I’ve been doing a deep dive on masculinity recently, so a friend recommended listening to Ezra Klein interview the author of Boys and Men, Richard Reeves. It’s a tremendous episode. Klein asks great questions and they both cover a lot of ground. I was driven to go back and took some notes. I added some commentary and resources of my own. If you want to better understand men and masculinity, please have a listen and take a look.
https://open.spotify.com/embed/episode/3D96sSDXyBvV0UxEyIu41e?utm_source=generator
We have traditionally seen disparities between men and women. However, some of these disparities negatively affect men—and are growing. If this feels like territory that is prone to dogma, you’re not the only one.
Here’s something that should grab you: girls are 14% more likely to be school-ready than boys at age 5. They just develop a bit faster. So, this isn’t about absolute age gap, it’s just about giving boys a chance to catch up. And this practice is increasingly being used by the affluent.
The difference between an orchid and a dandelion has often come up in looking at the resilience of kids. It appears that boys are a bit more orchid and girls are a bit more dandelion. The reason is not really known.
I find it fascinating how real life evidence is at odds with the narrative of boys being more tougher. It appears that they are, in fact, more sensitive. That false narrative may reduce the frequency or intensity of nurturing behaviours in parents. Maybe we just need to be a lot sweeter to boys. Maybe it’s us. On that note, another important study looks at how neighbourhood poverty seems to affect boys more than girls. Same with attendance at a poorer performing school.
Raj Chetty Race and Economic Opportunity in the United States
PDF:
Race_and_Economic_Opportunity_in_the_United_States.pdf
A valuable finding here—and perhaps a key to unlocking much of this—is that the black-white income gap in the US exists exclusively for black men; there are no differences between black women and white women in wages or employment rate. If nothing else, this deconstructs the argument that race is a prime factor in life outcomes.
<aside> 🔖 Further detail from the study:
“Hispanic Americans have rates of intergenerational mobility more similar to whites than blacks, leading the Hispanic-white income gap to shrink across generations. Second, differences in parental marital status, education, and wealth explain little of the black-white income gap conditional on parent income. Third, the black-white gap persists even among boys who grow up in the same neighbourhood. Controlling for parental income, black boys have lower incomes in adulthood than white boys in 99% of Census tracts. The few areas with small black-white gaps tend to be low-poverty neighbourhoods with low levels of racial bias among whites and high rates of father presence among blacks. Black males who move to such neighbourhoods earlier in childhood have significantly better outcomes. However, less than 5% of black children grow up in such areas.
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