Author: Super User

January 25, 2019 by Robert Franklin, Member, National Board of Directors, National Parents Organization

This continues yesterday’s post on Dr. Anna Manchin’s vital and highly informative article (Aeon, 1/17/19).  Put simply, it should be required reading for anyone with an interest in fathers, children, mothers, families, etc. 

To recap briefly, Manchin argues that fatherhood, the investment by males in their offspring, was critical, perhaps all-important, to our species’ evolutionary success?  That’s because our big-brain strategy for survival and our upright posture mean our children are born extremely immature.  They also come, with fairly rare exceptions, one at a time.  It also means they take an inordinate amount of time to reach sexual maturity.  So how’s a species like that to survive when infants and females were under constant threat of illness, accident or death?  Females had to wean their children far earlier than do our closest primate relatives, meaning that they renewed ovulation sooner and could produce additional offspring. 

That was all well and good, but who was going to care for all those kids?  Eventually, females began selecting as mates, those males who showed an interest in their offspring.  My guess is that those males happened to have the hormones that are present in females and that produce parenting behavior.  So the process of sexual selection produced males who cared for children.  As I’ve said many times before, we’re one of only about 5% of mammal species for which that is true.

But 500,000 years ago, our ancestors’ brains made another massive leap in size, and suddenly relying on female help alone was not enough. This new brain was energetically hungrier than ever before. Babies were born more helpless still, and the food – meat – now required to fuel our brains was even more complicated to catch and process than before. Mum needed to look beyond her female kin for someone else. Someone who was as genetically invested in her child as she was. This was, of course, dad.

Now, again as I’ve said before, those parenting hormones have receptors in different parts of the male brain than in the female brain.  That produces parenting behavior that’s markedly different between the sexes.  The fact has been noted too often to remember.  Mothers are more tender and in-focused, more verbal, etc., while fathers are more physical and tend to engage their babies outwardly with the world in which they’ve come to inhabit.

That brings us to Machin’s thoughts on paternal parenting.

[Rough-and tumble play] is highly physical with lots of throwing up in the air, jumping about and tickling, accompanied by loud shouts and laughter. It is crucial to the father-child bond and the child’s development for two reasons: first, the exuberant and extreme nature of this behaviour allows dads to build a bond with their children quickly; it is a time-efficient way to get the hits of neurochemicals required for a robust bond, crucial in our time-deprived Western lives where it is still the case that fathers are generally not the primary carer for their children. Second, due to the reciprocal nature of the play and its inherent riskiness, it begins to teach the child about the give and take of relationships, and how to judge and handle risk appropriately; even from a very young age, fathers are teaching their children these crucial life lessons…

[H]ormonal analysis has shown that, when it comes to interacting with each other, fathers and children get their peaks in oxytocin, indicating increased reward, from playing together. The corresponding peak for mothers and babies is when they are being affectionate. So, again, evolution has primed both fathers and children to carry out this developmentally important behaviour together.

Children need their fathers for their parenting that tends to differ from that of their mothers.  Through their fathers, kids learn “about the give and take of relationships, and how to judge and handle risk appropriately.”  Needless to say, that’s necessary information if one is to navigate the world and human society effectively.

Now, I’ve written much about parent-child attachment.  Well, it turns out that children attach differently to Mom than to Dad.

Likewise, a father’s attachment to his child has evolved to be crucially different than a mother’s…  In all cases, having a strong attachment relationship acts as a secure base from which we can strike out and explore the world, safe in the knowledge we can always return to the focus of our attachment for affection and help. Where parent-child attachment is concerned, the attachment between a mother and her child is best described as exclusive, an inward-looking dyad based on affection and care. In contrast, a father’s attachment to his child has elements of affection and care, but it is based on challenge.

This crucial difference leads a father to turn his children’s faces outward, encouraging them to meet fellow humans, build relationships, and succeed in the world. And it is because of this special type of attachment that studies repeatedly show fathers in particular encouraging their offspring to get the most out of their learning. It is fathers who aid the development of appropriate social behaviour, and build a child’s sense of worth.

Stated another way, mothers’ way of parenting tends to instill the sense of security and self-worth that are indispensable to an emotionally healthy, productive life.  But not everyone in life is your mother.  Everyone else, from peers to teachers to employers to life partners, will demand a certain quality  of behavior from you and your life will be happier and better if you know how to interact appropriately with others.  Fathers are vital to conveying that knowledge.

As with the rest of her article, Machin’s closing is spot-on.

Looking back at our pool of knowledge from 10 years ago and comparing it to what we know today, my conclusion is this: we need to change the conversations we have about fathers. 

I know.  I and countless others have been trying to do just that for many, many years.  It turns out to not be such an easy task.

We need to broaden our spectrum of who we think dad is to include all the fathers who stick around, investing in their children’s emotional, physical and intellectual development, regardless of whether they live with their children or not. We need to discuss the dads who coach football, read bedtime stories, locate rogue school socks, and scare away the night-time monsters. Who encourage their children’s mental resilience, and scaffold their entry into our increasingly complex social world…

And by broadening this conversation and sharing our newfound knowledge, we empower fathers to be more involved with their children, something that benefits us all.  

Again, I’ve pointed this out many times.  When fathers are given their due, everyone comes out a winner.  Kids do because they maintain meaningful relationships with both parents, fathers because they step into their all-important role as Dad, mothers because they’re freed to contribute equally to the family income, society because we solve the multiple problems of fatherlessness and the public purse because we stop spending so much on endless programs to combat the toxic results of absent fathers.

Further, a father’s special role in preparing his child to enter the wider world outside the family – shaping emotional and behavioural development, teaching the rules of social behaviour and language, helping to build mental resilience by dealing with risk, confronting challenge and overcoming failure – is arguably more important than ever before, when we are beset by a crisis in adolescent mental health, and live in a world that operates on new social rules, shaped by our digital, online lives.

Indeed.  Thanks to Dr. Machin for her hugely important contribution to the public discourse on fathers and children.

January 24, 2019 by Robert Franklin, Member, National Board of Directors, National Parents Organization

This is a necessary article (Aeon, 1/17/19).  That is, if you want to understand fathers, their relationships to mothers and their kids, you need to read and digest it thoroughly.  The writer, Anna Machin, reprises some of what I’ve said before in this blog, but adds much, much more.  Her astonishing thesis is that it is fathers and the role they play in children’s lives that separate us from other primates.  That of course is a powerful statement, given the amazing and unpredictable evolutionary success of Homo sapiens.  Is it really just about dads?

Well, no.  Countless other factors enter in, but consider Machin’s words:

[T]here is one aspect of human behaviour that is unique to us but is rarely the focus of these discussions. So necessary is this trait to the survival of our species that it is underpinned by an extensive, interrelated web of biological, psychological and behavioural systems that evolved over the past half a million years. Yet, until 10 years ago, we had neglected to try to understand this trait, due to the misguided assumption that it was of no significance – indeed, that it was dispensable. This trait is human fatherhood, and the fact that it doesn’t immediately spring to mind is symptomatic of the overwhelming neglect of this key figure in our society.  

