Our Boys Are Falling Behind. Why? Asks Warren Farrell

boys are far more likely to drop out of high school uh far less likely to go to college the school shootings in particular were very likely to be done not only by boys but boys whose family had been through divorce and who were in very high conflict situations and often um boys that did not have father involvement it's been six years since Warren frell published his groundbreaking book The Boy crisis why our boys are struggling and what we can do about it I wanted to get an update on where things are now there's a reason uh that men are um are killing themselves much more frequently we're not asking why this is American thought leaders and I'm y Kell waren frell such a pleasure to have you back on American thought leaders it's my pleasure also um you're such a good question asker and you really listen so well um I I love that about you well thank you very much and I'm actually very curious when we first interviewed back in 2019 we interviewed about your book The Boy crisis where have things come with the boy crisis and maybe before even that tell me what it is uh the boy crisis is boys falling behind in every in more than 70 different measurable metrics basically um everything from being far more likely than girls to commit suicide about four times as likely um when they're between 15 and 19 five times as likely when from age 20 to 24 uh they're far more likely to be addicted to uh to drugs to to die of drug overdoses to be addicted to video games playing a certain amount of video games is fine but addiction to video games 15 hours or more per week um is typical for the average boy playing video games and that begins to get into the addiction mode um boys are far more likely to drop out of high school uh far less likely to go to college and when they go to college they're 10% more likely to drop out of college than girls are and so when I submitted my research for the boy crisis my proposal to the publisher um I had 10 causes of the boy crisis outline that I was going to have a chapter for each and then I kep kept finding that um most of those causes were correlations but the only one that sort of met the um met the standard of a cause U was I found that the boy crisis to a larger degree than any other single reason the boy crisis resides where dads do not reside I saw this enormous power of lack of Father involvement so there's no greater correlation between suicide um and any other thing than lack of Father involvement um when we have mass shootings it's not about girls and it's not about guns and not about family values predominantly they're all players but I saw that to a Lar large degree the school shootings in particular were very likely to be done not only by boys but boys whose family had been through divorce and who were in very high conflict situations and often um boys that did not have father involvement and so I began to see this enormous amount of dad deprivation and this has not changed the amount of people dropping out of high school who are boys the amount um of them graduating from college or a boys the amount of drug overdoses um the life expectancy between males and females has increased in the last um couple of years it's now to 5.9 it was down about 5.2 um some years ago about the time that um the boy Crisis book came out you know and this also complement the research uh that shows that basically children that come out of nuclear families complete nuclear families are basically whether they come from affluent families or poor families left or right are set up for Success their likelihood of being successful in life and sort of changing their economic realities and life realities in a positive way is that's the single best predictor of that actually happening so that's interesting that this is very complimentary absolutely and what I saw was also that there was so the lack of Father involvement was the deepest cause that I sort of had articulated when when the boy crisis book came out now I've seen as I I would for the last 30 years I've been conducting um these couples communication workshops that I call role mate to soulmate workshops and I saw that there was one deeper prediction uh that is if a couple could that I saw that the Achilles heel of all human beings is our inability to handle personal criticism without becoming defensive I'll I'll advise people in my workshop to not become defensive when they hear criticism and everybody agreed but they got home in their real life and the moment that that criticism appeared the wisdom disappeared and so I realized that I really had to develop a a method uh that people practiced over and over again so their brain changed until they could associate um criticism with an opportunity to feel more deeply loved and the question was how to do that and but the the value of how to do that and I can get to that in a little while but the value of how to do that in relation to the boy crisis was the the real way to prevent the boy crisis is to have good parental communication so the children see good parental communication and and mother and father knowing how to resolve differences constructively and be able to hear each other and move closer together in their love than they were before I want um and when children see that uh they know how to communicate with their friends and they will know how to communicate with their children and there will be fewer divorces and when there are fewer divorces there are fewer um children raised predominantly by the by mother and with with what I call Dad deprivation well this is you know I think particularly relevant in these you know Frau times that we're in because you know this the strikes me that the ability to take criticism without feeling defensive or Worse right which I think is a we see see that a lot we're going to play a very valuable role in society at large not even just in you know sort of these intimate relationships which of course your new book Ro mate to soulmate is all about we'll talk about that in a moment I want to kind of talk about how things have shifted you know there's this recent Wall Street Journal piece America's young men are falling even further behind right made me think of you part of the reason we're here today um the pandemic policy resulted in these all these scenarios being exasperated do I understand that correctly can you kind of Flesh that out for me a bit one of the reasons is that um girls are very good at you know you get a zoom course and girls are very good at taking information down absorbing it remembering it and feeding it back on a test um boys for the most part have to do things uh physically um or or they're they have to be engaged in projects um and when they're engaged in a project boys do very well when they have to do something physically especially boys do very well but when they have to sit at home and listen to something over a zoom uh they tend to be distracted and bored and and they become passive aggressive in terms of going back and learning more and they they basically um tend to fail to a