Technology, immigration, and growing inequality reportedly have contributed to create a crisis for young men and boys in the U.S.
Suicide rates among young men have risen by a third in the past 15 years and now are higher than they are among middle-aged men, The New York Times reported Friday.
Among boys and men aged 15 to 34, 25% told Gallup they had experienced loneliness "a lot" on the previous day. That was significantly higher than the national average (18%) and the share of young women (18%).
Men now account for 41% of college degrees, lower than the women's share in 1970.
Even many men with college degrees face challenges. The unemployment rate for men ages 23 to 30 with bachelor's degrees is 6%, compared with 3.5% for young women with the same level of education, NBC News reported Wednesday.
Also, 1 in 10 men aged 20 to 24 are neither enrolled in school nor working — that's twice the rate in 1990, the Times reported.
Among men under 30, two-thirds think that "no one cares if men are okay," the newspaper added.
"Today's leaders have been slow to recognize the extent of male troubles, in part because of a fear of being seen as somehow anti-woman," Robert D. Putnam and Richard V. Reeves wrote in the Times.
The authors also said civic institutions that could help men "are struggling to fulfill that role."
"There are simply fewer organizations with an explicit mission to serve boys and men," the Times story said. "Most of the ones formed during the last boy crisis [in the early 20th Century] have gone coed, sometimes as a result of a merger. Most now serve more girls than boys. An exception is Boys and Girls Clubs, which renamed itself in 1990 and still serves a slightly higher share of boys (55%) than girls.
"In other cases, previously male-serving institutions have gone coed while their sister organizations have remained single-sex. Boy Scouts no longer exists, having rebranded as Scouting America after the controversial decision to admit girls. Of the roughly one million scouts in the movement today, around 20 percent are girls. But there are also more than a million girls in Girl Scouts, which remains a single-sex organization. All told, there are now 50 percent more girls than boys in scouting."
Male role models and volunteers also are needed, though "[o]ne hindrance to male volunteering is the fear of being seen as a potential predator," the Times reported.
Charlie McCarthy ✉
Charlie McCarthy, a writer/editor at Newsmax, has nearly 40 years of experience covering news, sports, and politics.
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