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THE BOY CRISIS DEFINED

Excerpt from The Minds of Boys... by Michael Gurian
IS THERE REALLY A BOY CRISIS?...
Because the word crisis gets thrown around a great deal these days, it deserves to be treated with suspicion. In fact, Kathy and I have tried not to use it, thinking, “But so many boys are getting by just fine. Can we really call the situation a crisis?” We’ve said, “Yes, the Gurian and Stevens families endured, struggled, and overcame their problems, but is it really a national or international crisis?” We’ve looked back on the months after Columbine, during which the Gurian Institute staff, along with many professionals, were asked by the media to comment and to offer our analysis of what happened and why. We learned then how using the word crisis can generate unwarranted fear about children’s lives, a sensationalism that can wound schools and families, that can spread hopelessness and hinder necessary changes and healing.

Yet after all this we have ended up using the term. Yes, we’re sorry to say, there really is a crisis. And in this chapter we hope to convince you to use the word not just as a negative alarm, but rather as an inspiration for positive change. Here are some of the things parents and educators are saying about the situation boys face in education today.
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FROM THE WHITE HOUSE (2006)
Young Americans Are At Risk. While many trends in negative risk-taking among youth are heading in the right direction, risky behaviors, including illegal drug and tobacco use, violence and early sexual activity, are still among the top causes of disease and early death among youth. In addition, more children are growing up in homes without a father present, and studies show that an overwhelming number of violent criminals in the United States are males who grew up without fathers. Research has shown that the more children are connected to family, school, and community, the less likely they are to engage in risky behaviors.

The President and Mrs. Bush are Committed to Helping America's Youth.

The Trouble with Boys... NEWSWEEK SPECIAL
By almost every benchmark, boys across the nation and in every demographic group are falling behind. In elementary school, boys are two times more likely than girls to be diagnosed with learning disabilities and twice as likely to be placed in special-education classes. High-school boys are losing ground to girls on standardized writing tests. The number of boys who said they didn't like school rose 71 percent between 1980 and 2001, according to a University of Michigan study. Nowhere is the shift more evident than on college campuses. Thirty years ago men represented 58 percent of the undergraduate student body. Now they're a minority at 44 percent. This widening achievement gap, says Margaret Spellings, U.S. secretary of Education, "has profound implications for the economy, society, families and democracy."
Off site link to Newsweek Special

BOYS & EDUCATION

THE "BOY CRISIS"
 from The Boys Project website

Since the late 1970's, young women have soared in college attendance while young men have stagnated. Young men's literacy is declining. Many young men are disengaging from school. Young men are less likely to be valedictorians, to be on the honor roll, and to be active in organizations like student government. Young men are more likely to get D's and F's, to be suspended or expelled from school, to drop out of school, and to commit suicide.

We are losing young boys to a sense of failure that comes from schooling poorly adapted to their needs. We are losing adolescent males to the depression that comes from feeling neither needed nor respected. We are losing young men to life tracks that include neither college nor any other energetic endeavor.

A large, sullen, poorly educated group of men will not keep the nation vital in the twenty-first century. The nation needs the energy, initiative, and ambition of its young men as well as its young women.

BLACK BOYS: THE SAD FACTS
By Rosa A. Smith
The American Association of School Administrators

The most compelling case behind the vulnerability of black boys in school comes from these selected findings collected by the Schott Foundation.

RELATED ARTICLES

BOYS AND VIOLENCE

Article... by Joe Manthey
Risk factors in school shootings:
Lack of attachment is a common thread with boys and violent behavior
It seems that after every school shooting, the usual suspects, often with vested interests, come out of the woodwork with their theories: guns, psychotropic drugs, violent video games, Satanic lyrics, Nazism ... But the Secret Service has determined that school assassins do not fit a “profile” — aside from the fact that they have all been boys. Therefore, a more productive approach would be to look for certain character risk factors:

1. Lack of attachment with a primary caregiver at beginning of life. Seung-Hui Cho did not even communicate with his parents and those around him. In 1997, the father of Minnesota shooter Jeff Weise committed suicide and two years later his mother, whom he “hated,” was partly paralyzed and brain damaged. Weise was estranged from his mother and other family members and had a strained relationship with his grandfather, whom he lived with and murdered. The parents of Granite Hills High School assassin Jason Hoffman separated when he was 3 months old.

2. Recent trauma. Wiese’s school had rejected him six months prior to his rampage and was placed on “homebound study.” He then left a message on the school’s computer screen that people at the school “are going to pay.” Hoffman had just learned that he was not going to graduate. All these boys had left numerous clues that they were deeply disturbed, and their cries for help were ignored. Cho is simply the latest example.

