The Boys Are Not Alright

All right, team, welcome to the mantalk Show. I'm Connor Beaton. This podcast is all about bettering you as a man, as a father, as a husband, as a leader. And today I'm going to talk about.

The boy crisis, the man crisis. I'm going to refer to an article that, oddly enough, Andrew Yang wrote, who was a one time Democratic political presidential candidate and his article is called the Data Are Clear, Boys Are Not. All right, today I'm going to talk a little bit about the future of men, the future of boys within our culture and our society. I have a lot of young men who follow me and they ask me all the time, how do I find a sense of meaning, how do I find a sense of purpose in life? Obviously, I get a lot of questions about dating advice, but one of the big pieces that I see a lot of men, a lot of young men especially dealing with is feeling as if they are not needed in culture or society. Not only that they're not needed, but that they're not wanted in culture and society any longer. And I think for a lot of men, they're grappling with where is my place? Where am I actually wanted? How do I become a productive, contribution oriented man within the world? How to become successful? How do I find joy, happiness, meaning, purpose? So all those questions come up and I think sometimes we need to look to what's happening socially for some indicators and into what's happening within male culture. So we're going to dive into a few topics. So here's what Andrew Yang has to say. Here's one of the biggest problems facing America. Boys and men across all regions and ethnic groups across all regions and ethnic groups have been failing both absolutely and relatively for years. This is catastrophic for our country. And by the way, this isn't just happening in America. It's also happening in Canada and other countries. The data are clear. Boys are more than twice as likely as girls to be diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, five times more likely to spend time in juvenile detention, and are less likely to finish high school. He goes on to say, unfortunately, it doesn't get better when boys become adults. Men now make up only 40.5% of college students. Male community college enrollment declined by 14.7% in 2020 alone. In one year, almost a 15% drop compared to the 6.8% for women. Median wages for men have declined since 1990 in real terms and roughly 1. And these two things are wild to me and we're going to talk about them a little bit More roughly, one third of men are either unemployed or out of the workforce. One third of men are either unemployed or out of the workforce. And more us men between the ages of 18 to 34 are now living with their parents than with romantic partners.