much greater degree um they women are very good about reaching out to women friends and sharing what their feelings and their fears and the women friends are very good about supporting them um boys are not as good about expressing their feelings and their fears to their men friends or to women and the reason for that is when boys Express their feelings to women especially if they're involved um romantically with those women um women often lose respect for men um who are complaining or who are you know sort of vulnerable in that way um and when men Express those feelings to of vulnerability to other men men T tend to give the men about a one minute um sort of like okay yes yes yes and then if they if the man keeps going on uh the other men lose respect for men so you better keep your feelings to yourself and if you if you have a lot of feelings you start drinking or or the feelings pile up and pile up and you and you come out with this volcano of anger that's been pent up and so it's a a very dangerous um period for for men to be isolated during the pandemic and in general well and and it's very interesting because everything you're talking about you know go back a few Generations it was just kind of much less of an issue right like men weren't thinking about things about their like their vulnerabilities so much do I do I mean do I have that right yes but it's this doesn't mean the process it took to make a man a hero is the exact opposite of the process it takes to make a man healthy that is the process it took to make a man hero meant repress your feelings because if you expressed your feelings to your sergeant in the Army you were a squeaky wheel and the war machine does not run well considering everybody's feelings and fears so the way we created U men to be our protectors and be willing to kill and be killed was to make them feel like they were more of a man when they didn't Express their feelings of vulnerabilities when they didn't say to their sergeant um oh officer that comment was anti-semitic and I'm Jewish U could you please you know refrain from making anti-semitic comments um the response of the sergeant would be you know do 30 push-ups and shut your mouth Warren we're going to take a quick break right now and we'll be right back and we're back with Dr Warren frell author of Ro mate to soulmate well so basically there's kind of two elements there's a change in the male role right and that itself needs some kind of mitigation right and the other thing is this father the fatherlessness crisis absolutely and the combination of these things is the boy crisis do I have that right that that's very right on in the old days men had two senses of purpose you were willing to be disposable in war or you were willing to be disposable in the workplace n to this day 93% of the deaths on in the workplace are deaths to men um and so uh that still is is pretty much an important variable um but so to a large degree men's most traditional sense of purpose um has experienced because of need the need for fewer men to fight in war has men have experienced a purpose void and and so that purpose void has left men feeling like what what do I do what's my role and that's leaves a lot of men not knowing the answer to that now there is potentially good answers to that so for example um high schools could have a lot more vocational training um so that boys would have an alternative role but in fact what schools have done is cut back on vocational training not increased it um second there there is a need for more recess the CDC finds that um once you do a certain amount of homework um the amount of time that you're physical um that you're physically active um each minute spend being Physically Active um once you've done a certain amount of homework is more productive to doing homework better uh than then time spent focused just on the homework this is true for girls and boys but it's especially true for boys there's all these things are not being considered by schools um when it used to be that most School teachers were female and but and it wasn't so B what I found when I did the research for the boy crisis is that if a boy grows up with a a an involved father and an involved mother and goes to a school with mostly female teachers not a big problem but if a boy grows up without dad involvement or what I call Dad deprived and goes from a dad deprived um home environment into a male deprived school um then then he oftentimes feels like there's no real male role model for him and so the male role models become a gang that invites him to be part of their family without the dad involvement he doesn't have the boundary enforcement he doesn't have the postpone gratification the single biggest predictor of success and so he's often times a failure to launch well he's a he's flipping hamburgers at McDonald's or someplace not making much money and some other guy is out there with a brand new car picking up the girls and so he says well I can if I had more money I could do that so he's offered an opportunity to be to deal drugs and this becomes extremely tempting because without dealing drugs he doesn't get the money without the money he doesn't get the car without the car he doesn't get the girl so he's so he feels and so that's um an example of what's been happening um lately for for many boys who are dad deprived at home of course there's this other dimension which is the uh movement for equality of women right you yourself have described yourself as a feminist and then also that you know the movement to equality possibly turning into something else and how does that fit in yes so at the beginning of my career um I was on the board of directors of the National Organization for Women in New York City I suppose I was the world's leading male feminist spoke all over around the world on the importance of feminist issues and that was the period of time when there was a lot of anger toward men even in the among the early feminists and and um up there was a lot of put down of the nuclear family even among the early feminists but by and large I felt the positive part of feminism at the beginning um was saying something like I Am Woman I am strong and trying to empower women uh today a lot of feminism has moved increasingly to from I Am Woman I am strong to I am woman I've been wronged hashtag me too here's a thousand ways that I've been wronged and and I I'm actually a supporter of hashtagme to but I want hashme to not to be a monologue I want it to be a dialogue both girls and boys women and men have had tough experiences there are many many fathers that have lost that have lost their children um in court battles that were very much oriented toward the Tender Years Doctrine and if other things are at all equal and a woman um says something she's more likely to be believed um we're we're in a situation where um the woman has the right to the children and the man has to fight for children and that's um and that's part of the hash me too for for fathers for men there's a reason uh that men are um are killing themselves much more frequently