boys in elementary school are being treated for ADHD. And it's like that's really high. Again, it's like the teen mental health. If everyone is struggling, then it's definitely not an individual struggle. We're doing something wrong. Don't we want different outcomes? I want different outcomes for my boys. Also, I don't want them to go to a college where they're like one out of every four students is boys. Not because I think it's wrong to be a lot around women, but I think that's hard on everybody.
Richard Reeves Yes.
Sarah I think that's setting everybody up to have a difficult experience. So it's an opportunity here we're all affected by it.
Richard Reeves It is. And in just the same way that one of the most powerful messages to support the women's movement was saying, "Don't you want your daughter to have all the same opportunities and chances to flourish as your son?" I have plenty of very conservative people in my family where they all work, etc. They want their daughters to succeed. And if they discover that their wife is being discriminated against on playgrounds, in the workplace or harassed or anything at work, they are not going to be happy about that. So the idea that people don't want women's flesh, but it's partly because it's their daughter, their wife, their sister who's being discriminated against or harassed or in some way made to feel lesser because she's a woman. Same the other way around. The number of-- in some ways it's like I think the consumers of my work, who I kind of hear the most from, are probably left leaning moms of sons.
Sarah Present!
Richard Reeves They were just like, "Yeah, if I don't have to give up my prior commitments and I don't have to start frothing at the mouth to care about boys and men and become 'one of them' then I'm here for that conversation because I'm really worried about my son and I don't think the school system's working." And maybe if we're medicating one in four, maybe that suggests that system's not working for them. Maybe rather than treating the inability of the boys to flourish in the system as a problem with them to be medicalized and then treated with drugs, maybe instead something about the set up. And, again, I think some of this it's like one in four boys across K-12 have been diagnosed with some form of developmental disability. Back to the ADHD thing, I think it's crazy to imagine honestly, though, if you have a group where one in four of them have been described as disabled developmentally, that's-- come on.
Sarah But not if you think they're just broken girls, right?
Richard Reeves Not if you think they're defective girls.
Sarah Not if you think they're just defective girls. And that makes sense, doesn't it? I mean, and that's the thing. One of the most impactful conversations we had around the Brett Kavanaugh hearing, I said, "I refuse to believe these beautiful creatures in my house are just rapists waiting to happen. I will not." No, absolutely not. And that's not to say that the reality of violence with men is not a real one, but this sense of they're just broken and all we can do is put barriers around them, no. Absolutely not. I don't feel that way about my sons. I don't feel that way about my husband. And that's why the way I calm myself the most is at least he's in their life presenting a different version of masculinity. But that shouldn't be the only option. It is make sure you have this very privileged luck (luck meeting the right person) to shepherd your boys through this. Although, I do think you call for like a different modern re-imagining of fatherhood that gives men something to lean into instead of feeling like they're failing constantly is really part of the solution.
Richard Reeves It's back to this expansion of roles and expanding. The great thing about some of the changes you see in recent years is it gives men much more space to do more fathering than my father was able to, for example. So I was able to be a stay at home dad quite a few years. And that's only possible because of the changes in the labor market, which meant my wife could earn enough for us to do that. And we always agreed that we weren't going to have two crazy jobs at the same time because we basically wanted to raise our kids and we kind of took it in turns. It was messy, but we kind of figured it out. But it was a great gift to me to be able to just basically be dad for a few years. And that's when I became a scout leader and was very involved in the community and all that stuff is great. Loved it. Slowed my career trajectory down a little bit because that's kind of inevitable. Was it worth it? Absolutely. So you have this opportunity to do more fathering. Meanwhile, there's actually a growing problem of fatherlessness, so it's going the wrong way. So we see fewer fathers in some cases. It usually varies by class. But, again, one of the stats that makes you go, "Wait, what?" and double check it and then have someone else check it for you and then go to the author and say, "Are you sure?" is the following: that within six years of their parents separating, a third of American children never see their father again?
Sarah Oh, my God.
Richard Reeves They're like, "Are you sure?" I just wrote that again for another Brookings piece and I had my boss double check it. And I'm like, "Yeah, that's right." And they're like, "Wait, what?" And I think there's cultural stuff around like fathers mattering in a way that goes beyond the old breadwinner model. There's a danger of-- I was at an event and I laid out the evidence for how fathers are really good for sons and daughters in terms of mental health and all kinds of things. And someone said, they asked the question nicely and they said, "Isn't saying that dads matter in ways that are distinct to mothers, although overlapping distinct. Isn't that heteronormative?" You're applying a heteronormative framework, which is this idea of the binary. And I said, "Well, look, that's the evidence as I like to see it. And if the price I have to pay for pointing out the positive impact of fathers on their kids lives is to be accused of being heteronormative, I'll pay it."
Sarah Yeah.
Richard Reeves If that doesn't make me heteronormative, okay. Because I think the alternative is saying, well, dads don't really matter. It's not only bad for kids. And here I think I really got this wrong in the book, actually. Something if I could go back and rewrite the stuff on fatherhood--
Sarah That was my last question, so perfect.
