The Problems of Boys and Men in Today's America (with Richard Reeves) 9/2/24

the university down the street from me has a women's business center. Amazon has preferential treatment for women owned businesses. the school I attended has special scholarships for women. women are eligible for no bid contracts that men are not eligible for at both the state and county level. google has a women's startup accelerator but men are forbidden from organizing in the same fashion. women can join the police, the military or firefighting with lowered standards. women in the aggregate are net tax recipients, men are net tax payers. men are forced to serve in the selective service in order to vote, but women are exempt from the draft. there are a lot more men than women who are homeless but there is no effort to equalize that. the average man pays anywhere between 25 to 65 percent of his income to pay for social entitlements, which is more than serfs were made to pay during feudalism. Social security and medicare are insanely bad investments for men both because men pay more in taxes and don't live as long. women complain about the pay gap but fail to note that men are much more likely to be injured on the job.

So will the number of babies born in the United States fall by 4% in 2025? Continual declining birthrates?

The idea that we should stop emphasizing organization, punctuality, attention to detail, concentration, ability to follow directions, communicability, etc. because women are better at them is absurd. And most classes from middle school onward increasingly are based on test performance. In college, most classes had grades based 100% on 1-3 high stakes tests - does that favor the guys too much? The answer is I don’t care. Boys who demonstrate poor executive functioning are no excuse to change the education system.

Well I will say that the poor and falling behind in education horse has been beaten to death since what The '70s?

Oh I doubt there's statistics I always have simply because I don't know I think we've seen enough example cases and or enough of the across the board situations a lot of the times they end up as our coworkers where yeah they came from a poor background etc but you know what they ultimately end up working a lot of the places that a lot of middle class individuals end up working granted in today's world the wages have been cut basically across the board for everyone I mean what used to pay $50,000 a year now you're lucky if you see 35 to 40,000 a year for the same damn job I know this is highly true when it comes to retail management which I will say it used to be that if you didn't go to college or if you only got a minor certification perhaps even just a two-year degree but for whatever reason you couldn't enter the exact field that you were supposedly trained in a lot of people would go to retail management retail management at one point was kind of every man's refuge.

Yeah that's right there was still a lot of people stuck at the shit factory job making less I mean it's like this not everybody could be a manager not everybody could be a cashier and not everyone can be a factory worker as it is I will say a lot of the problems that I myself have personally witnessed within companies particularly in retail over the course the past 23 years has been that we have too many chiefs and not enough Indians.

I will also say that you know what when it comes to education whether or not it's elementary school or somewhere in college a lot of people just don't want to do it frankly I was one of them particularly in the lower grades Iris really wasn't ready to go to school I didn't particularly like it and I find that true of about everyone so the one size fits all education and/or the fact that you're being forcibly removed from your home everyday and you're being told to do all the shit that you would much rather not do and I understand that education is a necessity but there's only so much going to be absorbed when it's forced down your throat some teachers are actually pretty good most are basically crap.

Concept that the poor kid isn't able to learn as well or as quickly as the other children is bullshit basically that's just a way to say that they're poor and stupid never mind The special people of the school happen to be the wealthy that by the way our fucking stupid they're superficial know nothing jackasses who quite frankly do not understand how the world works and yet they're the ones that enjoy all of the perks they are the ones that somehow fall ass backwards into decent jobs and yet a lot of them really they have the logic of a gnat.

A lot of those very people are the ones that end up sucking up the benefits of the education programs that was put there supposedly for the poor they use the poor as it means of getting supposed better education in but then ultimately it's the preppy types who end up benefiting from it.

The same can be said about home loan programs like for instance the whole FHA thing was supposedly started so that lower income people would have a shot at buying a house.

Well no that's a scam basically FHA has evolved into the wealthier persons go to for a home loan givens it You're going to play hell getting FHA to approve a house that costs say $80,000.

You're going to play the same hell if the house costs $145,000 because their target price is somewhere between $178 and $200,000 on the bottom end and by now I don't doubt that that's actually adjusted upwards.

They won't really tell you that but you can sometimes get certain real estate agents to talk about just what the preference is of FHA are FHA is pretty stringent so the house has to be pretty damned immaculate in order for them to you grant you a loan.

Education programs are really no different they say that they're for poor people they say they're for this or that but in reality who really benefits from it is the students that are more well-off that even if they're dumb as a box of rocks just simply because the area they come from perhaps even who their parents are especially if their parents happen to be another school teacher then they're going to be touted up as the smartest motherfucker in the classroom and they're the ones that's going to receive the extra tutoring they're the ones that's going to get the extra attention basically what is being realized after 50 years of bullshit within the education system cuz I will say I think the education system largely went to hell since the early '70s so let's just call it 50 years that I would say that everybody's basically realizing that it's a lost cause you can't really do this or that or cut this or that nonsense because the federal government has their nose in it but then you also have the teachers unions and no governor has the balls to stand up to the teachers union because then all the sudden the teachers will pretend that they're a federal employee see they like to pretend they're not a federal government employee except for when it comes to all of those federal fucking holidays and of course the 3% federal step raise they get every year.

i think it's ok if more women go to college. more men should go into a trade-- they will likely end up actually making more money and being fulfilled if they are not college-type students.