Okay, so there's a few things in there. First off, I want to say, because I talked about the dating crisis in a recent episode. I was talking about how less men were going to colleges and university, and there was some pushback around the validity or the necessity even of needing to go to college and university. And, yeah, I would agree with that. I would say largely, you know, you do not need to go to college or university. I actually took a number of years after high school before I even went to university and worked construction for about five years in gravel pits in northern Alberta and northern Canada, and, you know, worked construction, building sidewalks and, you know, laying concrete and driveways and stuff. And that was wonderful. I actually really enjoyed that. And there are a number of ways for you as a man, to find success, Right? I know that a lot of young men are going into the entrepreneurial space, you know, trying to create their own business, not entering into the sort of normal structure that maybe they saw their fathers go into or that they've seen other men go into. But there's a few key things that I think are in here, right? One third of men are either unemployed or out of the workforce. So there's a lot of men that are. That are unemployed and not in the traditional workforce. Men between the ages of 18 to 34 are more likely to live with their parents than a romantic partner. Now, okay, that's not necessarily a bad thing. I think that there's a lot that we could go into there. But I think that for the most part, it's a sign that in some ways, the economy, I think for a lot of young men, they feel the stress of needing to earn, of needing to provide. There's a good amount of research that one of the. One of the main things that women still look for, and this is, again, this is all stats. A significant factor that they look for in a partner is a steady job. And so as men's unemployment rates rise and a lot of women are now becoming the primary breadwinner within the family system. So within the United States, I think it's something like 42% of households, the woman is now the primary breadwinner. She's the primary earner. So within the modern dating scene, what has started to happen is that you have a lot of women that are wanting to date a man that makes equal to more than them. But that pool is shrinking. And so those men are becoming fewer and far between. Now, I think this is indicative in a few ways of a couple of things that I think are very important when it comes to young men. Number one, I've seen a trend of young men lacking a sense of meaning, direction and purpose in their life for a multitude of reasons. I have young men reaching out to me all the time saying that they don't feel like they have a place in society. They, they feel like, you know, the platforms like Tinder are stacked against them, which, you know, maybe isn't untrue. I think statistically, Tinder is set up, you know, as a dating platform to really prioritize the female dating preferences. And so you can see that in the data. You can, you can see that a lot of, there's, there's a very small group of men that do exceptionally well on Tinder, and then there's a very large group of men that really don't have a lot of success on Tinder. And that's largely because women's selection preferences are, you know, still looking for the tall guy. I mean, there's countless profiles that you see floating around online that's like, if you're under 6ft tall, don't message me, right? Don't even talk to me. Which is kind of in some ways a hilarious double standard because, you know, if a man put a body weight on his profile and said, if you're over £150, don't message me. I mean, that would be terms for crucifixion. So I think, you know, there's, there's the dating area, there is the, the workforce area. I think university institutions have in large part depending on where you live. But I think for a large part, men don't want to enter into those spaces anymore for a number of reasons, right? Not only because some of them are hostile if you're a cisgendered male, if you're a straight male, they are somewhat hostile regardless of your ethnicity or race. And I think that outside of that, university institutions have become so expensive that rationally and logically for a man, he's like, well, why the hell would I go and get a four year bachelor's degree? That isn't even going to guarantee me. Because it used to be be, you know, a few decades ago that if you went and got a university degree after that, it was a pretty high likelihood, you know, and I don't know specifically the data on this I'm not going to quote decades or years, but after that there was a pretty high likelihood that you would be lined up for a decent, well paying job that you could live off of. Nowadays, however, if you go get a poli sci degree or a Bachelor of arts, whatever it is, unless you're going into some of the STEM fields like engineering, there's not a guarantee that you're going to come out and have a decent paying job that you can actually make a living off of. And so a lot of men are turning to different places. And again, I think one of the important things for you as a man that's watching this is to start to discern how you want to build your life and how you want to build your value. Knowing that a lot of men are opting out from the sort of traditional pathways of making money, of making income, of finding financial stability, of finding meaning or value or purpose in their life, you need to start to determine, is university actually a valid pathway for me or can I do something different? Can I go the path of mentorship? Can I go the path of apprenticeship? Like for myself, I have a Bachelor of Music. You know, I didn't go to university for the work that I actually do right now. The thing that has given my life deep meaning and purpose, the thing that has brought me success in life, I didn't go to university for it. You know what I did, I found somebody that was willing to train me, thankfully, which is very, very rare, one on one. And I spent years apprenticing with him and I found that more valuable than anything else that I could have possibly done. And I think about, you know, some sometimes in the past I used to think about, should I go back and do my master's degree in psychology, you know, will people take me more seriously? I think that's changed today because the way that we view experts and expertise has shifted. There's sort of this return for a lot of men in wanting to reconnect to the lineage approach of receiving information, receiving wisdom. And so I think what you're going to start to see, and if, you know, if you're a man that's watching this, what I would say is if you don't want to go the university route, don't worry about it. Find a mentorship based approach where you can learn in a more hands on orientation that might suit your learning style. Even more than going to university, right? Even more than, you know, sitting in a classroom and having to retain a bunch of information and not really having any practical approaches to the implementation of the knowledge that you're. That you're learning. The other thing that I think is maybe a challenge in this is obviously social media, you know, the Internet. I think a lot of young men are looking at the landscape within the world today, and there's kind of this hopelessness that has set in for a lot of young men. And I don't know if that's you. I don't know if you're watching this and you've felt that sense of hopelessness. I think a lot of men that I've talked to have certainly felt at times in their life, maybe even periods of their life for a number of years, as if it was hopeless for them to try and get their shit together, try and build a business or, you know, get a career or that those things, you know, that getting a career and working a 9 to 5 like you saw your father do wasn't going to be rewarding. You know, I think men are very dialed into what the men that have come before them have experienced. And I think that a lot of men that have, you know, that have had father figures in their life have witnessed their fathers sort of go through the monotony of their existence, sort of leaving them with a sense of, like, I can't remember who said it, maybe it was Thoreau said, like, living a life of quiet desperation, you know, quietly despairing and hoping and wishing that their life would take a turn in some direction that would lead them to more fulfillment and more joy and more happiness. We're in this inflection point where a lot of men, and understandably so, are opting out of university, are opting out of, you know, dating sites. There's also a stat that I shared on one of the podcasts the other day. There's something like 32% of men under the age of 29 are not sexually active. They. They haven't had any. They haven't had sex, and they. They haven't been sexually active at all. Young men are not checking out from society, but I think there's a lot of young men kind of questioning like, what the hell should I even be doing? I've seen what my father did, and that didn't seem to be very exciting. I look at university institutions and I don't. I definitely don't feel like I'm welcome there or. That doesn't seem to have a logical outcome. I don't want to, you know, come out of university and be $250,000 or $100,000 in debt. Like, that seems absurd. And then they look housing prices and you know, they start to get into sort of long term planning or even thinking about their future. And it just seems unworkable. You know, it logically, rationally seems unworkable. And so I think that a lot of men have entered into this sort of holding pattern of trying to figure out what they should do and then they're just, you know, sort of trying to make it by. And so if you are one of those men, or even if you're not one of those men, I think there's a few things that I would say. And the number one thing is to begin to build your value, determine what you want your value to be as a man. Start to develop the skills you find meaningful. Maybe it's survival skills, maybe it's hunting skills, maybe it's martial arts, maybe it's working with your hands and woodworking and doing crafts. Maybe it's things around the arts with music or something creative. Maybe you want to develop the skill of building something, you know, houses.

