Andrew Reiner - Better Boys, Better Men

All right, Andrew, welcome to the mantalk Show. How are you doing today?

I'm doing well. Connor, how are you doing?

I'm doing so good. I'm doing so good. I'm very much looking forward to this conversation and looking forward to you sharing your perspective and just the dialogue that I think will come out of this because you wrote this incredible book, Better Boys, Better Men. And I think I get questions all the time about kids and masculinity and boys especially, what does that look like? How does some of the stereotypes fit in? And so I think we're going to have a great conversation, but we need to start. We need to start with you, my friend. So tell us a story about a defining moment in your life that made you who you are today.

Sure. I'm going to give you. I'm going to give you two, and I'll keep. I'll keep them brief. You know, for me, for me, on the path of, of kind of carving out a new kind of brand of masculinity or breed of masculinity for me, really begins at about seven years old, and I get into this brutal fistfight in the neighborhood with the neighborhood, another boy. We're basically the same age. And, you know, usually in my neighborhood, when there's little, little kind of tips like that, they end quickly. You know, there used to be a few punches thrown, and I mean, that was basically it. And everything went back to normal once, once the air was cleared. And this was really an atypical fight, even though we were incredibly young. This was a boy who I later realized was suffering. He and his older brother were suffering a lot of abuse from their parents. You know, when the, when the, the doors and screens were open in the summer, we heard a lot of yelling coming out of that house. And of course, you don't realize as a kid what that is going to mean for the children. But we get into this fight and it becomes this brutal, brutal fight. And at some point, this boy tells me to get down on my knees and beg for mercy. And we'd already been going at it for a while, and, you know, I was bloodied. You know, I was crying. And of course, you know, I did it thinking in good faith that he's gonna stop the fight, which he said he would, but he doesn't. He keeps pummeling me while I'm on my knees. And so the fight goes on. And at some point, I even get up and try to run away, and he comes after me and just keeps hitting me more. The whole neighborhood had turned out for this. Something I don't ever recall seeing throughout our childhood. And one of the things that I recall, and this often happens when people experience traumatic experiences. You remember these bizarre details and things kind of happen in slow motion. One of the things I remember very vividly is looking around for help from the other kids who were watching the fight. And their mouths and eyes were just wide open because this wasn't the kind of thing that happened in our neighborhood. And so I come home later that day, you know, after I've just kind of hidden behind an azalea bush, and I finally come in through the back door quietly, and I hear my oldest brother yelling at my mother. And I'm thinking the whole time, I don't know what this is going to look like, but he's going to come to my rescue, he's going to stick up for me. Instead, what I hear is him yelling about what a black sheep, what a coward, what an embarrassment I am to the family. That really kind of marked the beginning of what would become a many decades long smear campaign from my oldest brother about me. I mean, he did it to the other siblings as well in different ways. But for me, it was always, I fell short as a boy slash burgeoning man. And so I was always a coward. And so not long after that, I started getting into lots and lots of fights. And what I realized when I started this book was that I was just trying to fight my way out of the shame. You know, I was trying to redeem myself. And so that went on for a number of years. And then eventually when I got beyond that, I stopped fighting, I guess, at the end of elementary school. And when I unclenched my fist, it kind of created this open space. And in that vacuum, in that void, I started paying attention to the way that boys were talking to each other and treating each other. And so I decided at a young age, not very consciously, but subconsciously, that I was going to push back against a lot of this. And so it really kind of became my own little crusade that went on for decades, well into adulthood. So fast forward, this is the second kind of reckoning for me. My wife gives birth to a son. And so that opened up lots and lots of dissonance for me. On the one hand, of course, you know, I'm excited and elated to be a parent. And on the other hand, I'm terrified when I realize we're gonna, you know, it's a son, because I've been on my own little pitch battle for decades now. And it was always my fight. And that was okay, because it was my fight. And I knew that. I knew the rules of engagement and I knew how to navigate this terrain. But now I've got a son, and so it just kind of opens up a lot of wounds again and a lot of questions. Because I didn't want my son being thrown to the wolves, because I knew that, you know, the kind of. A lot of the masculinity and the masculine identity that is still very prevalent is out there. And I already knew by the time I was a father what this could mean for a young, impressionable boy. On the other hand, I. I didn't want to go the other extreme and impose my own baggage on him. So it meant, what is this healthy masculinity going to look like? Because you're going to have to be more intentional now that you've got a son. You're going to have to be intentional with somebody else.

