Of Boys and Men
I'd seen Of Boys and Men by Richard Reeves recommended on Instagram several times as a must-read for parents of boys. As a new father to a son, writing a blog about raising boys, it quickly hit the top of my reading list. The premise of the book is simple. Boys and men are struggling and we need to do something about it as a society. Overall I thought this was a good look at the issues collectively facing men and boys, which has some very strong points, but also some notable flaws. I liked the author's emphasis on intersectionality, the importance of the role fathers have in raising children, and how he doesn't shy away from proposing significant changes to address the relevant issues. Most of the drawbacks, in my opinion, come from the author's self-proclaimed position as a centrist, which leads to treating both sides' viewpoints as equally legitimate and some glaring ommissions in his arguments.
The Good Parts
The first and most important thing the author does well is emphasize that recognizing men's issues and looking for ways to support men does not mean ignoring women's issues or putting women down. He repeatedly says, "we can hold two thoughts in our head at once." Talking about men struggling in college or the labor market does not mean we don't care about women's education or job prospects. We can make changes to support the issues men and boys face without taking away supports for women and girls. He uses many initiatives for women in higher education and women in STEM as a model for the types of programs we need to help support men, just in different circumstances. Different people need different supports and inequalities in any direction are bad. This is especially important to emphasize, both in my opinion and stated by the author, because many people on the right point to women's advancements as the reason for men's problems and advocate for rolling back those advances. Many on the left avoid talking about men's issues because of a view that the patriarchy means supporting men comes at the expense of women. This is not true. We can hold two thoughts in our head at once.
While we live in a largely patriarchal society, that does not mean the average man is doing great. The men at the top are wealthy and powerful, but outside of that group, it's not easy. This is especially true if you're poor, and especially true if you're Black. The author places a heavy emphasis on intersectionality. He discusses how it's important to look at race, gender, and class together because many of the negative outcomes he discusses, such as educational difficulties, incidence of incarceration, and low job propsects only appear if you look at these categories together. Furthermore, they are often caused because of the combination of the three. Black men have a distinctly different experience than other men in the US, so it does them a massive disservice to ignore race when discussing men's issues. The author dedicates an entire chapter to the issues specifically facing Black boys and men.
A recurring theme in the book is that common simplifications of many social issues simply aren't true. Issues of equality are far more complicated than what fits in a sentence or two. For example, Reeves talks about the left blaming everything on toxic masculinity and the right blaming everything on feminism. Clearly neither of these viewpoints is correct, but many people default to them. The author also devotes an entire chapter to biological differences between different sexes, noting the left likes to pretend they don't exist and the right likes to use them to explain any gender discrepancies. He describes this as laziness on both sides which arises from unwillingness to get into more nuanced questions. Having spent any amount of time on social media, I have to say I agree. People (myself included) dig in their heels on the simple explanation they find agreeable and refuse to budge from it if possible.
Much of the book is dedicated to discussions of public policy. It's not a book about individuals, it's a book about men and boys as populations. One important takeaway from the policy chapters is how much it looks like public programs are working overall, when in reality successes by and for women outweigh the lackluster performance of boys and men. Many social programs don't report metrics split by gender, which hides the fact that they just aren't working for boys and men. He gives examples in education, job training programs, welfare programs, and others where this issue keeps reappearing. One reason for this may be that outcomes for men aren't specifically studied because of the assumption that men must be succeeding by default (see: patriarchy). The book presents a lot of examples that show this isn't the case, but it needs to be studied to understand why these programs aren't working for men and what we can do to fix them. The author gives lofty goals to fix some of these issues. For educational discrepancies, he proposes starting boys a year later in school by default (redshirting). To address the diminishing role of fathers, he suggests equal paid maternity and paternity leave as well as restructuring work expections to be more family centered rather than workers having to structure their family life around work. These are lofty goals, but he supports them well. Given the severity of many of the problems presented in the book, it makes sense to aim big.
The Bad Parts
While there is a lot to like about this book, in my opinion it has several large flaws. The biggest is that the author is a self-proclaimed centrist, who claims to reject partisan politics. You'll notice many of the examples I bring up from the book look like "the left says this and the right says that." This is how Reeves structures many of his arguments; the left does this, the right does that, and they're both wrong. He's not necessarily wrong, but he frequently treats both sides' viewpoints as equally legitimate. While I agree some of the things he accuses the left of are true, given the current attacks on women and trans people by the conservative right, it's utterly irresponsible to play the "both sides" game on gender issues. Reeves subtly blames the left for the existence and success of the manosphere, instead of blaming the people peddling the misogynistic nonsense.