Strong stuff and, as far as I can tell, accurate.  Machin is altogether aware of how neglected fathers are and have been in our society and her article seeks to change that.  But for now, the question arises “How did fatherhood become important for human babies, but not for, say, chimpanzees?”  As I’ve said before, the simple facts of our gestation, immature birth, long period of socialization, etc. all militate in favor of bi-parental childrearing.  But Machin puts meat on the bones of what I’ve said.

As any parent knows, human babies are startlingly dependent when they are born. This is due to the combination of a narrowed birth canal – the consequence of our bipedality – and our unusually large brains, which are six times larger than they should be for a mammal of our body size.

This has meant that, to ensure the survival of mother and baby and the continued existence of our species, we have evolved to exhibit a shortened gestation period, enabling the head to pass safely through the birth canal. The consequence of this is that our babies are born long before their brains are fully developed…

So, evolution selected for those members of our species who could wean their babies earlier and return to reproduction, ensuring the survival of their genes and our species. But because the brain had so much development ahead of it, these changes in gestation and lactation lengths led to a whole new life-history stage – childhood – and the evolution of a uniquely human character: the toddler.  

In short, the long period of time between birth and sexual maturity and the still longer time until an individual can get as much food as he/she consumes militate in favor of other caregivers than just Mom.  Plus, in order to keep the species in survival mode, Mom, once she stopped lactating, became fertile again and soon had another infant to demand all or most of her care.  So who could step in?

Much of the time it was other female members of the social group.

But 500,000 years ago, our ancestors’ brains made another massive leap in size, and suddenly relying on female help alone was not enough. This new brain was energetically hungrier than ever before. Babies were born more helpless still, and the food – meat – now required to fuel our brains was even more complicated to catch and process than before. Mum needed to look beyond her female kin for someone else. Someone who was as genetically invested in her child as she was. This was, of course, dad.

Although Machin doesn’t mention it, Dad was almost certainly a member of the group’s dominant male hierarchy.  If he weren’t, Mom likely wouldn’t have mated with him.  So recruiting Dad to his child’s care and protection simultaneously gave the child the status of a presumptive member of that hierarchy.  That improved the child’s possibility of survival.  Plus,

As time ticked on and the complexity of human life increased, another stage of human life-history evolved: the adolescent. This was a period of learning and exploration before the distractions that accompany sexual maturity start to emerge. With this individual, fathers truly came into their own. For there was much to teach an adolescent about the rules of cooperation, the skills of the hunt, the production of tools, and the knowledge of the landscape and its inhabitants. Mothers, still focused on the production of the next child, would be restricted in the amount of hands-on life experience they could give their teenagers, so it was dad who became the teacher.

The same holds true today. 

In all cultures, regardless of their economic model, fathers teach their children the vital skills to survive in their particular environment. Among the Kipsigis tribe in Kenya, fathers teach their sons about the practical and economic aspects of tea farming. From the age of nine or 10, boys are taken into the fields to learn the necessary practical skills of producing a viable crop, but in addition – and perhaps more vitally – they are allowed to join their fathers at the male-only social events where the deals are made, ensuring that they also have the negotiation skills and the necessary relationships that are vital to success in this tough, marginal habitat.

My guess is that, when American mothers and fathers divorce, the older the child, the more likely he/she is to express a preference for living with Dad.  If so, that would seem to agree with what Machin wrote in the previous quotation.

And of course, as I’ve said too many times to count, all this parenting behavior is rooted in our brain biochemistry.  Back in 2000, Storey, et al found the parenting hormones produced by mothers during pregnancy to be present in fathers who were exposed to their pregnant mates or immediately post-partum when exposed to their newborns.  Her findings were never robustly replicated, but others have studied oxytocin and found exactly that.  Mothers and fathers both increase their level of oxytocin output which leads to caregiving behavior.  But the oxytocin molecule finds receptors in different parts of the brain in males than in females.  Hence, differing parental behaviors.

Machin gives us more.

The hormonal and brain changes seen in new mothers are mirrored in fathers. Irreversible reductions in testosterone and changes in oxytocin levels prepare a man to be a sensitive and responsive father, attuned to his child’s needs and primed to bond – and critically, less motivated by the search for a new mate. As a man’s testosterone drops, the reward of chemical dopamine increases; this means that he receives the most wonderful neurochemical reward of all whenever he interacts with his child. His brain structure alters in those regions critical to parenting. Within the ancient, limbic core of the brain, regions linked to affection, nurturing and threat-detection see increases in grey and white matter. Likewise enhanced by connectivity and the sheer number of neurons are the higher cognitive zones of the neocortex that promote empathy, problem solving and planning.

And yet more.

But crucially, dad has not evolved to be the mirror to mum, a male mother, so to speak…

This is no more clear than in the neural structure of the brain itself. In her 2012 fMRI study, the Israeli psychologist Shir Atzil explored the similarities and differences in brain activity between mothers and fathers when they viewed videos of their children. She found that both parents appeared similarly wired to understand their child’s emotional and practical needs. For both parents, peaks of activity were seen in the areas of the brain linked to empathy. But beyond this, the differences between the parents were stark.

The mother’s peaks in activity were seen in the limbic area of her brain – the ancient core linked to affection and risk-detection. The father’s peaks were in the neocortex and particularly in areas linked to planning, problem solving and social cognition. 

And what if Mom can’t or won’t play the primary caregiver role?  Or what if, similarly, little Andy or Jenny has two daddies?

Where a child was brought up by two fathers, rather than a father and a mother, the plasticity of the human brain had ensured that, in the primary caretaking dad, both areas – mum’s and dad’s – showed high levels of activity so that his child still benefited from a fully rounded developmental environment.

Our understanding of fathers, their unique contributions to children and their hugely important role in our evolution, grows daily.  And everything we learn increases our understanding of the vital role fathers play for their children, their families, society and the species.

I’ll have more to say on Machin’s indispensable piece tomorrow.

January 23, 2019 by RObert Franklin, Member, National Board of Directors, National Parents Organization

Andrew Yarrow’s piece in the Washington Post about which I wrote last time has much to recommend it.  As I said last time, Yarrow grasps not only many of men’s problems, but excoriates as “morally wrong” the Left’s refusal to acknowledge, much less address, those problems.  His is a powerful article that all people who believe themselves to be liberal should take to heart.

But, like most discourse on men within the liberal realm, Yarrow’s article suffers from a misunderstanding of current society and why those problems have arisen.  In those rare writings by liberals that take men’s problems seriously, it’s a standard trope that a changing economy and workforce have left men behind and they don’t know how to catch up.  When once a young man could graduate from high school and get a job that supported a family of four or five, now it take far more.  And the industrial economy is far less the pillar of the GDP than it used to be.  In short, men need more education in more highly technical fields than ever before.  A high school diploma just won’t cut it any more. 

Such is the standard liberal line and it’s not wrong, only very, very limited.  What Yarrow and others miss is the fact that much of what plagues men nowadays is no accident, that the changing economy is far from the only cause of their ailments.