Yeah, I think it's like a bit of a quagmire conundrum that most men face when they have a son is how much am I going to exemplify my version of what a man is or what is masculine and what's not? And I think that, you know, in previous generations, that was very.

Blatant, very apparent. You know, I think a lot of men really defined in. In sometimes very strict fashions what masculinity was and what was okay and what was not. But I also think that in. In some ways, you know, male culture, and be interesting to get your perspective on this, but in male culture, we very much organize ourselves through often competitive means, you know, like through forms of communicative competition, stacking each other up physically. And I'm curious to get your perspective on how that actually that fits into this, as you call the changing face of masculine, which I do think masculinity is changing radically, you know, and there's many outside perspectives on what it should look like, how it should be arranged, and it's a very interesting time. So I'm going to pause there and maybe let you address that question, because I'm curious.

Yeah. So, you know, the point you bring up about competition is a really important one. And that's one of the things that in so many books that I've read on this topic, you know, the idea of competition is never really touched. It's never really scrutinized in any really meaningful way. And that was when I set out to write my book, I knew that I was going to be looking very carefully at the role of competition amongst boys and then for men. And that's a really important factor, especially when it comes to boys and, yes, the ways they interact with each other. But even in friendships, when you talk about competition, it goes far beyond the obvious things of, well, I want to show the group of friends that I'm in, that I can get the hottest girlfriend, or that, you know, look how jacked I am after, you know, working out at the gym. And I'm more jacked than all my other friends. And I won't make them feel badly about it, but they can see, you know, they can see the difference when we're out walking around in the summer, the type of competition that's much more common. I mean, that's obviously common too. But the one that's even more, I think, subtle and can often be really insidious is that when a lot of guys are together and the ways that they kind of interact and talk and in ways that it's so common, it's just so pervasive. Most of us don't even think twice about it. But it's little things like little jabs and digs, and you're in a group together of a bunch of guys, and it's just, hey, I'm just busting your chops. I'm just ragging on you. This is the way we bond. All that really common stuff about the smallest of things. But those are forms of competition. And when it does, ultimately, without most of us ever knowing it is. It teaches us a really important lesson about the guys we're friends with and about the ways that we relate to other men. And it's this. Other guys might have my back in terms of my physical. My body safety, but guys don't have my back when it comes to my emotional safety, when it comes to my need to have emotional honesty and transparency and support back, most guys don't have my back. So that idea of competition is really important. And I lean into that one a lot in my book. And I talk about how what that really creates in so many of us is a very deep distrust of other guys. Which is why so many boys that I interviewed from high school all the way up into men, well into adulthood, they all said the same thing. And I just hear this time and time and time over again. When I want to really open up to somebody, I go to a girlfriend or I go to a female friend or I go to a wife. And so often when guys would say. When I interviewed them for my book, and they would say, yeah, I Do get emotional support from other guys. And I'd say, okay, what does that look like? Almost always it was advice and solutions, but it wasn't emotional support. And then what they realized was when they were talking about, when we were really talking about a different kind of support, that's when they said, oh yeah, I'll go to a girlfriend, I'll go to a female friend, or when they're older, I go to my wife. And that's a really insidious form of competition because it sets up a really important divisiveness amongst boys and men that we can only take our connection so far.

Yeah, I mean, I think that this is a really important aspect because I, you know, on the one hand, I appreciate competition. You know, I really, I'm, I'm like, I like team sports, I like being competitive. You know, I like those kind of masculine drives. And at the same time, I think I really understand what you're saying because I talk about this a lot. You know, I talk about being able to move our male friendships from a competitive standpoint to a challenge based standpoint. Because when we, when we are not aware that, that we're competing with the other men in our lives, whether it's telling the, you know, the conquest stories or telling the financial stories about how much we've made or the, you know, the big bonus that we got or the deal that we closed, whatever that might look like, what ends up happening is that we other, the, our, our, our friends. And when we're in competition with people, there's a natural tendency to, from what I've witnessed, want to withhold certain aspects of ourselves, of our nature, you know, our fears, our worries, our insecurities, our weaknesses. Right. When you are competing with somebody, you do not want them to know your weaknesses. You want to hide those parts.

That's right.

