Men and boys are falling behind girls and young women in both high school and college achievement. They are becoming significantly under employed, especially the 25-35 age group. Men account for three out of every four “deaths of despair” — suicide and drug overdoses. During the COVID pandemic, middle-aged men accounted for 80% more deaths than middle-aged women. In the United States, mass shootings seem to occur frequently and in every case, men are wielding the guns.
Race and class complicate this overview, for example, the Black male homicide rate among young men ages 15-24 has risen to seven times higher than their age-specific non-Black counterparts. This trend has paralleled the zero-tolerance and "war on drugs" law enforcement policies of the 70s, 80s, 90s and into the 2000s.
Finally, notions of masculinity have gone haywire, increasingly becoming cannon fodder in the culture wars. And yet many men today are hard-pressed to define for themselves what was once obvious. Culture wars aside, we need to understand how western men arrived in this troubling situation, and how we may begin to turn things around.
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