Thanks for reading and reaching out!

Since the policy proposals I praised in my post come from Richard Reeves, you should consider sharing your comments with him as well.

I am persuaded by my own experience in school, by the data Reeves cites and by the arguments he makes in his book that the developmental differences between similarly aged boys and girls are evident in kindergarten and that the gap worsens in high school—with troubling effects thereafter. If I could implement only one of his proposals, it would be this one.

You don’t address the advantages of steering boys & men towards the parts of the job market that are growing. I take your point that many boys & men wont gravitate towards jobs in areas like social work and nursing today, but fewer would resist the pull of reliable work with job security if jobs like these was presented as male-appropriate too. A lot of this is perception. Everyone’s perception wont be changed, but some might if these jobs were presented differently and more men started actually doing them .

I agree with you that there has been a tremendous push behind bringing more girls & women into the workforce, and that there are many instances where they have been favored over boys & men over the past 40 years.

I also agree with you that paid leave for fathers during his kids teen years will cost a fortune. But I see it as a political and social debate worth having. Moms on a short leave with the kids when they’re babies, dads on a short leave when they’re in their early teens.

Finally, you seem to believe (at least in part) that boys & men are having problems today because too much prior effort has gone into helping girls & women—and that everything would self-correct if those kinds of props are removed. First off, I don’t think we can go back. And even given the unfairness to boys & men in the past, I don’t think we should.

Instead (and like with paid leave for dads) I think we should be given the choice on whether to help boys & men in targeted ways that could improve their ability to thrive economically and personally. If tax payers, the govt and corporate America are unpersuaded that it would be “worth it,” then we won’t do it—but we should have the debate and find out.

Thanks for taking the time to engage on these issues and for sharing your thoughts.

I think you understand there is a problem but you don’t understand the problem.

Suggestion 1: boys uses to enter school at the same time as girls and we didn’t have these problems. We can safely toss that, the brain science doesn’t line up the way it needs to to explain that.

Suggestion 2: Women are just entering the workforce like some naturally occurring phenomena? We’ve made it official policy for decades and propped it up with scholarships, networking programs, and hiring pushes. All policies that officially favor hiring women over men when you can. Of course more women are entering. Meanwhile nobody can buy a house so maybe it didn’t provide the economic bonanza it was supposed to.

Suggestion 3: masculinity is an external reality that’s isn’t fully malleable. It can shift but only within parameters. You going to tell some 16 year old jock “actually becoming a social worker is what’s really lit, for real for real no cap” and not expect him to cringe so hard he pulls a muscle? You have those mind powers?

Plus mandatory paid 6 month leave? With what money? You’re basically handing over the entire economy even more to the biggest companies capable of footing this bill and killing economic activity paradoxically by all the lower levels.

The final problem is your entire program relies on coercion. These policies necessitate an “or else” to pay for them or make them happen. They require regulatory groups using money taken by force from the tax payers to then police private organizations with bribes and threats (and let’s be honest, the government usually leans harder on the latter), as well as a social marketing (you know propaganda) plan which will probably succeed as much as DARE. FYI I’m not even a libertarian I don’t think all taxes are theft but if you’re taking their money by force then you had damn well better be able to show them something for it.

I think your heart is in the right place and if so bless you for that, but man none of this will work; if it’s even tried which nobody and I mean NOBODY wants to do because the minute it appears to give something to men that you’re not giving to women it will be shut down.

Human nature isn’t really changeable. Nature will take its course if you don’t mess with it. Stop artificially propping up women for an equality no one can really define.

Thanks for getting back and for your recommendation Marc.

With so many of our political representatives dependent on the defense industry’s campaign contributions and so many more Americans working in defense-related jobs, industry oversight is perfunctory (at best) and until it improves there will be little accountability for either efficiency or results. And of course, we don’t have unlimited resources or bandwidth, so the more of both that we devote to the military industrial complex in a post-Ukraine world, the less will go to other worthy endeavors.

On a brighter note, there are others talking about this abdication of civic responsibility including Fareed Zakaria, quite beautifully and quite recently, in his Ten Lessons for a Post-Pandemic World. So I’m neither alone nor that brave, but that’s not to say that more and louder voices wouldn’t be welcome on this important issue.

I hope you’ll continue to read and comment on my posts. Your comment really made my day!
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