And so I think what I hear you saying in some ways is that when we don't question, challenge or become aware of the sort of insidious nature of this competition based friendship that most of us adopt. Right. Most of us are born into. Socially, I would, I would argue to some degree because I grew up in that environment as well. You know, I grew up in Central Alberta playing hockey, you know, going to public school. And a lot of the masculine culture was very much about being in competition with the other guys, right? With the jocks, with the, you know, with the smart kids who, you know, we called nerds at the time. Right. Like being in competition with all the other guys to sort of get a sense of where you rank socially. And that seems to be how we as men have largely organized ourselves hierarchically, you know, and. And we sort of try and find, like, where we fit socially in, in that way. And I think that we often just don't question it, but it removes our capacity to actually be able to really be close and, and feel like we have deep, meaningful relationships. I think there was a study in Britain, I think this was in the, like, 2010, 2011, where they asked men, do you have someone to call in a crisis at night? And like, 50% of them said, no. Right, 50% of. 50% of men said, no, I don't have someone. And then next question was, you know, do you. Do you feel like you have a male friend that you can rely on in a Crisis? And another 50% said no again. And I think that some of this is because of that competitive nature that it naturally creates distance. And so how do you see this showing up in boy culture? As you, you know, did these interviews and spoke with a lot of younger kids and younger men, how do you see that competition showing up within that culture?

I mean, it's. It's. Well, it's well and thriving. You know, one of the things you hit on Connor a few minutes ago was the idea of the things that we share and don't share with our friends. And I came to come up with a term for that, and I call it targeted transparency. Because the things that as boys and men that we will share, that we feel vulnerable about with friends are things that we're very intentional about. You know, we won't share everything with our male friends because of the role of competition. And so if we have a close friend that we do feel like we can confide in, there are certain kinds of things we will share with them. And again, what we often get back almost always are solutions and problems. I mean, solutions and advice. And a lot of times we're fine with that. You know, with a lot of boys, you asked about boy culture. You know, a lot of boys will, you know, will basically look for advice on things that they, you know, they won't feel comfortable asking teachers, they won't feel comfortable asking parents. And these are often things that they really could use a much wiser perspective on when it. Things like when it comes to girls. Well, for boys, that's really important because one of the things that a lot of. We see these spikes with suicide in younger and younger boys. And a lot of the things, if you look at the qualitative research, a lot of times the Reasons that boys are attempting their own lives in say like high school and early college or college is over relationship issues. And so, you know, when boys are opening up to say, a guy friend, it'll be for advice or how should I handle this? But what they're not getting back, you know, are these are, you know, are these are, is empathy. You know, is somebody sitting back bearing witness and saying, man, that really sucks what you're going through right now. I really feel for you. That must be really, really hard. And you know, we've been programmed, and a lot of boys are still, you know, given this from, from men. We've been programmed to believe that there's not a lot productive about emotional support. Advice and solutions are productive. And there are things that can help us move on our merry way. But if that's the case, if they're so productive, and I would sometimes say, you know, to, to not so much to the younger boys, but older boys and younger men, well, if that's all you need, how's that working for you? It can't be working that great because you keep going to, you know, girlfriends and female friends and getting the support that you say that you still need. So why not get that from your male friends? And so of course, you know, that's the, that's the million dollar question. So, you know, boys, for all of the progress we're making in a lot of ways with healthy masculinity with boys, for instance, and young men, one of the vestiges that they're still being handed down and they're still embracing because they're being fed it and because they're impressionable and, you know, it's not their job to think these things through is the idea that to be a competent man, you still are expected to handle things on your own. And that if you do have to go to friends for help already, there's a feeling of I'm failing in some ways by having to go to a friend for advice or solutions. But at least I don't have to go to somebody older than me because then I'm really screwing it up.

