Monday, October 14, 2013

Perspective: Where Did the Boys Go?





An earlier blog pointed out that we have a 25% shortfall in the number of graduates with degrees in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM), which is keyed to the reduction of the number of men going to college. It turns out that the ratio of men to women college graduates has reversed in the last 40 years from 60 men to 40 women in the seventies to 40 men to 60 women today. Men still favor majors in STEM, but less than ten percent of women major in and graduate with STEM degrees. As a consequence, we have a shortfall. In that blog I focused on what we could do to promote and encourage more females to major in STEM and stick with it so that we would at least have a few more mechanical, chemical, electric, electronic and civil engineers and persons skilled in information technology (IT).But I left unaddressed the question about why the boys have dropped out.



It turns out to be worse than we thought! The boys have not just dropped out of school; they have dropped out of marriage, fatherhood and the American Dream, as well. What is surprising is that boys are also dropping out of school and marriage in Australia, Canada and Europe. Because men are opting out of school, marriage and parenting, women cannot find suitable mates and therefore remain single. Today, the number of single mothers who never married is 44%. For perspective, in 1960 single mothers who had never married were just 4% of the total of all single moms. Of further concern is the fact that out of wedlock births in the United States is reaching 50% and among the blacks that figure rises to nearly 75%. Yes, the men are still having children, but they are not becoming parents, so they are contributing little if anything to the essential job of producing responsible morally-compassed citizens. If we have this large a problem after a mere generation of men not performing as fathers, we can predict that the drop out rate of the next generation of males will be reaching tidal proportions right in front of our eyes. That should scare us to death!!



It is clear that the United States, indeed Western Civilization, does not know exactly why the boys have opted out. But what is really shocking is that Society does not seem to even care enough to find out why or how solve it. When a society has a problem this gigantic and so fundamental to its ability to sustain itself, and no one seems to notice it, or care enough to do anything about it, that society is in deep trouble. To phrase the question more bluntly: Are we witnessing the beginning of the end of Western Civilization?



So, what is different today versus forty years ago? Here are a few key items to consider:



• Boys want to continue to imitate their fathers and grow up to be like them, but today many boys have no fathers living with them

• Boys learn best when learning is “hands on”, i.e. touching, moving, climbing on, and building things. Today schools focus on reading and writing. Boys are not wired for such early exposure to something as abstract as reading and writing. In the 1970’s we did not teach reading in Kindergarten; today we do

• Boys are much more active than girls. Many schools have reduced or even eliminated recess time to make time for reading and writing.

Here are some theories regarding the cause.



The Education System

“Why Boys Fail”, by Richard Whitmire a journalist, written in 2010 does an excellent job of analyzing the problem. Interestingly, he and others believe that the emphasis placed on reading and writing in elementary school benefits girls more than the boys because girls are “wired” to read, grasp and use words at an earlier age than boys. Thus, the sub-title of his book is “Saving our Sons from an educational system that’s leaving them behind”. Here are some of his findings.



• Boys start to fall behind girls as early as third grade, and by ninth grade many boys have given up on school altogether.



• Boys who give up drop out of high school, don’t go to college, and if they do go to college often do not graduate from college



Whitmire explains that the problem shows up in boys from affluent husband/wife families as well as those who come from poor single mother families. However, because the data are lumped together for all the boys, white, black and Hispanic, the impact on Caucasian. boys is masked.



Since the early nineties numerous studies and books have been written that statistically confirm that the boys have dropped out of school. Joseph Torbin, Author of Good Guys Don’t Wear Hats, a Professor of Early Childhood Education at Arizona State University, asks the question “Is it boys or is it School?”, and points to the feminization of our schools and the emphasis on reading and writing at too early an age for boys. Tobin also points to the fact that boys are more active than girls and thus have trouble sitting still. The reduction of and often elimination of recess exacerbates this problem which leads to teacher’s feeling boys have problems that need to be treated. The treatment includes medication via Ritalin.

When Did Feminism Begin?

The 19th Annendment to the US Constitution was the first phase, but the surprise popularity of Betty Friedan's 1963 book The Feminine Mystique triggred the second phase. This wave of feminism was largely concerned with gender inequality in laws and culture and the end to discrimination and spanned roughly from 1960-1980. During this time, feminists campaigned against cultural and political inequalities, which they saw as inextricably linked. The movement encouraged women to understand aspects of their own personal lives as deeply politicized, and reflective of a sexist structure of power.

Subsequent to the 1960-1980 period and beginning about 1990 numerous writers have explored the feminist movement to determine its impact on men. Some of their works are listed in the Sources of Information section of this Blog.





