There’s been a lot of talk lately about how young men–Millennials, Gen Z, even Gen Alpha–are “failing at life”. How they are “struggling to find their place in society”. How they are “dropping out” or “failing to launch”. What used to be a source of ridicule, living with your parents well through your 20’s and into your 30’s, is now almost considered to be “normal” for guys. While I thought that was just an “East Coast, liberal elite” condition, I got a little wake up call that it’s obviously an issue in the Midwest and the Fox Valley as well.
Last month, I received a press release from the Fox Cities Chamber of Commerce listing the honorees in this year’s “Future 15”. The 15 professionals under the age of 40 whom the Chamber believes will be future leaders in the Fox Valley. WHBY’s own Hayley Tenpas was on that list (congrats to her), as were 13 other women. After giving the email a quick scan, I initially thought that the Future 15 must be one of those awards that only goes to women. We get a lot of emails about such programs: Women of Influence, Women who WOW Us, Northeast Wisconsin’s Remarkable Women, Women in Public Service, Notable Women in Manufacturing, and Wisconsin Women of Achievement are just a few. So I figured that this was just another ladies-only honor. But upon closer review, I did notice the last honoree named was a man.
And that is what is so concerning. In looking at the younger people here in the Fox Cities, the Chamber of Commerce could come up with just one male it thinks will be a future leader in the community. Just seven-percent of the honorees for this year. Assuming this is not an over-compensation for some perceived slight to females in the past, we should be taking a look at why this happened.
Data clearly shows that fewer young men are choosing to attend and graduate from college with the degrees that feed into executive careers. In the 1970’s, college campuses were 58% men. Now that percentage is 43%. Seventy-percent of female high school graduates go on to attend college. The rate for male high school graduates has declined to 55%. And when those teens get on campus, women are 10% more likely to actually complete their degree programs. Throughout all of American society, 47% of women have degrees, just 37% of men have degrees. So what happened to flip those numbers?
Again, I turn to the endless chain of emails we get here at the Radio Ranch. We get invitations all the time to cover events like Smart Girls Rock, Build Like a Girl, Girls in STEAM Camp, Girls Together Math, Girls Bites and Bytes, Women in STEM Career Day, SWENext, and Stellar Tech Girls Camp. Schools themselves are using programs like Science Club for Girls, Girls Excel in Mathematics, and Future Female Scholars programs to groom girls for college success. Assuming this is not an over-compensation for some perceived slight to females in the past, we should ask why these efforts only seem to be put into one group of students?
Well, for boys in education today, they are far more likely to get designated for special education programs instead. Two-thirds of kids with Individual Education Programs are males. IEP’s overwhelmingly focus on getting students to just baseline levels of competency in core subjects, and seldom encourage students to take advanced or college prep courses. Two-thirds of kids diagnosed with Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder are also males–meaning they are often prescribed mood and behavior-altering medications to control their behavior. Eighty percent of the kids diagnosed along the ever-expanding autism “spectrum” are boys. I was recently listening to a New York Times podcast about that explosion in diagnoses where the host brought up that fact and posited that perhaps the disorder may be related to the Y chromosome, or genetic traits passed down by a child’s father. The guest on the podcast didn’t even address that. Instead she claimed the disproportionate diagnoses numbers “actually raise concerns that not enough girls are being diagnosed with autism”–because even though it’s not something positive, we can’t let the boys get all of the attention for it.
To be fair, the education system is not solely to blame for the decline of the young male. Technology and social changes are playing just as large a role. Almost 30% of men between 18 and 34 are marijuana users–compared to 22% of women in the same age group. Ten percent of all men are daily pot users–with 18% of all men between 18 and 24 being classified as Cannabis Use Disorder.
98% of online sports betting problem gamblers are male–with 65% of men reporting they made on-line bets before reaching the legal age of 21. 38% of men under 30 “invest” in cryptocurrency–as opposed to just 11% of females that age. 15% of male on-line gamers are classified as addicts–compared to less than 3% of female gamers.
93% of teenage boys say they have viewed on-line porn. The median age for that first encounter is 12 years old. 87% of males between 18 and 35 watch porn at least once a week. 31% of men have claimed to have had an artificial intelligence “girlfriend”. Sixty-percent of the users paying for OnlyFans content are men under the age of 34. Is it any wonder why the marriage rate for 35-year old men went from 90% in 1980 to just 60% this year? In 1980, 60% of 25-year old men were already married. Today, it is less than 20%. Demographers estimate that 33% of males under 20-years old today will NEVER get married.
And then there are the disturbing trends in “deaths of despair”. Suicides and drug overdose deaths have more than doubled for men under 35 since 2000. Drug overdose rates among young men have increased by 18-percent a year each year since 2013. Women now outlive men by an average of five years–the highest rate seen in the US in a non-wartime period.
I don’t present all of this information looking for sympathy for today’s male youth. A lot of what I mentioned is “self-inflicted” damage and is the result of a lot of bad decisions and destructive behavior. And there are some of you that would argue that men “still have all of the advantages for success in business and society”, no matter what the current data may say. When you look at the leadership and boards of directors for many support groups and non-profit agencies in our area you see overwhelming majorities of women holding those positions–and they bring their own points of view as to what the real “issues” are with our society.
But without somebody deciding to make changes to the way we raise and educate boys in this country, all Future 15’s here in the Fox Cities will be 100% female.