3. Trigger. These boys were heavily stressed out in dysfunctional home environments. Former neighbors of Hoffman said he spent hours walking his neighborhood to get away from a troubled home life.
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Article... by James Garbarino, Ph.D.
Lost Boys: Why our Son's Turn Violent and How We Can Save Them
The 1997-1998 school year will go down in American history as the turning point in our country’s experience and understanding of lethal youth violence. October 1, 1997, Pearl, Mississippi: after killing his mother, sixteen-year-old Luke Woodham opens fire at his high school, killing three and wounding seven. December 1, 1997, West Paducah, Kentucky: fourteen-year-old Michael Carneal kills three students at a high school prayer meeting. March 24, 1998, Jonesboro, Arkansas: thirteen-year-old Mitchell Johnson and eleven-year-old Andrew Golden open fire on their schoolmates, killing four of them and a teacher. April 24, 1998, Edinboro, Pennsylvania: fourteen-year-old Andrew Wurst kills a teacher at a school dance. May 21, 1998, Springfield, Oregon: after killing his parents, fifteen-year-old Kip Kinkel walks into the school cafeteria and shoots twenty-four classmates, two fatally.
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BOYS AND FATHERLESSNESS

Book Excerpt... by David Popenoe
from the book, Life Without Father
Growing up without a father may be a root cause of many social ills—from crime to academic failure.The decline of fatherhood is one of the most basic, unexpected and extraordinary trends of our time. Its dimensions can be captured in a single statistic: In just three decades, between 1960 and 1990, the percentage of children living apart from their biological fathers more than doubled, from 17 percent to 36 percent. By the turn of the century, nearly 50 percent of American children may be going to sleep each evening without being able to say good night to their dads.

No one predicted this trend; few researchers or government agencies have monitored it; and it is not widely discussed, even today. But the decline of fatherhood is a major force behind many of the most disturbing problems that plague American society: crime; premature sexuality and out-of-wedlock births to teenagers; deteriorating educational achievement; depression, substance abuse and alienation among adolescents; and the growing number of women and children in poverty.
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Article... by Stephen Baskerville
Is There Really a Fatherhood Crisis?
A generation of fatherhood advocates has emerged who insist that fatherlessness is the most critical social issue of our time. In Fatherless America, David Blankenhorn calls the crisis of fatherless children “the most destructive trend of our generation” (1995, 1). Their case is powerful. Virtually every major social pathology has been linked to fatherless children: violent crime, drug and alcohol abuse, truancy, unwed pregnancy, suicide, and psychological disorders—all correlating more strongly with fatherlessness than with any other single factor, surpassing even race and poverty. The majority of prisoners, juvenile detention inmates, high school dropouts, pregnant teenagers, adolescent murderers, and rapists come from fatherless homes (Daniels 1998, passim). Children from affluent but broken families are much more likely to get into trouble than children from poor but intact ones, and white children from separated families are at higher risk than black children in intact families (McLanahan 1998, 88). The connection between single-parent households and crime is so strong that controlling for this factor erases the relationship between race and crime as well as between low income and crime (Kamarck and Galston 1990, 14).
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Article... by Glenn Sacks
Are Boys Really Better off Without Fathers?...
Peggy Drexler’s new book Raising Boys Without Men: How Maverick Moms Are Creating the Next Generation of Exceptional Men contends that father-absent homes—particularly “single mother by choice” and lesbian homes—are the best environments for boys. Drexler recently told Good Morning America that boys do just fine without dads, and her “maverick moms” always seem to have a better way of handling their sons than dad would. While Raising Boys may seem like a harmless, feel-good affirmation for these mothers, it could have a damaging impact on children by affecting both the choices women make and family law.
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BOYS AND SOCIETY

Article... by Paul Nathanson and Katherine K. Young © 2006
LEGALIZING MISANDRY ...
Males are not faring well at all in a society that is now focused explicitly on the needs and problems of females and is often hostile to the very possibility that males might have any distinct needs and problems of their own. Rapid social change and depression have been listed as causes of these problems, but the question is why these factors affect men, especially young men, much more than they do women.
Males are not faring well at all in a society that is now focused explicitly on the needs and problems of females and is often hostile to the very possibility that males might have any distinct needs and problems of their own. Rapid social change and depression have been listed as causes of these problems, but the question is why these factors affect men, especially young men, much more than they do women.
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ABUSED BOYS