For example, divorce is now as common as dirt.  It hasn’t always been, and that meant that men were rarely separated from their kids.  They maintained their role as father, family provider and mentor to their children.  Now they’re routinely removed from their children’s lives either altogether or mostly.  For almost all fathers, this is a terrible blow emotionally and to their sense of self-worth.

Then of course there’s the virulence of the anti-male public discourse and pop culture in which it is increasingly rare to see males depicted, either in the news or in the movies or television, as anything but deadbeats, buffoons, playboys and thugs.  Yarrow of course details some of that, but seems to see the phenomenon as a fault on the part of those messages, but not as anything that might impact men.  It’s entirely possible that men, faced with a nonstop barrage of the most degrading messages about them, might simply check out of society or, failing that, absorb the message and emulate what it describes.  Indeed, many men seem to do exactly that.

Nowhere does Yarrow mention the fact that extremist feminism has, for decades now, screamed its hatred and denigration of everything masculine.  That more mainstream society, far from shunning such bigotry, seems more and more bent on embracing it, can’t feel good to men.  Colleges and universities teach the message that all men have power, that male power is unearned because it stems from inherent privilege, that men are defective humans who fail to behave sufficiently like women.  The “long march through the institutions” has sent many graduates of those colleges and universities into policy-making positions and influential positions in public discourse.  As one example, Russlyn Ali was able to singlehandedly issue the “Dear Colleague” letter from her position in the Office of Civil Rights at the Department of Education.  Few things have had a more direct and adverse impact on men, but far from calling feminist rhetoric and influence to task, Yarrow all but dismisses anyone who questions the movement.

Many on the right have drawn attention to men’s problems — some thoughtfully, but more often to bash feminism and women.

So Yarrow, for all his awareness of the problems besetting men and his generosity toward them, balks at criticizing the very gender feminism that created the false anti-male narrative and has continued beating that drum for over four decades.

Indeed, Yarrow outlines the problems reasonably well, but never asks why they’ve cropped up when, say, fifty years ago they were non-existent.

Is he aware of the change in how children are schooled?  Does he know that schools intentionally adopted classroom settings and work assignments that appealed to girls’ but turned boys off?  Could that have anything to do with boys’ continuing problems in school?

Does he mention the family court system that tends strongly to remove one parent from a child’s life when its parents divorce?  Does he mention that that parent is almost always the father?  Does he recount all the ways that negatively affects boys?  No, no and no.

Yarrow knows something about the changing labor force, but wouldn’t dream of pointing out the obvious – that the loss of labor force participation by men is precisely due to increased female participation?  No one argues that women shouldn’t have a fair opportunity to support themselves and their families, but the fact remains that a look at a graph of labor force participation by men and women from 1950 to the present reveals that women’s gain is men’s loss.  The two lines are mirror images of each other; as men’s declines, women’s rises.  Are men supposed not to notice or care?

Much has changed in society and the economy over the past 50 years or so, but much has remained the same, and that too adversely affects men.  For example, women are free to work and earn equally with men and many do.  But the unmistakable message from the behavior of the sexes is that women are far less interested in paid work than are men.  So men continue to be the chief wage-earners in the huge majority of households.  That was once valued, but now it’s just the source of more anti-male palaver.  It’s more “toxic masculinity,” you see, that makes men lord it over women by working and earning more.

And of course that very tendency on the part of both sexes means that, when Mom divorces Dad, he gets to continue supporting her via child support and alimony.  The prevalence of divorce may be new, but the assumption that men are natural providers and women aren’t is as old as the hills.

And woe betide the married man who loses his job.  There’s no greater predictor of a woman’s filing for divorce than that event.  Again, this is 2019 and women aren’t supposed to care about a man’s support, but they do.  So the society that promotes women’s working for pay simultaneously creates the condition for their leaving their husband.  Could that adversely affect men?

Yarrow mentions that some 2 million men are incarcerated, but seems not to know that they’re treated more harshly at every step of the criminal justice system than are women.  Does that send a message to men about their how society values them?

I could go on and on, but mercifully will not.  The point being that, if Yarrow is serious about the Left’s taking on the problems facing men, he (and they) will have to admit things they’re so far unwilling to.  They’ll have to come to grips with the fact that it’s gender feminism that brought about much of those problems.  They’ll have to actually embrace men’s massive and positive contributions to society.  And that’ll mean totally abandoning their preferred narrative of male corruption and female innocence.  And they’ll have to grasp the fact that, despite decades of feminist hectoring, men and women tend to still embrace the traditional sex roles of men as resource providers and women as caregivers to children.

I’m here to tell Yarrow and anyone who thinks like him that the likelihood of those changes occurring is vanishingly small.  I’m glad Yarrow has the honesty and good sense to understand that men are human and need our help and compassion.  But sadly, he’s still too deeply mired in a leftist mindset to figure out all the ramifications of truly addressing men’s issues.  I personally doubt that he’s ready to do that.  So, fine as his article is, it still testifies to how far we are from doing what needs to be done.

January 21, 2019 by Robert Franklin, Member, National Board of Directors, National Parents Organization

From the paper that brought us “Why Can’t We Hate Men?” comes this (Washington Post, 1/18/19).  It’s written by former New York Times journalist Andrew Yarrow and verges on the excellent.  It’s not excellent for reasons I’ll go into later, but it gets close.  Yarrow gets close to “getting it.”

Unsurprisingly, Yarrow calls himself a liberal, but he means that in the classic sense.

Helping all people in physical, socioeconomic and psychological distress should be a defining characteristic of a humane, caring and democratic society.

Like any true liberal, Yarrow extends his morality, his sense of right and wrong, his empathy, not just to currently politically correct groups, but to everyone.  And when that demands that he care about the issues men – even white ones – face, he accedes.  That also means that he criticizes progressives for their “wokeness” that coincidentally excludes half the population.

Millions of American men are disconnected from work, children and family; are in poor physical and mental health; suffer from addiction and isolation; and struggle with what it means to be a man. Yet most progressives — who claim to care about all of society’s underdogs — seem to assiduously avoid these issues. Instead, their main concern when it comes to men is that too many men remain wedded to “traditional” notions and norms of masculinity…

The very phrase “men’s issues” conjures up images of bitter, angry white guys who stupidly don’t realize that they are oppressors and on top of the world. In the era of #MeToo, men don’t have problems; they are the problem.

Indeed, we’ve just seen the American Psychological Association do exactly that in lockstep with the misandry that’s taught in seemingly every college and university in the land.

Unlike the preponderance of the current public discourse, Yarrow grasps the obvious.

[T]he fact that women remain victims in many ways does not negate the reality that many men are struggling and are victims of economic and cultural changes — ones that often also hurt women, children and society. Men are not a monolithic group, and it is not a zero-sum game in which men win and women lose (or vice versa)…

These men on the sidelines of American life are of all races, places and classes, and include millennials, better-educated late-middle-age men and former prisoners.

Yarrow doesn’t shrink from delving into the many deficits that plague the male half of American society.

