In Reply to: Young men in this country are in crisis posted by mh on September 21, 2025 at 11:52:38
1. The collapse of the American Dream and it's impact on the way American men define themselves by their financial status and economic prospects.
2. Date centric social life for young adults who spend less time hanging about with pals (of mixed genders) in nonsexual contexts and more time fixating on finding a mate. Kids start dating really early these days. And keep in mind that every date is a stressful occasion that creates its performance anxiety and endless ways to fail.
3. Replacing real relationships with virtual ones before having had the chance to develop actual human relations in real life.
4. The tension created by traditional gender roles completely collapsing. What girls want from boys is not what boys think the girls want from them, and that's an age when people can't clearly formulate who they are and what they want from their partners or friends.
5. Likely family environment where the parents are going through their own relational collapse in similar ways at the same time.
6. Social media amplifying social anxieties.
As a side note, boys are always behind developmentally. And to be honest when I was in middle and high school, girls were always doing better than us boys and we completely understood that and did not feel bad about it because there was always the sense that this is just middle/high school and real life starts after that, when you start college. And if you didn't have a boyfriend or girlfriend, nobody really cared since most people didn't either, so no one stressed about it (unless they h we're having a crush, obviously). We just hung out with our buds and focused in getting better at human relations. To this day, my high school friendships have been the most profound and impactful in my life.
I was so lucky not to grow up in the kind of environment kids today are trying to grow up.
And my son was so lucky that he found band as his social context and developed non-gender segregated friendships around a band ethos.
Both my kids had zero interest in sports. I completely lucked out.