At least I can lean on a buddy and just have like very specific things that are safe for me to ask him. But there's other things that I can't go and bring up, like my fears, like my sadness, like my grief, like my confusion and frustration. You know, those aren't things that often when it comes to this targeted transparency that boys are sharing with their male friends, you know, it's, it's, how can I get help. What do you think I should do in this situation with this teacher? Because his teacher is really breathing down my neck and I'm really screwing it up big time. What do you think I should do with this girl? Because, you know, we've been hanging out and I really like her, but, you know, I don't want to come on too strong. I don't want to get rejected. Did it, you know, so these kinds of things that they're sharing are compartmentalized. And so when we talk about this idea of competition, this is something boys and men are not taught to compartmentalize. What we do compartmentalize are our emotional lives. And that comes really easily to us because we are taught we are not emotional beings. One of the other big things I lean into in my book is about the ways that we talk to and don't talk to boys. And we teach boys at very, very young ages, often before language is even part of the equation, for them not to think of themselves as emotional beings, to be disconnected from that part of themselves. Of course, you know, we know that anger is. Is. Is perfectly fine. Some of the interesting research I found when I was doing the research for my book was that there have been lots of distant, different studies that show the parts of our brains that light up. You know, for instance, with a lot of fathers, when they see their daughter smiling, you know, the pleasure center of their brains light up. That same part of their brain lights up when they see their boys with stoic or neutral facial expressions. Fathers react that way to sons when they are showing no expression. Now, if they are reacting that way subconsciously, you know damn well when it comes to other ways that they're communicating with their sons, they're sending a message that is congruent with what they want their sons to be, which is that if their pleasure center of their brain is lighting up at a very neutral facial expression in their sons, the ways that they're going to be interacting with their sons are going to be sending that message. Being emotional, whether it's joy, whether it's sadness, you know, these things are not. You're not going to get the kind of positive reinforcement loop from me. Fathers aren't saying that, but they're behaving that way. And some mothers are too, because this is the way we still raise boys. We're not really paying attention to the deeper emotional lives of boys because we still are of this notion that we're preparing them for manhood and being competent men. If we teach them to separate their deeper emotional lives from the rest of their being. And so it's no coincidence that boys can go around easily compartmentalizing their emotional lives and saving it for the safety of girls and women. But yet when it comes to competition, we don't compartmentalize that. That pervades all parts of our lives, and we. And we expect that.

Yeah. I mean, thank you for what you're laying out, because I think in. In many ways, it's almost as though we. We hold the perception that, as mentioned, our maleness or our masculinity is somehow broken or deficient or inferior when we need support, when we need, specifically, emotional health. Right. I can't tell you how many guys I've heard say, like, you know, therapy is for women or going to a psychologist or getting a coach is. You know, I don't believe in that crap. And I. I think in many ways that's that removal from. From doing the emotional work or from having to look at that. That part of ourselves. But it's. I mean, it's interesting when you're talking about.

Suicide rates being higher in younger men who are going through relational issues, it, like, triggered a story for me, a memory for me. When I was in high school, the. The woman that I was dating in high school, we'd been dating for a while, and I was very much, like, in between. I was not part of the cool crowd, but, you know, I was dating the. The cool girl in high school, and I was kind of this, you know, friends with the geeks, friends with jocks, friends. You know, I kind of had the people in all areas, but that relationship was very toxic at best. And one of the many times that she ended things, and I remember going to one of my buddies and. And actually, like, you know, breaking down. And I remember being in that. So clearly being in that situation and having him just look down, terrified, you know, like, he had no clue what to do. He couldn't give advice, because here I am. Like, I was very much the. The leader of the pack, the leader of my friends, and here I was. You just, like, you know, a little broken, heartbroken for sure. And he just didn't know what to do at all. And he just didn't say a thing. He's like, yeah, that sucks. Don't know what to tell you, man.

Right.

You know, like, do you want. And then literally said, do you want to go get fucked up? And that was his response. Right. Want to go get fucked up? Want to get drunk?

There it is.

And. And. And so that was. That was the method. But that method carries on for a very long time, right? Of. Of let's just drink it off or smoke it off or, you know, go hook up with some other. With some other woman and. And, you know, bang it out and you'll feel better. And so I think what I hear you saying is that the. The sort of changing face of masculinity within our culture is. Is allowing for emotional competency and emotional literacy to actually enter into the fold. Because I think that we've actually done a disservice to the Stoics in some way. Right. It's not that the Stoics were emotionally numbed out. The Stoics were actually very aware of emotions as a specific part of the human experience. It's simply that they interacted with those emotions. They actually had a very high, in my perspective, a very high level of emotional intelligence. And it's part of what they talked about. They just didn't allow themselves to be swept away in the sort of tidal wave of emotions that can often happen, the sort of intensity of emotions. So what. What's your perspective on. On that? Because I know you talk a lot about the changing face of masculinity. How is emotional intelligence entering into the fold? And. And how do we actually start to speak to our kids? Whether it's changing the language, interacting with them differently, to have our boys know that emotional intelligence is an important aspect of a man's life? What does that look like?