The data on male well-being tell a bleak story for a large minority of American men. About 20 million men have abandoned work (or work has abandoned them), as the male civilian labor force participation rate has fallen from 85 percent in the mid-1950s to 69 percent in November (and this excludes 2 million incarcerated men). Median inflation-adjusted income for all U.S. men was just 1 percent higher in 2017 than it was in 1973, and incomes for about 80 percent of men have stagnated or declined. About 8 million to 10 million fathers never or rarely see their minor children — and most of those fathers are not “deadbeats.”

Young adult males have higher poverty rates than their counterparts 40 years ago, and 25-to-34-year-old men are significantly more likely to live with their parents than women their age. Twice as many men than women are hardcore gamers. Compared with girls, boys have more behavioral problems and lower average academic achievement, and they are much less likely to graduate from college. The millions of formerly incarcerated menhave few prospects for a decent life.

Health and mental-health problems among men are increasing: Life expectancy, which remains stagnant among women, is declining among men. Males bear the brunt of opioid overdoses and alcohol addiction. Suicide is three and a half times more common among men than women. Many men are lonely or disengaging from society, as membership in unions and organizations that foster male camaraderie, such as Rotary and Elks clubs, has cratered.

That doesn’t get close to exhausting the list of ways in which men get the short end of the stick in today’s United States, but readers possessed of hearts and minds will get the picture.  The problems are deep and serious and any society that pretends to the liberal tradition will not ignore them.  Yarrow rightly excoriates both the Left and the Right for their willingness to ignore real problems that debilitate not just men, but society generally.

Many on the right have drawn attention to men’s problems — some thoughtfully, but more often to bash feminism and women. Many on the left are silent because they are implausibly unaware of such issues or, more likely, less willing to highlight them because doing so would be deemed politically incorrect.

True, all true.  The Post and Andrew Yarrow have done the right thing.  They’ve demanded of liberals that liberal morals, liberal values must apply to men as well as everyone else.  Anyone who fails to do that simple thing can’t call him/herself a liberal or, for that matter, a decent, compassionate person.

But Yarrow needed to say a lot more.  Right as his article is, it lacks a lot.  More on that next time.

January 20, 2019 by Robery Franklin, Member, National Board of Directors, National Parents Organization

Now it’s Dr. Leonard Sax’s turn to savage the new APA Guidelines for Practice with Men and Boys (IFStudies, 1/15/19).  Sax, like Michael Gurian about whose response to the APA I wrote this past Wednesday is that rara avis who takes the needs of men and boys seriously.  Not only that, he takes the science of his profession – psychologist – seriously too.  So it’s no surprise that he scorns the new guidelines.

His piece is aimed mostly at the science on men and boys and the lack of it supporting the guidelines.  But Sax also points out some of the more obvious deficiencies of the APA’s screed.  For example,

There are 10 guidelines in the APA publication. The first states that masculinity is a social construct.

No, actually it’s not, it’s a biological reality.  Yes, culture acts on biology, but however it does that, it is an individual’s biological makeup that responds.  Culture can influence certain traits, but the traits remain.  Sax makes this clear in his opening few paragraphs that compare chimpanzee behavior with that of humans.  If male and female behavior were all a matter of the society in which they occur, we’d expect to see no comparison between humans, who have culture and chimpanzees that don’t.  But of course the comparisons are stark and have been reiterated too many times to count.  Plus, across all human cultures, we see gender-typical behaviors.  How, for example, does the APA explain that, in over 36 cultures studied, men preferred as ideal a waist to hip circumference ratio in women of 0.6:1?

Needless to say, the APA has nothing to offer on that or any of the countless facts demonstrating that sex is in fact not a social construct.

Sax goes on to recount the many emotional, psychological and social problems besetting men and boys in today’s United States (and elsewhere).  The suicide rate, falling behind in school and many others occupy Sax the clinician.  All that of course raises for him an obvious point:

For all these reasons and more, it makes sense for our nation’s largest association of psychologists, the American Psychological Association (APA), to issue evidence-based guidelines for working with boys and men. 

Indeed.  If the APA cared about the welfare of men and boys, it would have done exactly that.  But it didn’t.

There are 10 guidelines in the APA publication. The first states that masculinity is a social construct. That assertion is politically correct. But it flies in the face of substantial research demonstrating that some typically masculine characteristics—such as risk-taking and the propensity for violence–are conserved across the primate order, from monkeys to chimpanzees, and therefore cannot be primarily a social construct (chimpanzees don’t watch The Sopranos). The APA guidelines never mention, let alone seek to refute, research on the innate basis for many traditionally masculine characteristics, such as risk-taking. Words such as “hardwired” and “innate” never appear. By contrast, “transgender” is mentioned 60 times!

Truly, I’m not making this up.  Neither is Sax.  In favor of a scientifically baseless claim that masculinity is a social construct, the APA, that supposedly sees to the professional competency of its members, entirely ignores basic hard science on masculinity, science that makes the irrefutable point that there is a huge biological component to sex-specific behavior.  In no scrupulous publication could that be done.  The necessary conclusion being that the APA guidelines aren’t one.

Making the same point even stronger, Sax, like Gurian before him, points out that the aim of the guidelines is not to help men become self-actualized, positive, productive human beings, but to eradicate traits like “aggression” and “stoicism” and others social justice warriors deem inappropriate.

As a summary of the guidelines on the APA website states, “The main thrust of the subsequent research is that traditional masculinity—marked by stoicism, competitiveness, dominance and aggression—is, on the whole, harmful.” Enlightened psychologists should, therefore, “help clients develop awareness of systems that assume cisgender masculinity expression is the expected norm” and “model gender-egalitarian attitudes and behaviors” (page 10 of the guidelines) in an effort to convert traditionally-masculine men into enlightened, gender-egalitarian men.

Sax then cites Stetson University psychologist Chris Ferguson who made the point I did recently – that the APA’s guidelines remind us of nothing so much as its previous definition of homosexuality as a mental illness that could be “cured” in various mysterious ways.   It’s beginning to look like the best thing the APA can do for men is to just leave us alone.

Speaking of science, Sax wants to know where the APA’s science is that demonstrates the success of the therapeutic interventions the guidelines recommend.  But of course there is none.

The APA guidelines are also disconnected from reality. Missing from the guidelines is any smidgeon of evidence that psychologists who preach to male clients about “cisgender masculinity privilege” or “gender-egalitarian attitudes and behaviors” will have any salutary effect at all.

Naturally, the most likely result of therapists’ embrace of the guidelines would be to turn men and boys irrevocably away from seeking psychotherapeutic help.

The most likely effect of such attempts at indoctrination will simply be to drive men out of the psychologists’ offices and to discourage men from becoming psychologists. That trend is already well underway. Among American psychologists 61 to 70 years of age, the male/female ratio is almost precisely 50/50. Among American psychologists 31 to 35 years of age, women now outnumber men by more than 8 to 1, according to the APA’s own data.

There’s such a thing as the cure being worse than the disease.  Doctors with this type of training are best avoided.

Psychology can help men and boys.  It just can’t do it using the new guidelines.

Years ago, I visited a boys’ school in Maryland. The school counselor, Judy Collins, didn’t quote Dave Grossman. But she knew all about the distinctions he made. She said, “You can’t turn a bully into a flower child. But you can turn him into a knight.” Her motto: “Affirm the knight.”

