Reply to A Generation of American Men Give Up on College: ‘I Just Feel Lost’

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Honestly, men are falling behind in every single factor.  It's crazy.  So many men are just completely checking out, giving themselves up to a life of video games, porn, and maybe some low income job to collect a paycheck.  It's extremely sad and concerning.

I think a lot of times women are just tougher.  Females have a much higher infancy survival rate and just seem a lot more capable of handling BS, be it physical, emotional, mental, whatever.  They just kind of... adapt.

There's always been slogans about "women are tougher" but over the stress this country has been in for the past 20 years, we're really seeing it be proven true beyond all doubt.  And there's really nothing anyone can do about it, save maybe banning these things like China has done recently. [/quote]

What we are seeing is fear manifesting itself as laziness and detachment. I've been haunted by something a medical professional told me about the male student body at a highly competitive institution of higher learning. He said that each year, they are seeing more men who have never had an intimate relationship. On its face, that is not necessarily a bad thing, but one reason given was fear of fallout from a relationship gone wrong (such as adverse social media) that would "ruin" their future. At the root is anxiety and lack of confidence in communication skills. Remember, these are motivated high achieving men who are so worried about opening up, they would rather not have any relationships and instead turn to porn.

As this thread shows, we still want to tell makes to stop being snowflakes and to toughen up any time they struggle. This attitude makes it less likely that those in need of help will seek it.

Remember, it's not about whether one gender is better or stronger than another. We should be concerned about developing healthy empowered individuals in elementary school and beyond. They aren't "weak" for struggling, but that's the message they are receiving, so they check out.  [/quote]

It is true that a lot of it is fear, but that's the thing- the solution IS toughening up.  Part of it is accepting that rejection WILL happen, inevitably, and it's fine.  You'll be okay.  If you ask someone out and they say no, you'll still be standing.  If youre relationship ends and your heart is broken, you'll be okay.  This seems to be something most women have grasped, that rejection is a necessary part of life, but young men seem completely stymied by.  We have coddled young men for the past couple decades and it's completely backfired.  The solution is actually teaching young men that they CAN handle things, that they NEED to be tough and somewhat stoic, and that failure is a part of life and perfectly fine.  As it stands now, we seem to be herding them into further and further incompetence and alienation.  And it's sad.[/quote]

The point is that they didn't learn to disengage in high school. The seeds were planted at a young age. I could go on and on about this, but I was a scout leader for two different age groups for many years. Over the years, I watched my boys as they made their way through school and life. These were good kids, with involved parents, and some of them blew me away with their natural curiosity and creativity, even if the behavior of some of them made me want to run away screaming and never come back. Over the years, I learned to structure the meetings so that we would do something more educational and then immediately shift to something active. This worked fairly well, and most of the boys stuck with it. What makes me so sad is that by middle school, many of these more active boys were struggling in school so much that they started checking out. These are kids who visited Civil War sites and were interested and recited facts they learned on their own. They weren't lazy, stupid, or even undisciplined necessary, it's just that school became a place they hated because they couldn't quite get the mechanics of being a "good student" right at the right time. Their parents fought with them, sat to make sure they did their homework, punished them for not getting it down, and they still managed to screw up.  That's not every boy, but it was some; medicated by middle school and less enthusiastic about almost everything.

I agree that more unstructured activity would help. Even sports were less structured and less competition based decades ago, and that probably helped develop more independence. One problem is how can you develop independence when you are a year or two away from being mature enough to handle expectations at school? Why is it more important to reinforce in 7th grade the undesirable consequences of turning in an assignment a day late than it is to make school a place where kids are interested and set up to succeed? Meeting the requirements for being a compliant student is not the only measure of someone's worth or capacity to have a good life, but that is what it can feel like for kids. And trust me, I'm not blaming teachers, but the system itself.

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