Another example of blaming the left without addressing issues on the right comes in the realm of biological differences between the sexes. Reeves dedicates an entire chapter to the topic, focusing mainly on how boys tend to be more aggressive and prone to taking risks. I don't want to dispute this as the stastics do not appear to lie, but the author never addresses other possible sources of these discrepancies. Just as he critizes the left for ignoring biological differences, he completely ignores how the right treats these as fundamental differences and refuses to address the question of socialization. How much of boys' aggressiveness and risk taking is biology and how much is "boys will be boys" and rough and tumble mentality? Are girls naturally more gentle or do they behave that way because of the expectations pushed on them? Are girls doing better in school becaues they're naturally better at it or because they aren't given as much leeway as boys?
Before reading, I expected this book would talk a lot about toxic masculinity. I was instead surprised that the author dedicates a few paragraphs to why he doesn't like the phrase "toxic masculinity" and then never addresses it again. He describes the phrase as unproductive because it pathologizes masculinity and treats all of masculinity is toxic. However, this departs from the way most people actually use the phrase. Toxic is a modifier that applies to certain parts of masculinity that are overemphasized and harmful. Reeves doesn't entertain the possibility that there are certain traits seen as masculine that are toxic, but there's room to strip them out and leave the good parts of masculinity. He says talking about toxic masculinity just tells boys there's something wrong with them for being masculine, which is not the case. We should be teaching boys about toxic masculinity so they recognize and can learn to avoid it.
Similarly, he engages with the idea of traditional gender roles in a way that frustrates me. He, thankfully, views the concept as a bad thing, but notably doesn't acknowledge that the version of "traditional" pushed by conservative influencers is only a few generations old. He talks about the long historical evolutionary tendency to specialize and how that resulted in men and women doing different things through the progression of human society, but doesn't separate that from the 1950s white picket fence ideology. He does criticize those who are pushing to go back to that as the solution to mens' problems, but I don't think it's a sufficient condemnation. Invoking the evolutionary argument gives cover and legitimacy this viewpoint doesn't deserve. These people just want control over women and are trying to wrap it up in a nice bow of family values. The movement pushing a fantasy return to "traditional values", which aren't even a century old and really only applied to the white middle and upper classes, needs to be loudly and consistently condemned.
The last issue I have with the book is not entirely fair, because the author addresses the issue upfront. He explicitly states that he only considers cisgender men in the book, partially because statistics including trans men are difficult to come by and partially because he's looking at men as a group and cis men make up the overwhelming majority of the group. While it's good that he acknowledged this instead of just pretending trans men don't exist, I wish he would have dedicated a chapter to discussing trans men. It would have fit well with his discussion of intersectionality, since trans men often don't have the same experience with male privilege as cis men.
New Model of Fatherhood
Because this is a blog about fatherhood, I want to dedicate more attention to the discussion of a new model of fatherhood. Because the model where the father is the sole monetary provider for the family largely doesn't exist anymore, many fathers feel directionless, like they don't have a real, distinct role. This is a real issue, but it's not good enough to just wallow in the fact that the role they expected to have doesn't exist anymore. Men need to invent the new role fathers should take that fits into the current model of the world. Like the "male loneliness epidemic" which is largely created by men and our behavior, we cannot simply complain and wait for someone else to fix the problem. We especially can't make women do the work for us. The author notes because many women earn their own income, they have less need for a husband, especially if he isn't contributing to the work of raising their children. They really don't need a husband if they need to find a role for him. It simply isn't their responsibility to find a new fatherhood role for men.
Reeves specifically calls out that telling boys and men to fix their problems as individuals is counterproductive. Yes, there are societal factors involved, but that doesn't mean individual men shouldn't try to improve. He notes many men are trying, but are hampered by outside influences. Career expectations, such as expected long hours and not taking the paternity leave they're entitled to, can take men away from their children more than they want (and place more of the childcare burden on women, hindering their careers). The child support system is particularly problematic for unmarried fathers. Those are issues that need to be addressed, and he presents some compelling ideas for how to fix them, but to me the biggest thing we need to do to build a new model of fatherhood is to dig in and do it. Many dads are working to unpack the expectations of what a father should be and it's important for us to talk about what that looks like publicly. Men need to see other men doing better.
Conclusion
I have a lot of criticisms of this book, but I don't want it to seem like you shouldn't read it. So much of what is raised in this book is important and it can be a good starting point for discussions of these issues which have no immediately obvious solution. I love the framing that we can look for ways to support boys and men without taking anything away from women. We want to see everyone's lives improve and we can only do that by looking for the supports they actually need. These are conversations we need to have and this book is a good place to get started.