Men’s natural (biological) tendency to protect the vulnerable sometimes involves aggression and even violence.  We label that tendency “toxic” at our peril.  Collins is spot on in her quest to channel the negative energy of male violence in the direction of helping those in need.  That’s how psychologists who care about their male clients act.  That’s how psychologists who know something about the true makeup of men and boys act.  And that’s how psychologists who know the science of masculinity act.

And that’s what the APA wants to stamp out.  Men, be informed.  Whenever you go to a psychologist, at the very first session ask questions like “Have you read the new APA guidelines?”  “Do you agree with their characterization of masculinity?”  “Do you believe that masculinity is a social construct?”

If the answer to those questions is “Yes,” stand up and walk out.  There are perfectly good therapists out there, but anyone who agrees with the guidelines should be avoided.

January 18, 2019 by Jeremy Lanning

This is the story of the night my divorce tried to kill me. After 18 years and 3 children I found myself on the other side of a divorce. My wife was pursuing other interests and I got served with papers and a date for a temporary hearing. I was a full time dad, student, and caregiver to my family’s special needs. I was hands on.

I was asked to leave the house and I refused. That’s when my fight began. I stayed home with my children through the temporary hearing as I withstood false accusations, slander, and prolific mistreatment.

I moved out. I got an apartment nearby and with help from church folk I had a mattress, a vacuum, some kitchen supplies, a bunk bed, and a toddler bed. I got to keep a non-working crock pot and a broken television from 20 years of family life. These orders were temporary and I was going to see my kids in 7 days. In a decade I hadn’t gone more than 1 day without seeing them. I could do it. I had to.

I spent the week getting ready. I planned 9 hours of activities for 2 hours of Thursday “visitation.” You could say I was still stunned. To my shock, I was denied visitation. I was told that I had it wrong. “You can come back next Thursday, unless you have to work.” The door shut. I guess she didn’t hear me ask if I could just see them really quick.

I went 14 days without seeing my children. No contact at all. I was a shell of myself. My only salve was the hope of seeing them for two hours on a Thursday. Surely I can’t be expected to live and parent this way.

The following Thursday came and my apartment was in order. I was excited. I had new carpet. The kids had never lived with carpet. I know my kids. They were going to flip for the carpet. They were sharing a room and they had a bathroom to themselves. I decorated it with years of father’s day drawings.

I picked them up and I could hear a man in the background say something as the door shut. I was so excited. The children were like a pile of exploding firecrackers. All I could think of was two hours. We got to the apartment complex. I wanted them to know that I was okay, that they had a home with me too. I wanted the two hours to be as normal as possible. I showed them the pool on site. They went nuts. We got to the apartment. The clock was ticking. I had them take off their shoes. I opened the door and they saw the carpet and went stomping in. I was forgetful of the misery and the dread. For a moment I was hopeful.

I was shocked how hard it was to manage this two-hour period. It felt like I was on a game show. My plan evaporated and I decided to head back slowly and go for ice cream. I gathered my children as they waved by to the apartment and we headed back. As we sat at the ice cream shop I watched the clock. Still do it to this day. I had to cry a little in secret, over my shoulder.

I dropped them off to complaints that they were dirty. I drove home well under the speed limit. It was after 8pm and I decided to walk around Target until closing. My apartment didn’t seem so hopeful anymore.

When I finally entered my apartment the first thing I noticed was the inside of their bedroom. Once so full of life. Once a sign of what’s to come, now a sign of what has left. I started to sob. I ran to their bedroom and shut the door. 9 years later and it’s a practice I continue. When my kids are gone the door stays shut, except when I mistakenly check on them in the middle of the night. That’s rough.

It was then I noticed that I tracked some dirt onto the carpet. Still crying I got out my vacuum and went to work. As I was feverishly going back and forth I noticed a pristine footprint in the carpet. A child’s bare footprint. My hand was still moving the vacuum and in a fit of slow motion I noticed the vacuum rolling over the footprint before I could stop. It was gone.

I collapsed to the ground hitting my head on the wall. Trying to yell “no.” I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t move. I crawled around searching for another footprint, any sign that would prove they were there. I couldn’t open the bedroom door. I couldn’t think. The vacuum was running, still devouring the footprint. I yanked the cord out of the wall and stood up. I was one decision away from being pain free.  

It was a long, lonely, and scary night. At sun up I awoke a survivor and the father I am today.  Those nights continue to this day but I wake up and take it because that’s what daddy’s do.

Jeremy J. Lanning is a Licensed Professional Counselor and Psychotherapist practicing in Fort Worth, TX and abroad, specializing in trauma, critical response, suicidality, addictions, and divorce recovery. Mr. Lanning has a BA and BS in Psychology and a Master’s Degree in Counseling Psychology. In addition, Mr. Lanning served 8 years’ active duty military in the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps as a Hospital Corpsman. Jeremy is a father of four with extensive personal experience in divorce recovery and the fight for sensible, data driven, family court reform. 

January 17, 2019 by Robert Franklin, Member, National Board of Directors, National Parents Organization

This is the third in my series on the APA Guidelines for Practice with Men and Boys.

To bring a much-needed helping of sanity to the subject of the psychology of men and boys comes the ever-excellent Michael Gurian (The Federalist, 1/14/19).  Gurian is a world authority on the brain chemistry of males and females and on differing therapeutic approaches to each.  Over the years, he’s penned some 32 books, at least one of which made the NYT’s Best Seller list.

His point in his Federalist piece is that men and boys aren’t just products of our culture and they’re not uniquely privileged by it.  They have their own male-specific brains and biochemistry and any effort (like that of the APA) to relegate them to an ideologically-skewed set of traits that must be eradicated is to do far more harm than good.

First, says Gurian, the field of psychology has for many years “skewed female.”

Without realizing it, over the last 50 years we’ve set up counseling and psychological services for girls and women. “Come into my office,” we say kindly. “Sit down. Tell me how you feel or felt.” Boys and men often fail out of counseling and therapy because we have not taught psychologists and therapists about the male and female brain. Only 15 percent of new counselors are male, leaving 85 percent female. Clients in therapy skew almost 80 percent female—males are dragged in by moms or spouses, but generally leave an environment unequipped for the male nature.

Unsurprisingly, men tend to be less than enthusiastic about the prospect of engaging in psychotherapy.  They feel they’re in alien territory which indeed they are.  The field of psychology isn’t male-friendly because it assumes a falsehood – that men are like women.

But, as the APA’s new guidelines demonstrate, the matter is far worse than an unintentionally misdirected trend away from male well-being.  Quite the contrary.  According to the APA, men and masculinity  are the problem.  The male individual who hangs on to masculine norms is not only sick himself, he’s a danger to others, primarily those he loves.  Plus, his worldview, his values are responsible for everything that’s wrong with society generally.  After all, if he believes that being strong and self-reliant are positive attributes, he’s just making himself a stranger to his wife and kids.  Ditto if he places hard work and providing for his family high on his list of important activities.  And heaven forbid that he should be sexually assertive with a woman.

This is what Gurian calls the “ideological swamp” into which the guidelines have fallen.