Well, so I just. If you don't mind, I want to address one part about what you talked about with the Stoics, and I'll definitely get to that. Absolutely. I have to come out and say this, and I feel like I should. I often try to say it, you know, when I do interviews is that, you know, when I'm kind of up here preaching for the importance of emotional honesty and because it leads to emotional resiliency, it's not, you know, a lot of times because our culture is so hyper competitive. And the more hyper competitive and individualistic, the more individualistic and competitive a culture is, the more you're going to have that disengagement from what appears to be anything that makes you vulnerable. And so what happens is that when people are scared and when they hear anything that goes against, you know, that goes against what they believe, they tend to think, okay, well, this person's coming from the other extreme. So when I'm talking about this importance of learning how to integrate the deeper, richer emotions of the human experience for all boys and men, I'm not saying that boys and men need to be going around like raw nerves, just, you know, weeping and screaming to the mountains every chance they get. It's nothing like that at all. It speaks to that idea of what you're talking about, you know, with a more fully evolved, fully realized, you know, emotional completeness where, you know, you know, you. You pick and choose and know when to disclose and when not to disclose. You know, that's a type of maturity and a type of practice that it takes a lot of time and work, and it's got to be very intentional, and that's what I'm really talking about. But, you know, what we've got to do is we've got to get boys at a place.

Boys won't grow into, men who are walking around.

Just being raw nerves all the time.

And this gets into the next part of your question. If we teach them a type of comfort level with their emotions and we normalize them so that as they get older, they will have a much stronger, clearer sense of how their emotional lives, you know, are an integral part of who they are. And it's something to embrace, not fear, and that it's something that they can learn to get control over, because that's the path of emotional resiliency. So I just wanted to really kind of, you know, lay that out, Connor, because I feel like a lot of people, you know, when they hear me say things about the importance of, you know, teaching boys and young men emotional honesty, they think, oh, my God, you know, he's basically trying to throw a wrench in everything. The wrench I'm trying. The wrench that. The wrench I'm trying to throw in is about changing the way that we look at, you know, our access to integrate and process our deeper emotional lives. Because we give girls and women, you know, they've got carte blanche, and you know what? They're doing great. A lot of girls and women out there are doing extremely well, and it's about time that we've helped them get to that point. Not so with boys. Boys don't have the same emotion, resiliency. And I talk about that a lot in my book because there's been a lot of important research out there on this that goes back a few decades that finds that, you know, boys need more scaffolding, they need more support. You know, if you talk to a lot of preschool teachers, even up through early elementary school, and you say to them, you know, who gets more. Who is more likely to break down and cry during class when they get frustrated? Not because somebody's calling them a name on the playground. But when they're having a hard time in the classroom, almost always it is the boys. They are the ones who are, you know, there is a lack of emotional resiliency that girls have and this kind of inner scaffolding that girls have at younger ages. And we can talk about the why, but that's another conversation. But this is something that boys, that occurs with boys. And one of the things about the way that we've taught them to kind of not betray, not really betray that so anybody can make fun of them is, is that, you know, we teach them, okay. Part of this traditional, you know, normative masculinity is about being in control of yourself. Part of it is not letting everybody seeing that you're sweat. Well, you know, that's all well and good, but if it's detaching you from your deeper emotional life, then being, being that kind of, that kind of, you know, that kind of porcelain. Porcelain stoicism isn't. Isn't really serving boys and men and the rest of everybody else who's got to interact with them later in life. So how do we do this? I mean, one of the things that I've really, since my son has been born, and I've gotten a lot more aware of this myself, is we have to normalize in the homes and I think to some extent in the schools as well, we have to normalize with boys what kind of, you know, not to be afraid of their deeper emotional lives. One of the things that often happens is that when we don't talk with boys in ways that increases their emotional literacy, what happens is that it sends a subtle subconscious message to them. Not only A, that they should detach themselves from this, but B, it's something to fear. And that's going to make it a lot harder when you're older to feel that you've got permission to get help for these kinds of things. We've got to normalize the way that we talk to and with boys and even in front of boys, we have to really kind of normalize a type of language and behavior that doesn't. Well, it just normalizes the emotional lives. One of the things that my wife and I have worked really hard on in the context of our relationship, just for the health of the relationship, is learning to normalize the negative behaviors as well as the positive ones. And so, you know, so our son might hear us saying, you know, you know, this is really scaring me, or this is something, this is something I'm really confused or frustrated about. So as opposed to just kind of leaning into the anger, it's about talk, you know. You know, showing him how to model that it's okay to feel and to access and talk about and to be accountable to the deeper parts of our lives. And that's a really important thing. One of the things that I often do with my son when I get really frustrated with him is I will go back to him, you know, once I'm back in the blue, and I'll go to him and I'll say, okay, you heard me. Getting frustrated and even maybe a little bit angry with you. Let me tell you what was beneath that anger or that frustration. And I'll say to him, because you always need to remember that there are deeper, more real feelings beneath the anger. And so I'll let you know. Sometimes I'll say things like, what you did scared me. What you did really scared me. And so I, you know, I masked it with the anger because that's kind of, you know, what I was taught to do. But what's really beneath this is I was scared of what you just did. And you need to know that, you know, that kind of behavior is not safe for you. And so, you know, at the very least, that's a way of going back and letting him know that I'm letting him know what the real emotion was, the real feelings and emotions behind it. And I'm also trying to normalize for him talking about these kinds of things, so it's not something that seems scary and too hot for him to handle as he gets older.