Richard Reeves I would rewrite it. I've had this comment for a lot of people, and it's just felt to me like I really missed an opportunity here. One that I'd like to address in the future is I essentially wrote about the importance of fathers for kids, and I treated fatherhood as a means to an end. And the end was kids flourishing, doing well at school, not getting into trouble, etc. And the evidence of that is very strong. So dads matter for their kids. But I had a number of men communicate with me and they just said to me, "You know, actually being a dad matters to dads as well." And you've basically said, look, we matter because of all this social science showing that, but actually the identity of being a father, what that means maybe you don't have a job or you're struggling in the labor market. Maybe you're struggling with all kinds of all the other problems in your life, maybe you've lost your faith you don't go to church anymore. Maybe you are surrounded by a culture that doesn't feel very amenable to you, etc. But you know what? You're still a dad. And I actually met this guy the other day, he was an Uber driver in Charlotte, and I asked what brought him here and he said, my ex moved up here with my daughter and I didn't have legal rights at that point. So she thought that by moving from Florida to Charlotte, that was going to shake me off. But I just moved my whole life here. I started working as an Uber driver because I'm not leaving my daughter. And it was clearly as a dad that was going to be part of his identity. And so if I could rewrite that section and I apologize that I didn't do this, especially to the dads, which is that dads you don't matter just because you're good for your kids and it's good for society, but actually it's good for you. And that's a noble and important role. And even if I didn't have good social science to say that fathers matters for kids, you know what? You're still a dad and you're still precious because of that. That role is so important. So I would definitely write that slightly differently now in a way that was more sensitive to the moral value of just being a dad and what that means and how it anchors you in a way that [crosstalk].
Sarah We're not saying it's positive because it's the only good outcome a child can have and that a child can't have a good outcome in a lesbian partnership. Like, it's just so silly the way we formulate these' they're not mutually exclusive. You can say uphold both things. I see that in my own father's life. He moved too far away when I was really little, but he was an excellent long distance father and he was very active and remains active in my half brother's life. And I think I see that when the economy shook him or he got divorced or didn't have an active church, that was important to him. He was and continues to be a very active and involved father. And I thought what you were going to say is that they're not just-- and here I'm going to get teared up again. It's not just when you're a kid, it matters to have a father as an adult, right? It's not like you're done and you can call your mum and you're fine.
Richard Reeves Yes, sometimes.
Sarah You just also need that figure as you get older as well.
Richard Reeves Yeah. I think that the honoring of dads and fathers at all stages is just huge to, in any way, dishonor them by suggesting that they're kind of surplus to requirements don't need them anymore. I actually had this conversation with a lesbian couple after I'd been accused of being heteronormative, who, like almost every lesbian couple I know, work incredibly hard to have very strong male figures in their kids lives, especially their sons. So that kind of social fathers. Again, it's this point you can do it in different ways. And I said, look, why do you make such a big deal as a godfather in this case? He's around all the time. He's deeply involved in your kids lives. Why do you do that? And they said, because it's really important that they have. They don't have a biological dad in their lives, but it's very important that they have dad like figures, that they have men who who are kind of there for them, role modeling for them, complementing kind of what we're doing. And because they're quite pretty feminist, I said, "Well, that's very heteronormative."
Sarah That was funny. My co-host always says we overcorrect. And I just think we've done so much overcorrection in the women's rights movement and in a lot of areas surrounding gender and biological sex. And I think we see the manifestations and that suffering. And I think it is so important to name it and say, we're not trying to go back, we're not trying to erase anything. We're just trying to get more on a path where everyone can flourish. That's the goal. Reduce suffering, increase flourishing. And if we see suffering, then it's time to re-calibrate. And I think that your book is such important work with regards to that re-calibration. Thank you so much for writing it.
Richard Reeves Well, thank you for saying that and thank you for this conversation.
Sarah Now, tell me before we leave the work you said you're working on a project with boys and men at Brookings. So tell us about that quickly.
Richard Reeves Yeah, so I'm staying on this limb. I'm on it. I might as well stay on it.
Sarah I'm here.
Richard Reeves I'm here now. I've walked through the fire. I might as well keep walking. But also because there is so much appetite from people saying, "Okay, so what do I do about it?" And the areas I really want to focus on are fatherhood and the way that the legal system, especially for unmarried fathers, can really get in the way of them being involved. And I want to work more on the issue that you talked about a few minutes ago around getting more men into these caring professions, these HEAL jobs, psychology, nursing, teaching, especially. I'm doing some more empirical work on that and trying to push forward on both of those fronts. I think there's lots of other work to do as well, but in terms of making a policy change that feels to be where I can make the most difference at this point.
Sarah Well, great. Thank you so much. Thank you so, so much for your work.
Richard Reeves Thanks again.
Maggie [01:01:07] Thank you so much for listening with us. We hope you're enjoying this end of the year season, which is such a good time for reflection and thinking about how we show up and what we want to take with us in the New Year. We are so excited to begin a new year with all of you and we will be in your ears again Friday with another of our listener favorites. And until then, keep it nuanced ya'll.
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