Male nature, the male brain, the need to contextualize boyhood into an important masculine journey to manhood, are all missing from the new American Psychological Association’s “Guidelines for Practice with Boys and Men.”…

Males, we are told, are born with dominion created by their inherent privilege; females (and males) are victims of this male privilege. The authors go further to discuss what they see as the main problem facing males—too much masculinity. They call it the root of all or most male issues from suicide to early death to depression to substance abuse to the reason for family breakups to school failure to violence. They claim that fewer males than females seek out therapy or stay in therapy and health services because of “masculinity.”

This virulent misandry isn’t just that; it’s pseudoscience as well.

Perhaps most worrisome: the APA should be a science-based organization, but its guidelines lack hard science. Ruben and Raquel Gur, Tracey Shors, Louanne Brizendine, Sandra Witelson, Daniel Amen, and the hundreds of scientists worldwide who use brain scan technology to understand male-female brain differences do not appear in these guidelines. Practitioners like myself and Leonard Sax, M.D., Ph.D., who have conducted multiple studies in science-based practical application of neuroscience to male nurturance in schools, homes, and communities, are not included.

The reason they’re not included is that they don’t conform to the APA’s misandric take on men and boys.  Gurian and the rest seek to actually understand males, not just condemn them.  They try to develop therapies that are, you know, therapeutic.  Their exclusion from the APA’s guidelines is proof positive of the true motivation of those who created them – the denigration of men and masculinity.  If they truly wanted to help therapists help men become better human beings, don’t you think they’d have given a nod to the hard science on who men are and how they respond in therapeutic settings? 

Included are mainly socio-psychologists who push the idea that maleness is basically socialized into “masculinities” that destroy male development. On the APA website, Stephanie Pappas sums up the APA’s enemy: “Traditional masculinity — marked by stoicism, competitiveness, dominance, and aggression — is, on the whole, harmful.” Our job as therapists is, the authors suggest, to remove all but the ideologically sound “masculinities” from boys and men, and specifically remove masculinities that involve competition, aggression, strength, and power.

Let us be entirely clear.  The organization of professionals that tells us its job is to help the emotional and psychological development of everyone has no intention of doing that for men and boys.  Its guidelines make clear that its goal in their case is the remaking of males according to the precepts of those who despise them.

By contrast, Gurian grasps all too clearly what psychotherapy should be about.

Masculinity, including traditional masculinity, is an ontology in which a male of any race, creed, ethnicity, or kind commits to developing and exercising strength, perseverance, hard work, love, compassion, responsibility for others, service to the disadvantaged, and self-sacrifice.

What professional in the psychology field would not want to embolden these characteristics?

I can name a few.  Among others, the authors of the guidelines come to mind.  But consider the “constellation” of male traits named above by Gurian beginning with “strength” and ending with “self-sacrifice.”  Now compare them with the “constellation” on offer in the guidelines with its emphasis on violence and “anti-femininity.”  Tell me then who’s the one who truly cares about males and their emotional health and well-being.

[T]rying to hook mental health professionals into the ideological triad that:

– masculinity is the problem

– males do not need nurturing in male-specific ways of being because men have it all in our society anyway; and

– manhood is not an ontology, a way of healthy being, but a form of oppression,

ignores one of the primary reasons for the existence of our psychology profession: not just to help girls, women, and others on the gender spectrum be empowered and find themselves, but also to help boys and men find their purpose, strength, and success in what will be, for them, a complex male journey through an increasing difficult lifespan.

For a long time now we’ve been on a mission to denigrate men and masculinity.  This is true despite the fact that essentially everything in human society that makes for what we call civilization was invented, discovered, developed, refined, built, maintained, etc. by men.  Men did all that and continue to do all that precisely because of their masculine traits.

The wholesale denigration of men is morally wrong and offensive to any decent person.  But if morality fails to move one, perhaps self-interest will.  The attack on men is an attack on civilization, the largely comfortable, healthy, prosperous knowledgeable lives that, as time goes on, more and more people enjoy.  Simple self-interest dictates that we cease the tearing down of men because failure to do so portends the decline of everything that we’ve come to rely on to make our lives good.  We attack men at our own peril.

But attacking men is what the APA is doing.

January 16, 2019 by Robert Franklin, Member, National Board of Directors, National Parents Organization

Continued from yesterday.

In my first piece on the new APA Guidelines for Psychological Practice with Men and Boys, I pointed out that the description of masculine norms on offer by the Guidelines seems to bear little resemblance to, well, men and boys.  Some, such as “achievement,” seem to pretty accurately peg masculine aspirations and behavior.  Others such as “violence” and “anti-femininity” don’t even get close.  So I inquired as to how the APA came up with these categories and noted that there was no citation to any published work to let us know.

But now I have achieved enlightenment.  This 2012 piece does much to explain the APA’s new guidelines. 

It seems that, over many years, something called the Conformity to Masculine Norms Inventory was developed, apparently by one James Mahalik.  This is what he came up with:

Power Over Women

Violence

Disdain for Homosexuals

Playboy

Winning

Emotional Control

Risk-Taking

Self-Reliance

Primacy of Work

Pursuit of Status

Dominance

Of those, only “Self-Reliance” can be viewed in a positive light.  In short, what Mahalik and others viewed as masculine was an array of bad behaviors.  And sure enough, the new guidelines, while by no means a copy of Mahalik’s CMNI, still reflect his pejorative view on men and boys. 

But of course the same question arises with his CMNI as with the APA’s “constellation of behaviors.”  Where on earth did they come from?  This comes from Mahalik’s own paper:

“The construct was chosen because Mahalik (the researcher) posited the gender role norms from the most dominant or powerful group in a society affect the experiences of persons in that group, as well as persons in all other groups. Thus, the expectations of masculinity as constructed by Caucasian, middle- and upper-class heterosexuals should affect members of that group and every other male in U.S. society who is held up to those standards and experiences acceptance or rejection from the majority, in part, based on adherence to the powerful group’s masculinity norms.”

So now we know that Mahalik’s inventory was never meant to reflect all men, only affluent white ones.  But we’re still left to wonder where he came up with those traits that supposedly describe white men with good incomes.  The linked-to article offers this:

It should be getting more clear about the origin of those [first] four categories of the CMNI. (Violence, Power over women, Disdain for Homosexuality and Playboy) They are the basis to the ideas of hegemonic and/or toxic masculinity.  It seems that Mahalik must have liked the idea of hegemonic masculinity and toxic masculinity and liked them so much that he just inserted those into his inventory as norms not because there was any research that backed up those choices, but because they were the foundation of the latest and hottest theory among his peers.

That’s true because, as it turns out, Mahalik was far from the first person to consider masculinity and identify traits that were considered typical.  The linked-to article discusses four previous ones dating from 1970 – 1986.  There we see nothing about violence, power over women, etc. or much that could be considered negative.  We find traits like “Independence,” “Competent,” “Level-headed” and the like.  So yes, it seems Mahalik simply decided to surf a different wave.

Apparently Mahalik didn’t simply make up traits and call them “masculine.”  He established focus groups that met with him for 90 minutes per week for eight months.  The two groups together amounted to nine people.  Yes, nine – four in Group One and five in Group Two.  What were they like?

