Latest news with #RichardReeves
Times
19-05-2025
- Politics
- Times
‘Misogyny is real — but I hate the term toxic masculinity'
It's now official: there is a crisis in masculinity. Wes Streeting, the health secretary, used the phrase in Westminster last week at the launch of a think tank devoted to scrutinising the troubles of men and boys — and he made sure to thank Richard Reeves, Nick Clegg's former director of strategy at No 10, for helping to 'force' conversations about masculinity 'into the mainstream'. A journalist turned policy wonk, Reeves is the chairman of the new Centre for Policy Research on Men and Boys (CPRMB), having two years ago set up the American Institute for Boys and Men (AIBM). When we meet for a coffee in a London hotel before he flies back to his home in the American Appalachians, he points out there
Bloomberg
21-04-2025
- General
- Bloomberg
Eight Charts Show Men Are Falling Behind, From Classrooms to Careers
Men falling behind women doesn't begin in college classrooms. According to a Brookings Institution report, the average US boy at age 5 is 16 percentage points less likely to be school-ready than the average girl—a gap that persists over the course of their education. Researcher Richard Reeves presents evidence in his 2022 book, Of Boys and Men, that this disparity can be linked to boys' brains developing more slowly, 'especially during the most critical years of secondary education.' He suggests that a positive reform would be to 'redshirt' the boys. In other words, give them an extra year of pre-K before starting them in school. Despite the growing bias toward girls in the education system, there continues to be a bias toward men in the office.
The Guardian
09-03-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Jobless, isolated, fed misogynistic porn… where is the love for Britain's lost boys?
The boys are not all right. That's the message from a new Centre for Social Justice report, Lost Boys, published last week. It surveys how boys and young men are faring in Britain and finds that in several areas there is now a reverse gender gap, with boys, particularly those from poorer backgrounds, struggling to keep up with girls. When it comes to education, girls outperform boys at GCSEs and A-levels, and the ratio of women to men at university is 60:40. Boys are more than twice as likely to be excluded from school, with rates of exclusion particularly high for those from disadvantaged backgrounds. This is all feeding through into labour market outcomes: in the 00s, women aged 16-24 were more likely to be not in employment, education and training than young men; in recent years, that has flipped, with young men also significantly more likely to be unemployed than young women. The pay gap for young people has also become a more complex story: for 21- to 24-year-olds, median earnings are now higher for women, but this has been driven by a stark drop in earnings for non-graduate young men, with graduates still earning more than their female equivalent. What's more, boys are more likely to be obese than girls, and rates of suicide are three and a half times higher for boys aged 15-19 than girls of the same age. None of this is to deny the many inequalities faced by females in a patriarchal society. But neither should a focus on women's equality crowd out discussion of the problems being experienced by a minority of boys; improving their lot would do a huge amount to make life better for both sexes. But we have struggled to have a constructive conversation about the specific issues facing boys, with a tendency for all sides to slip into polarised, zero-sum framing. For some on the left, there is an implicit fear that focusing on boys might distract from the challenges facing girls; and certain sections of the right wrongly regard boys falling behind as a product of important feminist wins of recent decades. This new report is a healthy corrective, and follows similar work in the US by thinkers such as Richard Reeves, who recently set up the American Institute for Boys and Men. Reeves' diagnosis of the problem is part institutional, part cultural. We today have an education system better suited to girls, but a labour market still structured around the needs of higher achieving men. And the positive shifts we have seen in the cultural script about successful womanhood have not been accompanied by changing narratives about what it means to be a flourishing man, a vacuum that has enabled misogynist influencers such as Andrew Tate – the third most Googled person in the world in 2023 – to seed the idea with some young men that women are to blame for their ills. Reading Lost Boys made me feel as though there's a long way to go in properly understanding what's going on with young men's wellbeing. Convincing hypotheses abound. Boys get conflicting messages everywhere, from the violent, aggressive pornography to which so many young people are exposed, to important societal conversations about male violence, to the harmful stereotypes found in books and toys and on clothes. Adverse childhood experiences and mental health issues tend to manifest differently in boys – in externalising bad behaviours, rather than internalised feelings of depression or anxiety – and are seen much less sympathetically in society, playing into higher school exclusion rates and higher rates of autism and ADHD diagnoses. Men tend to be more socially isolated – data from the US highlights they have fewer close friendships and that young men are twice as likely to be single than women. They are also much more likely to live in the parental home for longer. And Laura Bates has documented how social media algorithms target young men with extreme misogynistic content, with increasing numbers suffering from body dysmorphia or eating disorders, and taking steroids to bulk up. Some of the differences between boys and girls will be driven by biology; much will be socially constructed. In terms of the violence gap between the sexes, for example, the average man is not much more violent than the average woman, but there are many more very violent men than women. That is partly a product of higher testosterone levels, but also how some boys react to negative childhood experiences, such as domestic abuse or an absent father. On the friendship gap, one ethnographic study has found that in early adolescence, friendships between girls and between boys are not that dissimilar, but in later years boys learn to become more detached through 'macho' culture. Nature or nurture, these differences exist, however, and while some solutions, such as improving online safety and tighter regulation of online pornography will benefit boys and girls, the former also need solutions tailored to their needs. In the US, Reeves has called for boys to start school a year later, better vocational and technical education, and more male teachers. These are worthy of exploration, but it is striking how little we know about what might work in improving boys' outcomes. Sign up to Observed Analysis and opinion on the week's news and culture brought to you by the best Observer writers after newsletter promotion Redressing this is vital to improving the wellbeing of all young people. Failing to do so could also have political consequences, further opening the door for the far right to play on young men's grievances, as we have seen across Europe. In the last election, young men were twice as likely to vote for Reform as young women, with the latter twice as likely to vote Green, reflecting a growing attitudinal gap. The ubiquity of social media and the grim financial climate into which young people are maturing – a growing number of gen Z will never be able to afford their own home, and will spend most of their working lives paying off tuition fees – bring a unique set of challenges for this generation. But young men are no less deserving of a specific policy and cultural focus than young women; and to deny them this is to the detriment of everyone. Sonia Sodha is an Observer columnist
Vox
12-02-2025
- General
- Vox
Why are young men so hopeless at dating?