Testosterone Level

One other factor that might be relevant is what is happening to testosterone levels in men. The following is summarized from two authors: Malcolm Carruthers, MD. And Eugene Shippen, M.D. Studies in the 1940's showed the average testosterone level to be at 700 ng/dl, 300 ng/dl higher than for men today. In the past, a drop in testosterone levels to 250 ng/dl was rarely reported before men were 80 years of age. Yet today, it is not an uncommon value for middle aged men, and the decrease in testosterone levels is now occurring at an even earlier age. Up to 50% of all men at 40 now have testosterone levels below what was considered the normal range.



What Can be Done to Reverse the Male Drop Out?



Now, consider this irony!



Man-made climate change began to get Societies serious attention at about the same time that the male drop out began to be observed. And we have been told endlessly about the deleterious affect on human life from man-made climate change. But what huge catastrophic consequence of global warming has been observed with just our human senses of sight, sound, touch, smell and taste? None, only multi-million dollar extremely complex computer models can tell us about the catastrophic events that might occur at some distant future date. Nevertheless, the government spends millions of dollars and adds hundreds of regulations aimed at preventing man-made climate change.



Now, we don’t need a complex computer model to tell us what is happening or what might happen with the boys dropping out. We can observe what is happening with out own eyes. If high school records show that 30% of our males are already dropping out of school and half of our children are born out of wedlock, all of which has happened in the last generation or so, how difficult is it to imagine what the drop out and out of wedlock rates will be in the next generation! One would think that such an event might be catastrophic enough to scare us to want to take some corrective action



Unfortunately today’s politically correct atmosphere makes it difficult if not impossible to discuss the male drop out problem let alone to define it in such a way that you can come to grips with it and do anything about it. Actually, what our government is doing is wrong. Obamacare permits the 26 year-old male to stay home with Mom and Dad to get health care, but it fails to understand that today’s 26 year old “teen-ager” wants to stay at home with Mom and Dad where he can continue to play video games, be engrossed in the toxic culture available via the Internet, not get an education, not get a job, and in no way will he be thinking of becoming a married parent.



Obviously, because of political correctness, government and society at large will unable or unwilling to search for or to correct whatever the root cause of the problem. So the individual parent or perhaps groups of parents will need to learn how to deal with the problem by themselves.





While nevertheless understanding the difficulty of parents doing that, here are some ideas put forth by Dan Kindion, PhD and Michael Thompson, PhD. in a book entitled “ Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of boys” about what parents might be able to focus upon to help their sons.



• Boys want to grow up to be like their male role models, which is principally their father. Boys who grow up in homes with absent fathers have to try hardest to figure out how to become a responsible male. Single mothers, whether divorced, widowed or never married, should try to find male role models for the boy to emulate.



• Recognize and accept the high activity level boys require, and help them learn how to manage their physicality but not be shamed for exuberance. Become involved with the son’s school, particularly the elementary school to determine what physical exercise can be included in the curriculum. Such exercise will also help daughters. If it is not available in the school, work it into the home with some simple physical tasks that occur daily before and after school.



• Face the fact that your young son’s brain may not be wired for the exposure to reading and writing at such an early age as kindergarten. Find out what your son’s reading level is, and get early help without treating it as an ailment. Get him books with action stories so he learns how much fun reading can be. Get him a Kindle, or equivalent, so books can be easy to get, easy to read and easy to carry around.



• Above all do not let his teachers or especially the child himself think there is something wrong with him just because he is a boy. The bottom line is that boys are not girls and visa versa, thank God!!



Imagine some future historian writing that, “In the 21st century the United States was sitting in the “cat bird’s seat” regarding its newly found supply of fossil fuels and its cutting edge digital technology but could not capitalize on these assets due to a shortage of engineers and technicians caused by their males dropping out of school, marriage, parenting and worse of all, dropping out of the American Dream!!”

























Souces of Information:



Warren Farrell’s various books on the subject from Why Men are the Way They are (1988) to Does Feminism Discriminate Against Men (2007);Helen Smith’s: Men on Strike , Why Men are Boycotting Marriage , Fatherhood, and the American Dream and Why It Matters; Kay Hymowitz’s Manning Up: How the Rise of Women Has Turned Men into Boys; Kathleen Parker’s Save the Males: Why Men Matter and Women Should Care; Leonard Sax’s The Five Factors Driving the Growing Epidemic of Under Motivated Boys and Underachieving Young Men; Christina Hoff Sommer’s The War Against Boys; Hanna Rosin’s The End of Men and the Rise of Women



Male Menopause: Restoring Vitality and Virility. HarperCollins Publishing. London, England. 1996, p.132 and Eugene Shippen, M.D. Testosterone Syndrome: The Critical Factor for Energy, Health, & Sexuality-- Reversing the Male Menopause. M. Evans & Co., New York, 1998. Their findings are summarized here