The curious part of this is that of the nine people in these two focus groups, only 3 were white men! Five of the nine were women. Here is the demographic composition of each focus group: (Group 1) 1 Asian American man, 1 European American man, 2 European American women; (Group 2) 2 European American men, 2 European American women, 1 Haitian Canadian woman.

So, having decided to study the traits of white males, he established focus groups that were 33% white males and 55% women.  Truly, I’m not making this up.  How Mahalik could pretend that such groups could possibly reflect men or affluent white men generally is simply beyond comprehension.  But it actually gets worse.

It’s worth noting that these focus groups included only grad students in counseling psychology. According to an e-mail from Mahalik, moreover, all were in their mid-20s.

In short, Mahalik’s inventory came from a tiny and utterly unrepresentative sliver of the populace.  And of course no effort has ever been made to validate his inventory as reflective of men or boys generally or even white ones.  Moreover, the focus groups were populated entirely by psychology graduate students.  Mahalik was their professor.  I wonder if they felt themselves disposed to provide him the information he was seeking.  I bet they did.

Are his categories accurate?  Do they describe either men themselves or what men tend to aspire to?  Again, the linked-to article makes some pithy points.

Is violence a masculine norm?  I don’t think so. In 2008 99.82% of men in the United States were not arrested for a violent crime.  That leaves about .18% who were.  Very far from being a norm.  Of the men you know how many are violent?  How about your father, brother, nephews or other male relatives, are they violent?  Probably not. And if they were, do you look up to their violent behavior? Do they model what you would like to be?

Of course much violence occurs without the participants being arrested for a violent crime.  But whatever the actual figure, the simple fact is that a tiny minority of men engage in violence and, when they do, it’s (a) exceptional and (b) generally looked down on.

And we know that, for example, women engage in domestic violence as much as or more than do men.  Does the APA have an inventory of female characteristics that includes “violence?”  The answer is that the APA does have a female inventory and it does not include violence.  Why?  My best guess has to do with sugar and spice…

Oh and, just in case readers are wondering, a total of eight of Mahalik’s publications are cited by the APA Guidelines, strongly indicating his influence on them.

From here, the Guidelines look like dangerous territory for men and boys seeking help from APA-informed therapists.

January 15, 2019 by Robert Franklin, Member, National Board of Directors, National Parents Organization

It was barely 45 years ago that the American Psychological Association officially (if not entirely) stopped calling homosexuality a form of mental illness.  As of 2019 it now casts the same slur at “traditional masculinity.”(APA. 1/2019)  The APA has promulgated its Guidelinesfor Psychological Practice with Men and Boys and, like the government, the APA is here to help (APA, 8/2018).  Look out lads people like Michael Kimmel have proclaimed that they understand you and – quelle surprise! – no one but them can give you the help you so urgently need. 

What’s been most publicized about the guidelines is the continuing education paper by Stephanie Pappas linked to above in which she memorably explains that “traditional masculinity is psychologically harmful.”  Of course the guidelines themselves make no such assertion, but it’s helpful to have Pappas around to give voice to the reality behind the carefully-chosen words of the actual APA document.

Now, given the astonishing claim quoted above, inquiring minds want to know just what is this thing called “traditional masculinity” that is so “harmful” to, well, the masculine half of humanity.  Sadly and astonishingly, the guidelines are quite coy on the subject that is the focus of the entire 31-page article.  Here is what they say:

Masculinity ideology is a set of descriptive, prescriptive, and proscriptive of cognitions about boys and men (Levant & Richmond, 2007; Pleck, Sonenstein, & Ku, 1994). Although there are differences in masculinity ideologies, there is a particular constellation of standards that have held sway over large segments of the population, including: anti-femininity, achievement, eschewal of the appearance of weakness, and adventure, risk, and violence. These have been collectively referred to as traditional masculinity ideology (Levant & Richmond, 2007).

Leave aside the fact that the first sentence is such bad grammar as to be unintelligible.  Notice that this “constellation of standards” comes to us without the courtesy of a citation.  It’s just a naked assertion by whoever wrote the guidelines.  In what way did those traits “hold sway” and what is meant by “large segments of the population?”  5%?  95%?  Who measured that and how?  Did anyone?  And, since the listed traits (anti-femininity, etc.) aren’t exclusive, what are the others?  We’re left to guess.

And what about the list that’s provided?  Does it in fact describe men or to what they aspire?  The idea that men generally are “anti-feminine” is patently absurd.  Most men, I venture to say, want women (and particularly those to whom they’re close) to be at least somewhat feminine.  They’re less enthusiastic about feminine men, much as women are about masculine women.  But, for each sex, that’s more a matter of identifying with the sex one is.  Again, the idea that men are “anti-feminine” is nonsense.

Achievement?  Yes, men as a rule value achievement and women value achieving men.  Is this a problem?  Let’s hope the APA doesn’t view it as one because most of civilization (including the profession of psychology) exists solely because of it.  As Camille Paglia once remarked “If it had been up to women, we’d still be living in grass huts.”  Men are strongly encouraged by biology and by women to achieve and that’s not a bad thing.  Nowhere does the APA tell us that men shouldn’t aspire to achievement, so why is that trait included among others that are called “harmful?”

Adventure and risk of course are mostly a function of testosterone.  Men have it in abundance and the hormone is strongly associated with those behaviors.  So what does the APA intend to do about that?  Many psychologists are now transforming boys into girls via sex reassignment “therapy,” so why not the whole male population?  But is that a serious proposal?  The guidelines don’t say so and rational minds reject it outright.

And of course there’s “violence.”  We men are all violent, aren’t we?  No, we’re not.  Indeed, violence of any serious sort is rare among us and has always, since the dawn of civilization, been treated as either criminal or pathological.  Yes, boys on the playground may indulge in the odd punch-up and drunks in a bar sometimes do too.  So what?  And yes, most violent crime is committed by males, but again, perpetrators make up just a tiny portion of the male population, so it scarcely makes sense to identify men generally with that small percentage who tend toward violence.  Any therapeutic approach to men and boys that assumes us to be the thug on the street is bound to be wrong and destructive.

As to the eschewal of the appearance of weakness, that’s a generally accurate description of (I should think) most men.  But here’s the kicker: it’s mostly a good thing.  As I’ve said recently, in order to accomplish anything and certainly anything of value, a bit of stoicism is a prerequisite.  Some tasks are hard.  Some take a long time (sometimes a lifetime) to do.  Many resist accomplishment by visiting failure on the person again and again.  Weakness is, among other things, quitting at the first indication that the job is hard.  Success requires not giving in to weakness.  Our vastly rich, varied, safe, productive and stimulating culture exists because of male eschewal of the appearance of weakness.

So the items listed as constituting “traditional masculinity” don’t bear even casual scrutiny.  That’s because they either have little or nothing to do with masculinity generally or because we should in no way try to tag them as deficiencies to be fixed or pathologies to be cured.

I’ll have a lot more to say on this subject in the future, but for now I’ll close by urging the writers of the guidelines to consult a bit of history.  In the context of history, their idea of “traditional masculinity” looks a good bit like neither.

