Lost men

For centuries, families depended on their sons for their clans’ future prosperity. In the modern era, families have made a priority of investing their time and money in their sons’ schooling and training. But now, daughters are looking like the better bet.

Around the world, girls are getting higher grades than boys in every school subject—even in stereotypically male fields like science and math. Girls score higher on standardized tests and graduate with higher grade-point averages. In the United States, 89 percent of girls graduate from high school in four years, while only 83 percent of boys do.  

All of which means more young women than young men are going to university—and getting the degrees that often determine how much they’ll earn as adults or even the careers they can pursue. Around 57 percent of male high-school graduates in the U.S. now enroll in college—a figure that’s barely moved in more than 60 years: In 1960, it was 54 percent. Back then, only 38 percent of female high-school grads went to college. Today, it’s 66 percent—and rising, every year.

For the young men left behind, the stakes are high. Their worsening performance is linked to fewer job prospects, lower earnings, poorer mental and physical health, and higher incarceration rates.

What’s the boys’ problem?

Ioakim Boutakidis is a professor of child and adolescent studies at California State University, Fullerton, a member of the American Psychological Association’s National Task Force on Boys in School, and a research fellow at the American Institute for Boys and Men. Boutakidis says that even after all these years, there just isn’t enough compelling evidence to say for sure one way or another. Biology seems to be part of it: Boys struggle to regulate their attention and behavior in a traditional classroom setting—and that setting looks very similar all over the world. It also seems boys have trouble connecting with their teachers: In the U.S., roughly three-quarters of public-school teachers are women. Globally, it’s two-thirds. In early childhood education, it’s almost 98 percent women in the U.S., only a few percent lower globally. And teachers tend to punish boys more often, and more severely, than they do girls.

What’s worse, Boutakidis says, boys’ poor performance has turned into a vicious circle. They start off behaving worse or getting lower scores than girls do. Then they sense teachers are frustrated with them or investing more time and energy with girls. And boys can see other boys having the same problems and feelings. As they understand they’re falling behind, many of them react by deciding that school and studying just aren’t for them. This is only leading them to worse results in school—and, increasingly, in their lives after it …

Allison Braden: What kinds of boys are falling furthest behind?