Richard Reeves, a British writer long resident here and now an American citizen, hit the jackpot with his 2022 volume “Of Boys and Men.” Receiving mention on most “Best Books” lists and an Obama reading selection for 2024, this father of three sons has spun off a veritable empire of concern for the struggles of adolescent boys, becoming president of the American Institute for Boys and Men. While I have not perused his seminal work, it has been followed by subsequent articles with titles like, “Are Boys Falling Behind?”, “Are Our Boys in Trouble?” and similar alarums. Even Jonathan Haidt, last year’s breakthrough catastrophist with “The Anxious Generation” has weighed in supporting Reeves.

Data certainly reinforces their arguments. Assertions that 21st century boys face unique economic, social and cultural challenges which then pursue them into manhood surely deserve discussion. There is no denying erosion in the usual measures of maturation and success. Boys have been losing ground in the classroom, beginning in elementary years, and girls greatly outnumber their male counterparts in college enrollment. Boys are also experiencing declining incomes when they enter the workplace – consequently they form fewer families, surrender to the despair of addictions and live shorter lives. No better example of the seismic shift underway than at the Colorado School of Mines. Forty years ago, it was rated among the top ten schools nationally where girls could “score a husband,” with its 10-to-1 campus ratio of men to women. Last year’s freshman class was more than 50% female for the first time, filled with women pursuing profession credentials rather than marital companions.

It appears all the emphasis on STEM education today is producing results for our girls. So, what gives with our boys? The New York Times cites research results indicating economic and social changes are interacting to undermine boys’ and men’s career trajectories. Although conservatives find this plausible, this conclusion is closely allied with what critical race theorists assert on behalf of young Black men whose results are even worse. Pew studies find that, “Many young men say they feel unmoored and undervalued, and parents and adults who work with children are deeply worried about boys.” Boys have been known to lag girls in terms of emotional maturity and certain academic disciplines for decades. There has to be more to this perceived failure than the substitution of the muscle required for manual labor with the demands of an information economy.

Sophie Gibert, a staff writer at The Atlantic, has recently published “Girl on Girl” which examines “How Pop Culture Turned a Generation of Women Against Themselves.” She was Pulitzer Prize nominee for her criticism of TV, books and culture in 2022 and brings a critic’s eye to the course of feminism over the past 40 years. It is a bracing tale. I still have only a slippery grasp of what distinguishes the first, second and third waves of feminist thought, but come away from her dissertation convinced that, despite positive change, progress has proven no bed of roses for women. True equality remains a victory that lies ahead of us. A blurb on the book jacket reads, “The result is a devastating portrait of a time when a distinctly American blend of excess, materialism, and power worship collided with the culture’s reactionary, puritanical, and chauvinistic currents.”

Gilbert views the introduction of internet porn as a turning point which would influence everything from “the gleeful cruelty” of reality television to the objectification and sexualization of women in virtually every corner of American media. It would take the “Me Too!” excesses of the late 2010s to shatter this pattern. It came as no surprise to most men that many of their comrades are sexual thugs. Their misbehavior has been swept under the rug for most of my adult life. Harassment starts early and rarely lets up. In my experience, serial molesters are much like drug addicts, they simply can’t stop themselves. So, why are girls currently doing better than the boys? Not because it is easy, as Gilbert points out. The wage gap had shrunk to just 93% by 2013 from 67% in 1980. Family leave legislation has been spotty across the country and childcare expenses remain prohibitively high in many states. Nonetheless, 61% of Millennial women aspire to career advancement, according to Pew.

Gilbert concludes her book with what I found a surprising, but perhaps obvious, formula for addressing women’s needs – and I suspect one that would also address many of men’s problems. She cites the social scientist Alice Evans, who has studied gender relations across different cultures, in her final chapter. “One of the single biggest drivers of gender equality, Evans argues, is romantic love. In societies where love is actively disdained in favor of consolidating male networks of power … women tend to have a much lower status,” Gilbert summarizes. In Evans own words gender equality relies on “..loving men who want women to thrive and be happy.” I fear, if that’s the case, we do a poor job instilling the virtue of such respect and commitment in boys.

Sadly, our politics are currently dominated by a misogynist culture that justifies stripping women of their God-given personal autonomy. Among the “techbros” of Palo Alto there is an emerging debate about protecting the civil rights of artificial intelligence bots. Prior to worrying whether unplugging an AI entity constitutes a form of manslaughter, we have a lot of unfinished business protecting the human rights of human beings. Women are not doing well at the expense of men but, largely, despite them. While girls have come a long way in my lifetime, there remains a void men need to bridge lying ahead of us. As Texan Jim Hightower observes, “Before we give rights to machines, let’s secure the rights moneyed elites have denied to women, the poor, nature and democracy itself.” We should get started.

Miller Hudson is a public affairs consultant and a former Colorado legislator.