First, since long before the written word (and therefore about as traditional as it’s possible to be), the idea of men and masculinity has been vastly broader than the APA grasps.  For example, among the first non-warrior men were the shamans, i.e. those in touch with the spirit world.  Then there were the poets like Homer whose use of words and song moved their listeners and by some were considered in touch with unseen worlds.  More recently, men have been healers, scientists, philosophers, explorers, priests, artists, etc.  All of those are and have always been accepted forms of masculinity.  Men and masculinity have always been understood to be broad concepts encompassing many, many ways of being.  The “constellation” of behaviors listed by the APA entirely fails to describe the vast sweep of historic masculinity.

Stated another way, Charlemagne and Julius Caesar were men, but so were the Buddha, Confucius, Jesus and Lao Tzu.  So were Aristotle and Plato, Darwin and Einstein.  So were Shakespeare and Rembrandt and Leonardo.  And the pages of history are littered with the greatest warriors weeping for a fallen comrade or even a fallen foe.  Did they “eschew the appearance of weakness?”  Or were they capable of great strength and at the same time great honesty about their feelings?

The problem with “traditional masculinity” is current-day ignorance of it.  Social Justice Warriors have defined traditional masculinity to be A and then described A pejoratively in order to make war on it.  Their Achilles heel is that they have no clue about what constituted traditional masculinity.  Times far better informed than our own accepted as legitimate men the Warrior, the King, the Priest, the Poet and countless others.  If we were to do so now, all this talk about “toxic masculinity” would be consigned where it belongs – the ash –heap of, yes, history. 

January 10, 2019 by Robert Franklin, Member, National Board of Directors, National Parents Organization

Continued from yesterday.

I’d like to ask David French a question: “Did you grow up with a father?  That is, was your father present in the household, was he a tangible presence in your life?”

The reason I ask is that, in his National Review article, French demonstrates that he grasps the value of fathers to children, particularly boys.

But becoming a true “grown man” — while a felt need — isn’t an easy process. It involves shaping and molding. It requires mentoring. It requires fathers who are themselves grown men. Turning boys into grown men means taking many of their inherent characteristics — such as their aggression, their sense of adventure, and their default physical strength — and shaping them toward virtuous ends. A strong, aggressive risk-taker can be a criminal or a cop, for example…

Especially in fatherless homes, female-dominated elementary-school experiences often mean that boys are exposed to few — if any — male role models, and male restlessness is therefore viewed almost entirely as a problem to be solved rather than a potential asset to be shaped…

As I’ve argued before, acculturation into healthy traditional masculinity used to be a far more natural and inevitable act. Even upper-class men had to learn to work (at least to some degree) with their hands; to earn a living, working-class men often had to be strong; and with more intact families (and male-dominated work spaces), men did not lack for role models.

Plus, French also seems to be providing a healthy father-child relationship for his son.  In short, when it comes to fathering and the importance of fathers, French seems to get it.  I suspect that’s because he had a dad growing up.

So why doesn’t he get the fact that much of our country’s plague of fatherlessness comes from our courts and laws.  How can he miss the obvious?  When courts relegate fit fathers to every other weekend visitors and, in so doing, make them less fathers than entertainers of their own kids, how can French and so many others avoid noticing that it’s our laws and public policies that are in great part responsible for our lack of fathers in children’s lives?

It’s not only conservatives of course who blind themselves to what’s going on every day right under their noses.  When he was in office, President Obama’s web page bemoaned the problem of absent fathers and yet offered nothing in the way of a policy fix to address it.  Like French, Obama seemed to believe that the problem stemmed from some innate deficiency in men or fathers that, if they would simply behave better, all would be well.  French inveighs against governmental solutions, but, as I said yesterday, government, through its laws and regulations created this problem, so governmental reform is required to fix it.

Now comes Tucker Carlson whose 15-minute piece on Fox spurred French to respond (Fox News, 1/3/19).  Like French’s piece, I agree with a lot that Carlson says.  His commentary is about far more than the decline of intact families; indeed, it’s mostly about the great divide between the rulers and the ruled in this country.

We are ruled by mercenaries who feel no long-term obligation to the people they rule. They’re day traders. Substitute teachers. They’re just passing through. They have no skin in this game, and it shows. They can’t solve our problems. They don’t even bother to understand our problems.

Anyone who’s ever lobbied a state legislator knows this to be true.  When confronted by a conflict between what’s right for his/her constituents and what promises re-election, the choice is never hard.  It’s re-election by a landslide every time.  Oh, the officeholder would like to do the right thing, but if doing so is an electoral risk, it won’t happen.  If it did, equal parenting laws would rule custody decisions in every state.  But they don’t.

But Carlson, like French, misses the obvious.  He believes that the decline in the family is attributable to the liberal welfare policies of the 60s that, we are relentlessly told, separated fathers from their kids.  How that impacts today’s society, particularly among those who don’t receive welfare benefits remains a mystery.  Carlson also tags the decline in men’s wages as a problem and rightly points out that much social science demonstrates that low earnings are one of men’s biggest impediments to marriage and one of the strongest predictors of divorce.

Study after study has shown that when men make less than women, women generally don’t want to marry them. Maybe they should want to marry them, but they don’t. Over big populations, this causes a drop in marriage, a spike in out-of-wedlock births, and all the familiar disasters that inevitably follow — more drug and alcohol abuse, higher incarceration rates, fewer families formed in the next generation.

All very true.  But one of the most powerful drivers of low male wages is competition from women.  In 1950, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, just 33% of women and girls over the age of 16 were part of the workforce, i.e. employed or looking for work.  For men the number was 88%.  The trends for each have converged ever since so that now workforce participation for women is about 56% and for men about 69%.  Meanwhile, men’s real wages have declined. 

That certainly has an impact on men’s marriage and divorce chances, but what does Carlson suggest we do about it?  Women get to engage in paid work if they want to.  So do men.  That both do so is a fact and will remain one, as it should.

Republicans have long claimed to be the party of Family Values, but they aren’t.  Carlson and French are both leading voices on the Right, but neither understands the problems besetting families.  To a huge extent, they are of our own making and entirely within our ability to solve.  Equal parenting following divorce is one answer, but there are more.  We can’t force people to marry and should stop trying, but we can make divorce less appealing once they do.  Currently, we offer (mostly) women cash incentives in the form of alimony and child support to divorce.  Plus, the family court system all but promises women sole or primary custody of their children.  Unsurprisingly, 70% of divorces are filed by women.

Given those weapons arrayed against them men can be forgiven for viewing marriage and children as dubious and dangerous propositions.  Who wants to invest his whole self into fatherhood, only to lose it at the drop of a judge’s gavel?  Who wants to lose half his savings, his home, his kids and much of his future income?  What about any of that is designed to encourage young men to marry?  We can’t seriously claim surprise at the decline in the percentage of young men who value marriage and kids.

All of this is within our power to fix, but our political system isn’t interested.  Carlson is right that elites don’t care enough to even acknowledge the problems we’ve created.  For all his good intentions, he looks very much like one of those elites.