Yeah, well, well said. You know, I think part of the. Part of the conundrum is, you know, where. Where to begin, because, you know, in order to raise more emotionally robust boys, we need more emotionally coherent and aware men.

So, you know, amen.

It's like a little bit of a. It's a little bit of a catch 22 in. In some ways. But I think, you know, I think it's becoming much more prevalent in our culture and a society that men are having these conversations more and more. I certainly have noticed a. A massive influx even within. Although it's a small subset within my business, within the. My organization of men, you know, really pouring in and starting to ask these questions, you know, how do I have this conversation with my son? And it's like, well, how do you have this conversation with you? First, what does that look like? You know, maybe you haven't taught yourself the thing that you're trying to teach your kid and and so the. The onus is on us as fathers. And, you know, I. I had a gentleman named Stephen Jenkinson on the show recently, and he talked about the. The sort of etymology of the word patriarchy being patros father and Archie to uphold. And I think in. In many ways, what I hear you describing is that act in some ways of the act of the father taking ownership, you know, you taking ownership over your emotional competency. And anger is often a secondary emotion. It's often, you know, comes after grief, sadness, fear, you know, insecurity, something that's. That's popped up. And I like the way that you presented that because I think it gives a very real and tangible example. You say, I think this is directly from the book, and I just want to read it off and get your account of this, because I think it's really important. It's an interesting conversation. You say, whether or not the future is female. The sad reality is that the now of males is decidedly bleak. This is why it's time we start leading and learning, leaning into and learning from these emerging models of masculinity. If we don't, boys and men will continue to stagnate and fall behind or worse. Can you just speak to that a little bit more? Because I feel like that's a very important sort of intersection to address.

Absolutely. Sure. Yeah. So, you know, one of the things that I was saying earlier, you know, we have done a fantastic job as a culture of really empowering girls. As well we should empowering girls in many different ways in terms of, you know, being encouraging them, you know, if they have predilections for science and math to be, you know, really leaning into those directions, taking leadership positions, not being afraid, you know, in the classroom to, you know, be raising their hands and asking questions and, you know, taking the reins of conversations. Those are all fantastic things. But what's happened is that, you know, we've often thought, and I can understand why, but actually was erroneously. We often thought that boys were already empowered in these ways. And it really was kind of a paper tiger, you know, what boys. Because there really was, you know, we really were not encouraging girls and young women to rise in the same ways that boys were already kind of occupying these spaces. What I've realized in the course of researching my book is that, you know, the kind of power that a lot of boys and men were really holding was very much a paper tiger. And I think the kind of excelling and the kind of.

