Young males are not poisonous, but they are unformed. The major paths to community, progress in life, and social and personal comprehensibility have all more or less disintegrated in recent decades. That disintegration was dramatically accelerated and even completed by the pandemic.
This means that men are not getting the education they so desperately need to become good men – and which they have historically received.
One in four American young men report feeling lonely. Many of them have been excluded or disappeared from the dating scene of their generation.
Their level of education and motivation continues to lag behind that of their female peers. The number of suicides among men – and especially among young men – is growing at an alarming rate. They are also worryingly susceptible to political and religious radicalization.
A cheerful son sits on daddy’s lap and helps him with the laundry. (iStock)
A generation of deformed or unformed young men is a serious social and political issue, as well as a real tragedy for any young man who struggles in this way.
But when we discuss how and why young men seem to be lost, we tend to focus too much on the problem and oversimplify the solution. We tend to discuss all the ways these young men fail themselves and others, and focus far too little on what has failed them.
Our culture is quick to accept the worst expressions of male behavior and label masculinity as toxic. But as Scott Galloway writes in ‘Notes on Being a Man,'[There’s] There is no such thing as ‘toxic masculinity’ – that’s the emperor of all oxymorons. There is cruelty, crime, bullying, predation and abuse of power. If you are guilty of any of these things, or confuse manliness with rudeness and cruelty, then you are not manly; you are anti-male.”
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Masculinity in itself is not and cannot be toxic. But individual men can be. That is often the case if they are not guided.
What fails young men today is not who they are, but the absence of guidance and education that shapes who they become.
Learning how to be a man is a crucial and difficult process. You just can’t do it alone. I certainly didn’t. I look back at the men who approached me in high school and college—executives, teachers, coaches, and family friends—and marvel at how different my life could have been without their intervention.
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One of my first mentors was a man named Mr. Lewis. He taught me how to play basketball with the city kids. My mom told me I had to play on their team, so she dropped me off and introduced us.
And he changed my life. He challenged me. My teammates challenged me. He helped me feel safe, helped me learn trust and humility. I was one of the worst players on the team, but I loved it, especially because I loved him.
But when we discuss how and why young men seem to be lost, we tend to focus too much on the problem and oversimplify the solution.
Men need loving, mature, stable relationships with people who care about them and can guide them well. They need mentors, friends, managers, coaches, colleagues, teachers, professors and neighbors who will guide them towards flourishing masculinity. They need all of us to remain explicitly and charitably committed to supporting their formation.
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I have also seen this emphasized repeatedly while working with young men throughout my years as a pastor. Young men who are flourishing have other men who care for them and are willing to guide them actively and specifically. Young men who wrestle usually don’t.
That’s why I think the crisis of masculinity is actually a crisis of men. It is a failure of men who should help shape other men but don’t; and a failure of men who need formation and do not receive it.
One factor precipitating this crisis is simply that the education young men need conflicts with the kind of autonomy we have unleashed on society in recent decades.
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We tell men to define themselves, direct themselves and construct themselves. We replaced the formation with autonomy, and they began to destroy themselves. Society labels this type of direction as control, when in fact it is formation.
In ‘Why Are Single Men So Miserable?’ Allie Volpe explores the emotional and social problems young men face when they attempt to fail in self-directed education and end up lonely.
“A lack of social support has numerous negative consequences regardless of gender: higher risk of mortality, depression, poor sleep quality, weakened immunity, anxiety and low self-esteem,” Volpe writes. “Having a network you can rely on has been shown to strengthen a person’s coping abilities and quality of life, even when he or she is stressed.”
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Social media doesn’t solve isolation, no matter how much it feels like it connects us to movements, meaning, and other people. The ‘education’ that young men in particular receive through social media, influencer culture or television is often just another form of destructive self-creation. After all, they choose (to some extent) the content they consume. They are shaped by their interests, prejudices and unformed desires.
Men need loving, mature, stable relationships with people who care about them and can guide them well.
But nothing they consume online can give them the depth or direction they need to grow into good men. Nothing they can find online will give them the tools they need to endure real hardship or suffering. Their ‘autonomy’ is simply tragic and distorts isolation.
And this confusing, isolating, and fractured digital “formation” has largely come to serve the purpose of earlier mediating institutions.
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The local organizations that so richly populated our lives asked something of us – responsibilities, expectations, standards – and in doing so helped us all grow, individually and together. We had unions, civic associations, Boy Scouts, Boy Scouts, and a rich school club culture. Churches were active and socially dynamic.
In cities, many generations were closely linked, so that the very young and the very old had regular contact and developed friendships and mentoring relationships with relative ease.
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These embodied, specific, personal relationships, embedded in and organized by real and sustainable communities, are essential to the formation of young men. There is simply no internet replacement.
All of these institutions helped support strong men with clear formative and normative relationships. Each promoted the kinds of social interactions that men are more likely to engage in, and provided them with a social network to lean on.
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While almost all of these institutions are a pale shadow of what they once were, this remains unchanged: education requires real people, real sacrifice, and real community – and young men will not be able to flourish without them.
If we want good young men – and we must – then we must stop outsourcing their formation to screens and self-direction, and take back the responsibility of shaping them with our presence, our intention and our lives.
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