How about a K-8 reading list for kids?

Citizen of the Galaxy by Robert Heinlein
Black Man's Burden by Mack Reynolds
Voyage from Yesteryear by James P Hogan

It is unfortunate to say but a lot of ideas that kids get from local adults are just too shallow.

How come gay men do better than all other groups, including women, if the education system is against men?

I was hoping this podcast would try to tie boys underperformance with the falling female fertility rate.

Is it just me or does anybody else see these phenomenon as being connected?

Boys would prefer to stay home and play video games instead of studying.

Girls prefer to focus on their career and squander their best chances at reproduction.

Phenomenon are not unconnected but I expert in this area.

I’m curious why so many discussions talk about “women no longer need men” or fatherhood not being important never talk about what happened on the way to these ideas. While we may hear phrases like this, they sound like whining. Hear me out and decide.

I grew up in the late 70’s 80’s when there was a rise in divorce rates. The stories in the news and in neighborhoods were about men leaving their wives and children for younger women and starting whole new families. I was friends with a lot of the first family-children. Fathers were absent. Children experienced trauma. Many of these stories were about men hiding money or not paying alimony or child support.

At that time, my mother’s generation could attend college, but jobs paying well were not abundant or easy to get. Men were still paid more, women left college or jobs to have children.

Also at this time and hereafter, there was a percentage of vocal men saying women’s homemaker work had no dollar value and therefore, they weren’t worth alimony or child support.

This is a HUGE reason girls of the late 70’s - 80’s decided they better rely on themselves if they wanted to be financially secure. It;s not that women don’t need men, it’s that women could not count on men to stay. Women were objectified as a product with no value and a shelf life. Children of these families — boys are these children too, by the way — developed trauma of broken families. Ask these boys what they think of their fathers. Ask my husband, who grew up with a deadbeat dad and never trusted men to stay either.

We all need to survive. But in a world where women were treated as property, then their work was economically devalued and left to try to survive with little to no education or experience — this system cannot last and is not acceptable.

Also, it’s not acceptable for women to need men — especially if there is abuse or of the men don’t keep them safe in the contract that men created.

Now that women are showing they are responsible, smart and successful, they don’t want to NEED men. They want to CHOOSE men. Men who are responsible, accountable, honest, transparent, reliable — those terms you used in this podcast. We don’t need men who aren’t these things if we strive to be these things ourselves.

I don’t think this is a crisis for boys and men. I think it;s a crisis of a system of entitlement that now turns to a system of status being earned. Now that women showed they can earn this status, what about men being happy for that and stepping up to stand beside them, equally earning a status we know they are capable of?

This is not a crisis for boys. What it is, is a crisis of “boys will be boys” excuses for bad behavior. We need all humans to step up and be role models for the human children of the next generation. All people deserve to thrive. We need to stop putting men vs women and discuss what we want for a society that will thrive. You mentioned qualities like reliable, accountable, responsible…these are what I hear you saying the current education system demands. If boys can’t do that (which I find hard to believe) then why?

My daughters also roughhouse, but maybe it is not as necessary for their development, dunno.

I wish people would stop talking about any educational reform other than parental choice. Anything else is just opinion. Like in any normal industry, these should be business decisions, and then parents could choose the program that fits.

Save yourselves boys, the older generations and women want you to serve a society that doesn't serve you in turn, take what you can from society give nothing back.

Regarding the 44m30s mark on if parenting makes you a better person.. reminded by the discussion with Lyman Stone that says the world is moving towards fewer kids, for a variety of reasons:

Expensive / Housing
Social Media Distraction
pornography
People Less Attractive [fat, tattoos]
Politics much more dividing / Mental Health / Lower-testosterone
Fewer people getting Married / Unfair Divorce Laws
Feminist Movement [Career focus, not supportive / Grateful ]
Climate Impact
Future Job prospects in an uncertain world

I think one of the biggest reasons why people have kids is so that they can take of them when older. But it's risky.. the kids may not have the means, ability, nor live nearby. Gen Z'rs are more likely to still live with their parents in their 30s, play video games, no drivers license, job etc. Perhaps, it's best to pay long-term-care insurance.


BTW, regarding Rudyard Kipling's "If", I recommend the Honestly with Bari Weiss episode "Why Half of American Babies are Born to Unmarried Mothers"

the guests comments about MGTOW where disappointingly inaccurate. I also think it would have been good to investigate the difference between GPA and SAT. It seems to me bias of teachers against boys will come out in GPA, but it much more difficult to insert that same bias against boys in a standard test. I also think that the idea that boys, especially in adolescence, are developmentally behind girls is not obvious, and I speculate that girls stop maturing at much earlier age, compared to boys who continue in their maturation for longer. I am not convinced that women do have such a large "civilizing" effect via marriage on men, and I think another powerful signal to men that they have no hope in this life is plain, clear cultural messaging, which wasn't even brought up in this episode.