we're not asking why uh we say it's mental health and it's sort a broad sense but it's something much more specific than mental health in a broad sense it's something that happens with men oftentimes when they get married and they may um and they have their and especially when they have their first child when a man has his first child what he often realizes is you know being an elementary school teacher was very fulfilling it was exactly what he loved he loved kids but he didn't pay a lot so he has to become a principal or a superintendent of schools and he hates Administration so he gives up love often times what he loves to do for what he feels he needs to do so he can give his children opportunities that he never had but then he's more likely to be the Principal or the superintendent of schools and what did we as feminists say we said that's male privilege well it's not male privilege to give up doing what you love to do to earn more money so somebody else can benefit uh so you can die earlier that's not power that's not privilege and as I started forming men's groups I started hearing these stories from man after man I was a musician I wanted to be the next John Lenin um I really wanted to um I I had a wonderful um small amount of gigs coming on but they weren't enough to support me and children they were just barely enough to support myself artist writer actor the same story so I started seeing in my men's groups man after man who had this fulfilling job until the first child came and then he felt he needed to give up the the the luxury occupation the high fulfillment occupations because on a you know it's just a pure economics basis the more fulfilling your occupation is the more people want to have it uh the more people that want to have it um the more the supply the more the demand is in relation to the supply you know waren what strikes me with all of this ultimately we're talking about a kind of a shift in the social structure really right that's that's creating this I don't know problem or lack of clarity lack of sense of purpose which is exactly what happened during the pandemic whatever changes in social structure existed were you know kind of put into overdrive in a sense as people you know as we had these shelter and place policies and you know different all sort sorts of businesses dying out and and everything else today you know we're some significant portion of kids I know in the in this in the San Francisco area and in the LA area haven't even come back to school since the school closures I mean in la it's some astronomical amount right I mean this is a this is a kind of like a d a dramatic shift yes yes absolutely and to a large degree this is not the only answer to a large degree the ones that don't come back are either the ones that are dad deprived usually dad deprived or dads that start parenting the way mom's parents so you have so normally speaking when you have both parents involved on on average and there's some people that are the reverse of this on average moms will say you know um sweetie um get to bed um at a certain time and but the studies show us that moms set earlier bed times when they're the primary care Aker dads set later bedtime so that would sound on the surface that dads are more lenient but when the measurements occur as to when children actually get to bed they find that children being supervised by dads get to bed sooner than children being supervised by moms why because moms will tend to set bed times a little bit earlier like 8:30 let's say and then the child comes at 8:30 and and says oh Mom you know I didn't do my homework and Mom says well you could have done your homework before you had plenty of time to do it you were doing the playing that video game instead but okay I don't I definitely don't want you to go into school without having done your homework whereas the dad is more likely to say the first time he'll say a lot of what Mom just did you know he'll give a warning but Dad is likely to enforce that when the child procrastinates and doesn't do the homework and Dad will is much more likely to say on average U that you know gave you the warning before now you've you've done it again so you're going to have to go into school tomorrow without doing your homework or get up earlier and do your homework mommy doesn't make me do that you know sorry I'm not Mommy um get to bed so the end result is uh the studies show that that children being supervised by the dad actually get to bed earlier also what happens is the child ends up experiencing postpone gratification when on when the dad is involved in a typical traditional dad mode that is the child realizes it wants to play that video game but if it plays that video game it it won't get to be able to do the homework it will fail in school or something it'll be deprived of something else and Dad's going to enforce that when boundaries are enforced it requires the child to postpone gratification from doing what she or he wants to do um and do instead what needs to be done postpone bone gratification is the single biggest predictor of success or failure in life and postpone gratification comes from a parent who's good not at boundary setting but at boundary enforcement I mean absolutely fascinating because when I think about our society at large I see a lot of lack of boundary enforcement let's say I don't think it's just around boys I'll have to say this absolutely fascinating um a final thought as we finish yeah I think the final thought that as we finish is that um what intrigued me about role mate to soulmate was that there is even something more at the root of being able to help boys and men than Dad involvement which is having dad and mom being able to communicate in such a way that no matter what their issue is they that they each felt heard and seen by the other one and that the children could pick up the fact that there was a disagreement and dad and mom did this for each other and there was a way of solving the problem and both hearing and seeing each other even if they still disagreed on what the outcome is yes Dad said it was okay to climb the tree mom said it wasn't but Dad heard the reasons mom didn't want me to do it Mom heard the reasons that Dad did and together they came to a compromise that I could climb the tree to a certain degree dad had to be underneath the tree to protect me um but that dad's point that when you climb that tree you're your your your IQ actually increases as you learned how to negotiate the difference between what's safe and what's risk-taking um and so knowing what the value of dad parenting is and the value of Mom Mom parenting is and then being able to negotiate it's about the best role model you can ever give your children well Warren frell it's such a pleasure to have had you on again it's it's a pleasure to be interviewed and talk with talk with you again as I said before you you just asked wonderful questions and you listen so um caringly thank you all for joining Warren Ferell and me on this episode of American thought leaders I'm your host Yan Kell [Music]