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Dear saints,
This week I read the book "Of Boys and Men" by Richard Reeves. Having three of them—boys and men that is—under our own roof, Reeves' subject matter literally strikes close to home. I wonder if any of the following surprises or shocks you:
- Men account for three of out four 'deaths of despair' either from suicide or overdose
- Today, the typical weekly earning for a man with just a high school diploma is 14% lower than it was in 1979
- While a free college program in Kalamazoo, MI, led to an almost 50% increase in college completion levels for women in the program, it had zero benefits for their male counterparts
What Reeves is trying to raise up is that for the 75% of American men who are not among the most affluent males in society and especially those who are Black, the prospects for life when boys become men are getting bleaker not better. Reeves' other point is that our mental model of what it means to be a man is too narrowly stuck with what is now an archaic notion of "provider-in-chief." Women are now the main breadwinners in 41% of American households and at the same time one in three of men today with only a high school education are out of the labor force—not counting unemployed men, because these 5 million Americans are not actively seeking work, they just aren't working.
The other side of Reeves' coin is the good men can do, especially as dads. Studies find that fathers who are engaged with their teenagers help to reduce harmful forms of risk-taking behavior. Similarly, delinquency rates are lower among adolescent children of involved fathers. You get the picture.
When I sit back and look at all of this and think about my own boys, or my male friends, or myself, I see the need for thoughtful conversation about what it means to be male, alongside of course a whole host of other deeply important issues and concerns about what it means to be female, and what it means to understand and experience selfhood in non-binary ways. Put another way, when it comes to gender and identity, there’s a whole lot we could and should be talking about as a society.
The problem is, we aren’t, at least not particularly well. One of the points that Richard Reeves makes in his book is how once again the political polarization of our national discourse has rendered both liberal and conservative political actors and commentators mostly incapable of nuanced conversation about such things. The church is surely capable of more, especially a tradition like ours that thrives in a via media, a middle way between all sorts of views and insights. What a gift it would be for people to discover in the church a place where that kind of faithful and thoughtful conversation was indeed possible.
Perhaps this Labor Day weekend there will be an opportunity for reflections with your loved ones about such things as your daughter cooks at the grill and your son cleans the dishes. We all get to dream, don’t we?
Blessings for the holiday.
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