Article... by: Jim Struve, L.C.S.W.
Socialization and it's Impact on Male Survivors of Sexual Abuse
Unfortunately, within our culture there exists an underlying premise for boys and men that it is O.K. for males to act on feelings but dangerous to express feelings: males should have the capacity to "rise above" feelings & "move beyond" adversities. This is a particularly important factor that influences how a male will respond if he encounters a traumatic experience such as sexual victimization. In fact, this cultural expectation actually creates a kind of global "double bind" in which the concept of "male" and "victimization" exist as oxymorons. Within such an environment, it is extremely difficult for males to step forward and seek to address very personal issues related to experiences of sexual victimization.
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Article... Child Health News
Abused boys may 'learn' that violence is an acceptable method of conflict resolution in the home
According to a study in the October 18 issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine, a history of childhood physical abuse may be common in men from urban settings, and these men with physical abuse histories may be more likely to commit domestic violence. The study found that the childhood abuse was primarily committed by parents, with mothers being the most frequent abusers.
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Article... by Daniel J. Sonkin
The Wounding of Male Children
This year (2004) over a million and a half children will experience some form of emotional, sexual, or physical abuse and at least a quarter of these will be boys. But no matter what type of abuse a boy experiences, the physical and psychological pain that it causes may result in many different types of problems throughout his life. Most commonly, the grown man continues to abuse himself and those closest to him.
Many adults say, "Boys are flexible. They can handle it." Or "Kids forget about it when they grow up." My interviews with hundreds of men abused as children, however, have not proven this case. In fact the majority of these child victims of abuse have suffered for years. Many have numerous physical ailments, frequent nightmares, troubled interpersonal relationships, and serious behavior problems. Though many men try to forget their childhood experiences, the memories and their associated feelings still affect their lives.
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CIRCUMCISION OF INFANT BOYS

Article... by Ryan McAllister, Ph.D and Dan Sisan, Ph.D
CIRCUMCISION : Health, Sexism, and Human Rights
Not knowing much about circumcision, about half of American parents today allow someone to circumcise their boys.
Why? Appearance? Health? Cleanliness? Conformity? Parents often state that they were motivated by conformity, either “so he will look like [the dad]” or so that he “won’t be teased.” Can you imagine other surgeries being performed on otherwise-typical, healthy children merely for conformity? Perhaps a need of our own plays a role in this choice we make for our children. Perhaps knowing it was done to ourselves or our loved ones leads us to rationalize that it was done for good reason.
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GUEST ARTICLE... by J. Steven Svoboda
Circumcision of Boys: A Serious Male Health Problem
While rare in Scandinavia and Europe, male circumcision is still common in North America despite some reductions in frequency over recent decades. The United States rate has declined from 90 to 60 per cent in recent years and has fallen by 15 percent in five years. Canadian circumcision rates differ dramatically from province to province but the national average is around 25%.  It is revealing that the provincial rates have plummeted as each province discontinued coverage under the National Health Service. Currently, only Manitoba still pays for circumcisions.
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GUEST ARTICLE... by Van Lewis
A mutilator’s question
With the first probe under the foreskin the baby screams a blood curdling scream and keeps screaming. With the crushing of the center line of the top of the foreskin with the hemostat the baby’s screaming and thrashing ratchet WAY up (he was restrained by tie-downs, put in place in preparation for this human hurricane they already knew from long experience was coming) and when the clamp comes off and the dorsal cut is made the baby begins to vomit—projectile vomiting—the most violent vomiting I have ever witnessed from any human being. Blood from the baby’s penis spurts everywhere. The vomiting interrupts the screaming and the screaming interrupts the vomiting. The mutilator takes out his sewing kit and starts sewing. With every puncture of the needle a new blood-curdling scream comes rushing out, with every pulling of the thread through the foreskin the baby turns bluer and screams louder and harder and finally, when I think the police are going to arrive, or the baby is going to die, or God is going to strike us all dead on the spot—the baby goes totally silent and completely limp. He passes out, knocked cold by the trauma of the mutilating. [Ed. Some babies dissociate and this may be what Mr. Lewis observed] The mutilator can now work in peace.
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RELATED ARTICLES

BOYS TO MEN

Article... by Michael Thompson
Becoming a Man by August...
The boy sitting next to me on the prop plane from Toronto to North Bay was seventeen years old, a rising high school senior with a slight beard. He had the misfortune to sit next to a child psychologist, a so-called expert on boys, who would pester him with questions for the entire trip about how he was spending his summer, and why. “This is kind of like a final exam,” he observed, trying to get me to relent, but I wouldn’t let go.
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RELATED ARTICLES