A Vox reader asks: Why are young men struggling or failing to date/engage in romantic relationships more so than their female peers? In a recent conversation, a new acquaintance of mine recounted an exchange he'd recently overheard. A man turned to his female friend and exclaimed, 'I'm not going to go to a bar and just start a conversation with a woman. Who wants to be picked up?' One quip doesn't account for the entirety of men's experiences, of course, but it does speak to the challenges men seem to be facing recently in dating. If dating is a numbers game, the numbers don't appear to be on the men's side. According to a 2022 Pew Research Center survey, 63 percent of men under 30 said they were single, compared to only 34 percent of women in the same age cohort. These single men are more likely to be looking for love, too: Half of single men in Pew's survey reported looking for a committed relationship and/or casual dates, while only 35 percent of single women said the same. This discrepancy could be for any number of reasons, says Richard Reeves, the president of the American Institute for Boys and Men and the author of Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male Is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do About It . Perhaps young men and women differ in their definition of a relationship or perhaps women are dating older men and other women at higher rates than previous generations. But Reeves posits that there's another reason that men, and in particular straight men, are struggling with dating, and it has to do with the way that the rules of romance have changed. A recent YouGov poll found that 57 percent of women said they've been on a terrible date — only 44 percent of men can say the same. With many women no longer willing to accept ghosting, noncommitment, and harassment, men may be forced to change their ways or face being shut out of the dating pool. By and large, Reeves says the men he has spoken to understand this; they know what not to do — 'don't mansplain, don't mansplain, don't be toxic, don't be a predator … don't be a creep' — but they're at a loss for what is acceptable when trying to date. The newsletter is part of Vox's Explain It to Me. Each week, we tackle a question from our audience and deliver a digestible explainer from one of our journalists. Have a question you want us to answer? Ask us here. 'You can see a little bit of risk aversion among young men,' Reeves says. 'Partly because they are largely, and I think incorrectly, worried about the risks that are going to come from putting yourself out there.' All social interaction carries some form of risk, a potential for rejection, but the alternatives to dating available in the modern dating landscape make putting yourself out there even less appealing. One factor to consider is the easy accessibility of porn. A 2020 study found that 91 percent of men between the ages of 18 and 73 consumed porn within the last month, compared to 60 percent of women. When a sexual experience — mediated through a screen, no less — is a click away, why risk any potential discomfort? Ideological and political differences may also be driving singles apart: According to a recent American Perspectives Survey from the Survey Center on American Life, 52 percent of single women say they would be less likely to date a Trump supporter, compared to 36 percent of single men who say they wouldn't date a Trump supporter. Sixty percent of single women feared that women would be worse off under another Trump administration whereas only 47 percent of single men felt the same. Given that young men appeared to favor Trump in the 2024 presidential election, this may impact their overall prospects. When politics looms too large in singles' lives, and every choice, including who to date, carries significance, relationships can suffer, Reeves says. The problem, then, is how to encourage men to get out of their comfort zones, to feel comfortable with risk, without feeling entitled to a woman's time. Women carry some responsibility, Reeves says, to offer kind rejections and to not assume the worst of men. Men, of course, must also act in good faith and graciously accept a rejection. Dating has always required, and will always require, people to place some amount of trust in each other. A total lack of trust and good faith has consequences. If your prevailing notion is that all men are dangerous misogynists or all women are boring and cruel, how can anyone reasonably date? 'There's a bit of a trend right now to start to think the worst of each other,' Reeves says. 'It's really hard to have a good dating market if both the men and women are tending to think the worst of each other in advance. And I see a lot of that on both sides.' Of course, there will always be bad actors, Reeves says, but, by and large, most people fall somewhere in the middle. The only real way forward, according to Reeves, is to assume that the vast majority of potential prospects aren't trying to be creeps and aren't trying to harm one another. 'This whole enterprise needs a lot of grace,' he says, 'and a lot of forgiveness and a lot of accepting people in good faith.' This story was featured in the Explain It to Me newsletter. Sign up here . For more from Explain It to Me, check out the podcast . See More: Advice Even Better Explain It to Me Life Relationships
