A very small number of men dominate the most powerful and wealthiest positions, and are among the most aggressive humans alive.
But though this tiny number accounts for many disparities, and men have not taken enough domestic imbalances, their trend lines are worrying. Boys and men are going the wrong direction fast.
That’s from the 2024 book by Richard V. Reeves: “Of Boys and Men Why the Modern Male Is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do about It.” It’s one of a growing collection of research and literature.
As Reeves writes: “We have an education system favoring girls and a labor market favoring men. Two wrongs don’t make a right.”
Below I share my notes for future reference.
My notes:
- Ezra Klein interview inspired author’s Institute, which later spawned this book
- Author’s Big Think interview is among their best viewed
- Men fall out of HEAL professions: health, education, administration, literacy
- Fewer men work in k-12 than women in STEM
- Redesign jobs and domestic responsibilities to be better for girls and women, and reform education to be better for boys
- Gender gap in college is wider today than it was in 1970 but in the opposite direction
- 1 in 5 American fathers with kids under aged 18 is not living with his children
- Having men crowding the top rung doesn’t help the many more men clinging to the bottom — race and class
- The left tells boys to be more like your sister, the right tells them be more like your father
- The End of Men: And the Rise of Women by Hanna Rosin in 2010
- “We have an education system favoring girls and a labor market favoring men. Two wrongs don’t make a right.”
- On PISA, American boys do as well as Finnish boys but Finnish girls wildly outperform and pull the nation up
- The school readiness for kindergarten gap between boys and girls is wider than that for black and white kids, for rich and poor kids and for those who went to preschool and did not
- Sex differences: it’s not about how brains develop but men and education hid this difference by suppressing women for a lot g time. Now we see what was always there
- STEM still skew male but declining.
- Matthew Chingos: colleges enrolling more disadvantaged students shouldn’t be penalized for lower graduation rates
- Divide biggest between black and white and upper and lower income: speaking about male attainment obscures the divide
- 5m American prime age working men are not in labor force at all
- Mark Muro: men work in jobs more hit by automation and free trade
- BLS: fewer than 1 in 10 jobs now require heavy force, once seen as male jobs
- “In 1985, the average man in his early 30s could squeeze your hand with about 30 pounds more force than a similarly aged woman. Today their grip strength is about the same.”
- We need girls into STEM, boys into HEAL
- Claudia Goldin: “grand gender convergence”
- “Women are paid less because they do different work, or work differently or both” — “the pay gap is a parenting gap”
- Irina Dunn around 1970: “a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle”
- “One of the great revelations of feminism may turn out to be that men need women more than women need men. Wives were economically dependent on their husbands, but men were emotionally dependent on their wives.”
- “Within six years of their parents separating, one and three children never see their father.”
- Kimberlee Crenshaw: intersectionality and “complexities of compoundness”
- Sheryll Cashin: “descendants”
- Author thinks “people of color” may build a coalition but it obscures anti black racism
- “Black girls are more likely than white boys to have graduated from high school; young black women aged 18 to 24 are more likely than young white men to be enrolled in college; and a higher proportion of black women aged 25 to 29 hold post graduate degrees than white men are the same age”
- The black-white household divide is almost entirely explained by black-white men income divide and fewer black women marrying
- 2017: Anne Case and Angus Deaton introduce “deaths of despair”
- Arlie Hochschild’s 1989 book “Second Shift”
- Kathryn Edin’s 2005 book “Promises I Can Keep: Why Poor Women Put Motherhood Before Marriage” : black women view their baby fathers as another mouth to feed
- In 1979, there was no marriage gap by class, now there is a wide one
- “I think educated Americans have transformed a marriage from an institution of economic dependency into a joint venture for the purpose of parenting”
- Raj Chetty: neighborhoods matter more for Boys than girls
- Kalamazoo Promise: free tuition surged women but not men use of college
- Higher share of study abroad is POC than men
- Biological differences in sex are dimorphic — different but overlapping. The differences come especially at the tails: a high majority of the most risk taking people are males but much more overlap around the averages
- Naturalistic fallacy: believing that which is natural must be good
- Men are genetically modified women
- Humans are Desmond Morris put it “risen apes not fallen angels”
- Roy Baumeister: “penis surplus” historically — we have twice as many female ancestors as male as top men typically hoarded resources
- Joseph Henrich: “math problem of surplus men”
- Men evolved to risk take to stand out
- “A study in New York found that opening a strip club or escort agency reduced sex crime in the surrounding neighborhood by 13%”
- Womanhood is more defined by biology and manhood is more social construction, which is why it’s more fragile
- “I learned very early on that what a man does,” wrote Anthony Clare in his book On Men, “ is even more important than who he is.” — he meant paid work in capitalism but it holds true in lots of ways
- American poet Leonard Kriegel wrote “in every age, not just our own, manhood was something that had to be won.”