BOOKS ABOUT BOYS

The Minds of Boys: Saving Our Sons From Falling Behind in School and Life
by Michael Gurian
Angry Young Men: How Parents, Teachers, and Counselors Can Help Bad Boys Become Good Men
by Aaron R. Kipnis
The War Against Boys
by Christina Hoff Sommers
The Good Son: Shaping the Moral Development of Our Boys and Young Men 
by Michael Gurian
Raising Boys: Why Boys Are Different-And How to Help Them Become Happy and Well-Balanced Men
by Steve Biddulph
Raising Cain : Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys
by Daniel J. Kindlon, Michael Thompson
Lost Boys : Why Our Sons Turn Violent and How We Can Save Them
by James Garbarino
TMC EXCLUSIVE:  Click here to read Chapter one
Real Boys : Rescuing Our Sons from the Myths of Boyhood  
by William Pollack
A Fine Young Man : What Parents, Mentors and Educators Can Do to Shape Adolescent Boys into Exceptional Men
by Michael Gurian
As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who Was Raised As A Girl.
By John Colapinto
The Wonder of Boys : What Parents, Mentors and Educators Can Do to Shape Boys into Exceptional Men
by Michael Gurian

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By James Garbarino, Ph.D. ©2006
Seven years after writing “Lost Boys: Why Our Sons Turn Violent and How We Can Save Them,” James Garbarino, Ph.D., professor of humanistic psychology at Loyola University Chicago, has published what could roughly speaking be described as a companion volume, “See Jane Hit: Why Girls are Growing More Violent and What We Can Do About It.” Garbarino writes well, and his book addresses a topic that has drawn significant interest in recent years, having been addressed in at least four other recent volumes. “See Jane Hit” is interesting reading for gender activists, since Garbarino writes from a more mainstream perspective that uncritically accepts some anti-male falsehoods, yet at the same time is a generally thoughtful and fair-minded commentator.
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REVIEW: Straight Talk for Men about Marriage: What Men Need to Know About Marriage (And What Women Need to Know About Men)
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The author has put together an appealingly presented, male-friendly guide to improving the quality of our marriages. As Friedman is the first to point out, this isn’t exactly rocket science. We need to learn to do the basics. A marriage is a path to learning about ourselves. Projecting our discontent onto our spouse doesn’t do either of us any favors.
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Norah Vincent has produced a new book whose simple underlying concept nevertheless seems to possess all the potential power of, say, John Howard Griffin’s classic Black Like Me, in which the Caucasian author masqueraded as a black man and was astonished at the depths of the discrimination and barriers he discovered.  Author Vincent tries to do the same thing for gender, dressing in drag as “Ned” and entering various supposed male bastions to report on what she discovers.
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Planning Together for Less Stress and More Joy
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Judith Sherven and James Sniechowski, husband-and-wife psychologists and authors of three books previously reviewed by me in these pages (The New Intimacy, Opening to Love 365 Days a Year, and Be Loved for Who You Really Are) have just published a new book on their favorite topic, love and marriage. In a literal sense, The Smart Couple’s Guide to the Wedding of Your Dreams covers a narrower subject than any of their three previous books.  But actually, predictably enough given the authors’ excellent writing skills and tireless, creative devotion to promoting passion, their latest offering manages to transcend the limits of the genre of wedding guides.  Not seeing a book that went beyond the technicalities of wedding planning and touched the spirit of the event, they took the plunge and wrote it!
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REVIEW: Partnering: A New Kind of Relationship
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Hal and Sidra Stone are, like Judith Sherven and James Sniechowski (whose latest book is reviewed elsewhere in this issue) a husband-and-wife psychologist team who have written a number of books and who travel the world giving workshops on their techniques for improving one’s life and relationships.  Partnering does not represent a stunning advance on the authors’ previous work but it does expand, in the specific context of relationships, on the work they have helped pioneer in exploring the multiple selves each of us contains through the voice dialogue technique.
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REVIEW: Gendercide and Genocide
Edited by Adam Jones © 2006
Apart from the rarest exceptions (such as the not-to-be-missed “Female ‘Circumcision’ in Africa: Culture, Controversy, and Change,” Edited by Bettina Shell-Duncan and Ylva Hernlund), edited volumes tend to be hit-and-miss affairs. It’s hard enough simply to find an appropriate topic, to accumulate contributions that are varied enough to provide interest but not so different that they work at cross-purposes, and to publish the work. Maintaining a razor-like focus as can easily be done with an individually authored book by definition becomes almost impossible with an edited volume.
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MENSIGHT Magazine is another free service of The Men's Resource Network, Inc. (MRN). It has grown out of the response that we have received from articles posted on TheMensCenter.com (TMC), our official web-site. The first issue went on-line on May 1, 2000. (Archive)

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