Ascendancy that we're seeing from girls and women is not Paper tiger, you know, it's soul deep. You know, they are more emotionally resilient than a lot of boys. They are working a lot harder than a lot of boys and young men and they're grinding it out. There's a grit there that what we're seeing, and I talk about this a lot in my book, it's not a coincidence that across the board at all levels, girls are doing better in school, they're doing their, you know, when they are assigned homework, they're doing the work, they're studying more. Their work ethic, all teachers will say this almost across the board is stronger. They're not dropping out of school at the end of high school, they're not dropping out of college. When they're in college, boys and young men are. They're much more likely to drop out of school and they're less likely to go to college. And when they are in college, they're the ones who are far more likely to drop out. And so even beyond college, there was a recent study that was done that showed that a lot of young women are much more likely to get professional entry level jobs out of college than young men are. And then when you go up the scale even higher, age wise in most businesses now, in middle management and higher, you're much more likely to see women in those positions. You are more likely to see women in law school and in medical school. There's a common thread here. None of this is all just happenstance and coincidental. There's a common thread here. We finally have done a great job with girls and young women and with boys and young men. They are stagnating because the power, the kind of paper tiger power that they've always clung to, that they're still clinging to, they're starting to see why girls are running laps around them because the center isn't holding anymore. It may have worked in the past because we were holding girls and women back. And so we could kind of occupy this space and think that the type of power that we have is really generative and it's a real de force field, but it's not. We're seeing that now because boys and men are still being raised in ways that the power, the kind of power structure that they were used to doesn't hold up anymore. Because in classrooms and in workplaces and in boardrooms, what we're seeing is that the toolkit that was really needed to succeed today is different than the one that everybody else grew up with. You know, this is not the same world that our fathers grew up in. You know, the toolkit needed today is one that girls and young women feeds to their strengths. It's empathy, it's collaboration, it's strong communication skills. These are all the kinds of things. And self awareness, that's an important one too. These are not things that we encourage, still encourage in boys. And so when these are all skills that are being expected and really championed in these different spaces and spheres that are public, boys are still at a loss because they're just not getting it, because we're really not encouraging that in them. Those are some of the ways that we're seeing this. And I don't think it's a coincidence, in addition to all those other areas that we're seeing, that the pandemic has really kind of pulled back the curtain on what I think was already there, which is this lack of emotional resiliency in boys and men. It's just exacerbating what already was there. It's just pulling back the curtain on a problem that already existed. And it's showing just how much more support boys and men need to really get a stronger sense of power that they need to survive in the 21st century. Because we're just seeing endless examples of glaring examples of ways that boys and men are just kind of falling off, you know, through the cracks. And I think the behavior speaks to that. I think that as we see a lot of the old kind of traditional masculinity and a lot of, you know, young men and men who embrace that are digging in their heels and they're kind of just planting that flag and they're saying, you know, we're not yielding any ground on this. You know, that's really kind of a last stand. And I'm not saying that that won't continue for some time, but it's, but it, but it no longer is serving them. This is not the masculinity that is generative and that can be successful in the 21st century. You can cling to it, but you're going to be an outlier in terms of your success in the classroom, in the workplace, in relationships. Because a lot of women, and I've noticed this in conversations with millennial women and to some extent probably Gen Z, is that they're saying, you know, you know, why should we settle, you know, for these guys that are stunted? And that speaks to part of this too. It's this, it's, you know, they are, they're stunted. You know, we, we really need to re examine the ways that we're really bringing boys along if we're really going to prepare them for this new world so that they can thrive and survive. I really don't. I really think what's going to happen is, and I hate to say this, that I really don't think that we're seeing the tail end of this suicide epidemic. I really think it's, I hate to say this, but I think it's going to get worse for boys and young men. I really do.

Yeah, yeah, I mean, I would agree with that. Just, you know, I've spoken to quite a few boys schools, all boys schools, military prep schools, military schools, college prep schools, et cetera. And I do think that the world has changed to a degree where it's asking men to have a more robust inner ecosystem, you know, where, where emotional intelligence is a very active part of it. Because our world has become so interconnected that the, the sort of authoritarian style, hyper, you know, somewhat misogynistic masculinity is not functional anymore. It may have, may have functioned in, in certain ways in the past and you know, you can, there's, there's arguments for, for whether or not it was effective, but.

Yeah, there's a whole other conversation. But in today's society it's, it's non functional because we are so interconnected through technology, through communities in a global sense. And yet I think one of the biggest things is plaguing men is isolation. Is that more so than ever, men are feeling alone, alone with their own thoughts, alone with their own fears, alone with their own views of the world, alone with their own problems. That's taking a toll. And so just to wrap things up here because we're almost out of time, I do want you to touch on, how do I describe this sort of like the, the darker impact of the, the old style of, of sort of American masculinity that we see, you know, creating things like incels and leading to, you know, mass shootings. I think nine out of every 10 days there's a mass shooting in America. And that, as a Canadian, first off, just baffles the hell out of me that that's happening. Predominantly men, right? It's, it's white men, predominantly. And so I'm just hoping that you can just add your perspective to this because I know you touch on it in the book as well.

Yeah, absolutely. It's, yeah. I mean, you know, this is those guys who are planting the flag. They're digging in their heels and they're saying, you know, we're not changing and it's There is some complexity behind this because one of the things that has happened in the conversation over the past, I'd say, 10 years, increasingly since MeToo, there are a lot of white men out there who do feel. And these are not, you know, these guys who are beholden to this rigid form of old school masculinity either, who do feel that, you know what, I just don't feel like I've got a place at the table at all. And so there is some complexity to this, you know, because there is a little bit of truth to the idea that a lot of well meaning, really, you know, evolved men don't feel that, you know, they can really, you know, have a place at the table these days with the conversation. It's very true. In the States, I think.