- We are all a mix of nature and culture and at times cultures have effectively channeled the energy of men to positive social ends, especially by teaching them to care for others but “this behavior, being learned, is fragile, “warned Margaret Mead. “And can disappear rather easily under social conditions that no longer teach it effectively.”
- STEM paradox: women make up 27% of workers in STEM, up from 8% in 1970 — but is parity realistic knowing men on average tend to like things far more? 2018 study by Gijsbert Stoet and David Geary: gender equality paradox: even in Finland and Norway where safety net is stronger, fewer women pursue STEM in more gender equal countries
- “Average differences between groups should never influence the treatment of individuals”
- Efforts have been done to compare projected interests in job types by sex, versus actual
- JF Roxburghepf Stowe School: his goal was to cultivate men who would be “acceptable at a dance and invaluable in a shipwreck”
- Obese, unemployed and criminals are given structural explanations by the left but men are thought only to have individual problems
- Why is patriarchy a system that needs to be addressed societally but men need to process its downfall as individuals?
- Author and Fariha Haque redid a World Economic Forum gender equality score to reflect that in many domains women have surpassed men
- Jordan Peterson like Robert Bly’s Iron John and transforming Men by Geoff Dench
- Progressives deny biology and conservatives obsess over biology
- Charles Murray Hunsn Diversity is mostly balanced until policy suggestions when he uses averages to defend policy for individuals (eg women and childcare)
- Dan Cassino FDU: asking questions about spousal earnings of men made them vote more conservative
- George Gilder was reviled but the conservative wasn’t all wrong, he knew the fragility of men, with “no civilized role or agenda inscribed in his body” and so his role is reversible
- Daniel Schwammenthal: an iron rule of politics is that if responsible parties don’t respond to the real problems of society then “the irresponsible parties will”
- His policy recommendations: an extra year of pre-k for boys (red shirting), more make teachers, and more vocational schools
- Redshirting so boys are a year older in middle school
- The share of military fighter jet pilots who are women is twice the share of pre k teachers who are male
- Desegregation of jobs have gone entirely one direction
- Judith Ramaley coined STEM replacing SMET
- 9% jobs in STEM, 23% in HEAL
- Women are 27% in STEM up from 13% in 1980, tech industry a laggard (25% ) compared to physical sciences and life (45%)
- David Deming: jobs requiring social interaction has grown 12% from 1980 to 2012 while limited interaction but with more math has declined by 3.3%
- Labor shortages In education and health but solving it with just half the workforce
- Set 30% goal for women in STEM and men in HEAL
- George Akerlof and Rachel Kenton; “identity economics” in 2000
- Will and Grace shaped gay marriage; MTV’s 16 and pregnant affected teenage pregnancy rates
- Cass Sunstein and Robert Frank: “norm cascades” and “behavior contagion”
- Ruth Nader Ginsberg: feminist meant equal rights for fathers (she argue Weinberger v Wisenfeld)
- Need equal parental leave
- Sarah Blaffer Hrdy: 500k years ago, humans needed 13m calories to get to independence, more than a mother could get on her child on her own (so partnership was strategic)
- Pauline Hunt in 1970s: the English town, the men washed the windows outside and women inside
- According to one longitudinal study, “16-year-old girls who were close to their fathers have better mental health at the age of 33.”
- Residency doesn’t matter as much as the relationship between fathers and kids
- Tim Nelson’s 2013 book “Doing the Best I Can” ” looks at fatherhood in Philadelphia and Camden
- Six months parental leave: gornick and Meyer policy
- “If we want equality at work, we need equality at home”
- Mary Daly: “gender politics of family time”
- 1973 book symmetrical family Peter and Michael young: from 1 demanding job for both parents, to 2 for mom and 1 for dad, to 2 for both (parenting and job). It doesn’t seem like we’re at that last stage
- Goldin’s “greedy jobs “, compared to pharmacy “a most egalitarian profession” where near gender pay equality and no wage penalty for part time work
- Anne Marie Slaughter, progress will be slow if the “care problem” is described as a “women’s problem”