Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male Is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do about It

"This exploration of challenges facing modern men aligns with Barack Obama's ongoing interest in societal well-being and equitable opportunity, topics central to his post-presidency work."

"Although his training is not in economics, Richard Reeves draws on economic research, as well as research from the fields of sociology, psychology , and political science, to tell an under-told story. The book explores the problems faced by boys and men, the roots of those problems, and possible policy solutions. Richard Reeves does not pit his argument against any argument related to the difficulties women face. If somebody says nuclear proliferation is a problem, it does not mean they don’t care about climate change . Similarly, to say there are a set of problems faced by boys and men that need a policy solution, does not mean that you don’t think there are a set of problems facing girls and women that need a policy solution. We tried to bring attention to both sets of issues when I ran the Council of Economic Advisers. One issue that we documented is that for decades—from the 1950s through the present—men’s employment has been falling fairly steadily; it is the equivalent of a massive recession happening in slow motion over several decades. The increasing disparity between the degree to which males and females attend college and an even bigger disparity in the degree to which males and females graduate from college and go on to grad school is indicative of a lot of potential being lost. Reeves devotes an entire chapter to this issue along with other chapters on education and culture. He then goes on to explain the problems, grounding his explanation in a rich mixture of economics, culture and biology. Finally he devotes considerable space to proposing policy solutions, ranging from an effort to get more men to teach elementary school to more radical ideas like making the default that boys start school a year later than girls."