That said a lot of these men that you talked about, you know, younger men getting involved, you know, a fellow Canadian of yours, Jordan Peterson. Right. So there's a reason that a guy like Jordan Peterson is attracting a lot of young men in college and educated young men, because, you know, he is not as extreme, I feel, in any way, as a lot of these guys who are digging in and basically, you know, anti feminist, you know, racist. You know, these guys are the extreme. They're, they're, you know, they may be in this country, in the States, they still have a sizable, you know, a sizable population, unfortunately. But there's a reason that even amongst really thoughtful, better educated young men that a guy like Jordan Peterson really, you know, he literally and figuratively speaks to them. You know, there's. We're at a time when we're being told that the toolkit you need really does not at all is not congruent with the one that you were given at a young age. It's not the one that you were taught you need to succeed. A lot of guys feel like, wait a minute, the rules have been changed. The rules have been changed. And so when you've got more thoughtful guys.

They will hopefully say, well, okay, well, there are things about a guy like Jordan Peterson that appeals to me. You know, the idea about being accountable, you know, about keeping, you know, cleaning up your own house, you know, those, those are good messages, I think, for anybody. And it's. And a lot of young men do need that. But when it happens at the expense, you know, of saying, well, we, you know, but, but we. It still puts men in opposition to women, that no good can come of that. But I think that there, there are a lot of men of all different, you know, kind of educational and political stripes who feel that they're confused, they're frustrated, and they feel like they're really, you know, that they really, they're really not being allowed, let alone encouraged, to really have any say in the conversation. And I think, I think to some extent, that is still going on in some places. And so that said.

We do also have, of course, that more virulent strain of old school masculinity that really doesn't want to let up. They do realize on some level that they are not really part of where things are moving. They're trying to pull everything back. And that's a really important, not the reason, but one reason why a guy like Donald Trump can have the base that he has where they feel like we're going to go back to the America that we understood, that was familiar, that made sense to us, and that's also a form of masculinity that made sense to them. But they know in some level that it's not going to go back to the way it was. And there's. There's very little they can do to drag it back. And so this is a way of kind of digging in your heels, you know, and basically saying, you know, no, I'm not, I'm not moving forward with this. But the problem with that, of course, you know, is that everybody else is leaving them behind. So, you know, and so what happens is that, you know what they are then doing. And you talk about mass shootings. And I think that's an important part of this, is that you've got a lot of boys and young men who want to exact revenge, you know, and this is part of that. It's that feeling of, I am suffering. Even though they wouldn't admit it, I am suffering. Other people need to need to suffer as well. Other people need to be suffering. I can't be suffering alone. And that feeds into another thing that I think has to do with our kind of increasing degree of narcissism. It's this idea that I cannot and should not have to suffer alone. And that is very much of the old patriarchy, the idea that, you know, this idea that I am justified in exacting revenge. And that's part of it, you know, it's the idea that other people need to go down, too. I'm not going down alone. I'm not going to be, you know, I'm not going to be the only one suffering here. Other people are going to get dragged down with me. And so that does speak to that more toxic side of that kind of old school masculinity and feeling like, you know, there must be revenge. The field must be leveled for this.

Yeah, yeah. Well, well said. You know, it's almost like when the hero doesn't have a purpose anymore, he can very quickly turn into the villain. And I think that the heroic American archetype is radically shifting and the, the men who felt like they embodied that archetype before now have a sense of purposelessness and are being asked to adopt and adapt in a new culture. And that's, that's always a challenging time. But I think that maybe that's for another conversation because we're have to wrap up here. So, Andrew, thank you so much for coming on and joining me in this conversation. For everyone that's out there, definitely go and check out Better Boys, Better Men, the new masculinity that creates greater courage and emotional resiliency. It is pretty much everywhere now, but we'll have the links for that in the show notes and any final words of where people can find out more about your work, Andrew?

Sure. So my website, Andrew Reiner, author.com I'm on Instagram. I only recently just got on Twitter. I've been trying to avoid that shitstorm for a long time, but I recently got onto Twitter, but Instagram is a little kinder, friendlier place and of course on Facebook as well. And you can email me if there's anything at arinerson. Edu.

Awesome. Wonderful. Well, thank you so much for joining me. For everyone that's out there, definitely share this episode with somebody that you know will enjoy this conversation. Maybe somebody that is raising a son and has questions about what they might be facing. And until next week, this is Connor Beaton signing off.