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New research highlights a shortage of male mentors for boys and young men

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Re: New research highlights a shortage of male mentors for boys and young men

#11

Post by fzeroracer »

People are going to misread the article and go off in their own direction but the problem is clearly capitalism. It's always been capitalism. Lower income boys have drastically less access to male mentors than higher income ones and the article even states this.

Low family income means less options. Most of your mentors at a young age are going to come from schooling, which still generally has a gender tilt towards women for multiple reasons. But lower income schools are going to be more resource starved with larger classes and less time for teachers to interact with students individually.

edit: fixed wording to better emphasize what I meant

Re: New research highlights a shortage of male mentors for boys and young men

#12

Post by sunrunner »

yetihehe wrote: post #3
Urahandystar wrote: post #2

One of the saddest things I heard was a young kid say he's never heard the word masculinity unless it was paired with the word toxic before it. With that kind of attitude is this any wonder?

Sites like artofmanliness.com seem to be more and more needed in today's world.

So we can all be schooled in the important manly things such as the '6 Card Games Every Many Should Know' or 'The Dale Carnegie That Will Instantly Improve Your Relationships'?

Re: New research highlights a shortage of male mentors for boys and young men

#13

Post by egorfine »

I have lived in a country where communication between adults and minors is not frowned upon in the slightest and so I have been a male mentor for a bunch of girls in an orphanage for many years.

(Once I perish, no one is going to remember any of my business projects, clean codebases and unit test coverage. But that little hobby of mine - oh, these deliverables are gonna last).

Anyways. Happy to be a mentor to teenagers but it seems to me that in the US that's impossible on multiple levels.

Re: New research highlights a shortage of male mentors for boys and young men

#16

Post by philipallstar »

oulipo2 wrote: post #5
lelanthran wrote: post #4

This will not change anytime soon; the "women are wonderful" talk is as relevant as it has ever been. Regardless of the criteria you choose to establish a ranking, males dominate the bottom of that ranking.

You don't understand much if you think that to fight the lack of mentors for men, you have to put down women. It's completely orthogonal. People in power want you to have this "I don't have what I want because this other minority takes it from me", but it's simply wrong, even though this argument seems to capture the mind of simple-minded people. We don't have what we want because we're in a ruthless capitalist socie…

> You don't understand much if you think that to fight the lack of mentors for men, you have to put down women

The reverse of this has been what's been dominating for a decade. Anything pro-men (or even just neutral) can be accused of being anti-woman, which creates a chilling effect as female-dominated HR departments can make life very difficult for men looking to provide for their families.

Re: New research highlights a shortage of male mentors for boys and young men

#18

Post by close04 »

CalRobert wrote: post #8

It does feel a bit cruel that we were told to be vulnerable and open, and then when men said we’re lonely got accused of asking other people to fix our problems and that we just needed to deal with it. Also I don’t think I’d risk being e.g. a teacher - the girls in my high school would casually joke about accusing their teachers of being creeps if they failed a test, etc.

> we were told to be vulnerable and open, and then when men said we’re lonely got accused of asking other people to fix our problems

The discrimination pendulum swinged the other way. And as with a lot of discrimination, the criticism is in reality aimed at what you are, not what you do. So you will never get it right in the eyes of those critics. On the other hand the roles of men in society are changing and it's not at all clear "to what". "Be a man but don't really be one, it's complicated".

Re: New research highlights a shortage of male mentors for boys and young men

#19

Post by sirwhinesalot »

fzeroracer wrote: post #11

People are going to misread the article and go off in their own direction but the problem is clearly capitalism. It's always been capitalism. Lower income boys have drastically less access to male mentors than higher income ones and the article even states this. Low family income means less options. Most of your mentors at a young age are going to come from schooling, which still generally has a gender tilt towards w…

Yes lower income boys are hit way harder, but it's not like the issue disappears at the higher end.

> 72 percent of boys from households earning $100,000 or more reported having a male mentor for schoolwork.

> A similar trend appeared regarding relationship advice. Only 45 percent of boys in the lowest income group had a male mentor for relationships. This compares to 67 percent of boys in the highest income group.

Even 30% of rich kids don't have access to a proper male role model, those are terrible numbers!

Re: New research highlights a shortage of male mentors for boys and young men

#20

Post by CalRobert »

close04 wrote: post #18
CalRobert wrote: post #8

It does feel a bit cruel that we were told to be vulnerable and open, and then when men said we’re lonely got accused of asking other people to fix our problems and that we just needed to deal with it. Also I don’t think I’d risk being e.g. a teacher - the girls in my high school would casually joke about accusing their teachers of being creeps if they failed a test, etc.

> we were told to be vulnerable and open, and then when men said we’re lonely got accused of asking other people to fix our problems The discrimination pendulum swinged the other way. And as with a lot of discrimination, the criticism is in reality aimed at what you are, not what you do. So you will never get it right in the eyes of those critics. On the other hand the roles of men in society are changing and it's no…

Well we have data showing that people have fewer close friends, men in particular, than in decades past. This used to be what the loneliness epidemic referred to, but somehow it got turned in to being about dating.

I mean, I’m lonely and I’m married. Middle age is a tough time for friendships.

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