What do they call tiny houses or whatever it is, right? Working on, on cars and electric vehicles or motorcycles and doing custom builds and stuff like that. Begin to develop your skills because those skills will lead to your value as a man and they will lead you likely down the path of being able to develop something that you can earn a living from, that you can build a business from, and that that becomes the value that then provides stability that if you, you know, if you are a heterosexual male that women are realistically looking for, right, Whether they say it or not. I mean, the data and the research just shows that a lot of women are still looking for that. The other thing that I would say is there's great.

Reward in finding where you are needed. You know, I think he, Andrew Yang at the end of the article says he quotes George Orwell and he says a man with no means of filling up his time is as miserable out of work as a dog on the chain. Not having a sense that we are needed, not having a sense that, that we're wanted, not having a sense that we can contribute is radically debilitating as a man. You know, a lot of men ask me about purpose and, you know, how do you find purpose in your life? Well, look at where you want to feel needed. Do you want to feel needed by other men? Do you want to feel needed by a certain community or group that you can contribute to and then start to work back? What skills do you need to actually contribute and add value into that space, into that community, into that Project into that problem that you have identified within the world, whether it's environmental or cultural or political or it's within a product or a service. Begin to develop those skills. But do not underestimate the radical value of feeling needed by the world. You know, where you can contribute as a man is likely the number one indicator of where you're going to find meaning, of joy, of purpose, a sense of fulfillment in life. And I think one of the biggest tragedies that a lot of young men are facing is that they don't feel needed. They don't think that they are needed culturally, socially, or relationally in the world, which is a tragedy. I mean, that just. It makes me. It makes me emotional to even say that, that there are literally hundreds of thousands of millions of men around the world that feel like they're not needed and feel like they don't have a place to contribute. So find where want to contribute. Find where you want to add value, Find where you want to be needed and then work your way back. Develop the skills, implement the discipline and the strategies, and create the structure in order for you to go and contribute to those areas of life that are the most meaningful, that matter to you the most. And if you don't know where to look, begin in your own suffering, begin in your own pain. I don't know who said it, but your mess is your message. And in some ways that's where we need to start if we don't know where else to begin. So I hope that you enjoyed this conversation. I hope that you took the time to listen to the whole thing, and I would love to hear your thoughts. So comment below if you're watching this on YouTube or fire me off a message on Instagram. Mantalks DM me. Let me know what you thought about this episode. Let me know what you thought I missed or what I could touch on next time or what you'd like to hear more of or what you'd like me to engage in. So thank you very much. And until next week, this is Connor Beaton signing off.