Does Anyone Care About Men’s Struggles? - Richard Reeves

1. 0:00 – 0:20

   Intro

   1. RRRichard V. Reeves0:00

      Nobody predicted that once girls and women caught up with boys and men, that they would keep going, and that we would now have a bigger gender gap in higher education than we did 50 years ago, just the other way around. So we've flipped the inequality now and it's actually wider now than it was when I was born. (laughs) That's an extraordinary fact that no one predicted. (wind blows)

   2. CWChris Williamson0:19

      What do you think

2. 0:20 – 4:20

   Origin of ‘Toxic Masculinity’

   1. CWChris Williamson0:20

      about the term toxic masculinity?

   2. RRRichard V. Reeves0:23

      Uh, I think it's a toxic term. Uh, it escaped from the, the margins of academia in the, in abou- in 2016, not, not coincidentally, um, a- and just became a, a term that was used to apply essentially to any behavior by boys and men that the user disapproved of. Uh, it's rarely defined, uh, without any specificity at all. And so it's a, it in a sense is a completely vacuous term, but it's worse than that because by putting those two words right next to each other, it actually repels a lot of boys and men from a conversation about what it means to be a man, what it, what it means to be particularly mature. I think to talk about mature masculinity and immature masculinity is quite useful. But the idea of toxic, it's like puritan. It's like a, this idea, it's, it's reminds me of the idea of original sin in Christian theologies, right? And, and, and you need these exorcisms, you need someone to come and exorcise it. "If you just weren't so male, you'd be okay." And having raised three boys to adulthood, I gotta tell you, that idea that there's something toxic in them that has to be expunged is not a helpful way to raise them. And so, uh, I, if we could, if we could just consign that particular term back to the obscurity of academic journals, that would be great.

   3. CWChris Williamson1:36

      Where did it come from?

   4. RRRichard V. Reeves1:38

      It was originally, uh, from, uh, cr- from work that was being done with incar- very violent, incarcerated prisoners. Uh, and so there were a couple of academics that were using it to talk about ways in which a very violent man, who was serving long prison sentences, how their views of masculinity had become intertwined with ideas of expressed violence and dominance and so on too. And, uh, and so it was, uh, it was a concept that was being used by a few psychologists. But, but I think it had sort of a, it was mentioned five times a year in academic journals until 2016, and then overnight, it was on the front page of every newspaper. And so it escaped. So, you know, I think it did have some value in the sense that there may be a, a, a group, very small group of men for whom actually their sense of what it means to be male has in some ways become toxic. But it was always this tiny minority of men for whom it was ever useful to apply it. And then suddenly Donald Trump got elected, MeToo, et cetera, and you know, there you go.

   5. CWChris Williamson2:36

      I've heard you say that it's a catchall term to use when one finds the behavior of any man offensive or unpleasant. And that's so correct. It's gone from being something that's an aberration, a complete outlier, to anything which is just slightly objectionable.

   6. RRRichard V. Reeves2:53

      Yeah, that's the problem with it, is that, um, and there are many problems with it, but like any of these terms, if it just expands and expands and expands. So everything, you know, I think I, I've, I, I just did a quick search around and discovered that everything from climate change, to COVID, to war, to... You, y- it is the result of toxic masculinity. And, you know, if there was resistance to getting vaccinated, it was toxic masculinity. If you make a pass, it's toxic masculinity. And, and it was just like being... And actually there was this, this, I talk about this in my book, there was an incident at my kid's high school, uh, that got international attention as an expression of toxic masculinity, which really woke me up to the way this term is being sort of thrown around, uh, and used indiscriminately. Um, but as I say, it's not just, it's not just vacuous, it's actively harmful. And interestingly, a lot of feminists will say that now too. There's a lot of people like Helen Lewis who writes The Atlantic and so on, they're just saying, "Look, this term is not helping us. It's actually pushing men away from a conversation about masculinity, and can we please stop using it?" And so this is not a, you know, a right-wing view at all. It's actually one that a lot of feminists are just looking at the data and saying, "If the goal here is to have a good conversation with boys and men about what it means to be boys and men, this is not the way in. It's a terrible frame for that conversation."

   7. CWChris Williamson4:11

      It seems strange to me, there's something odd happening in the modern world at the moment, because the male default, it looks like, has become sort of the preferential

3. 4:20 – 11:30

   Why Are Women Told to be More Masculine?

   1. CWChris Williamson4:21

      life path that's being pushed onto especially women, that sort of lean in, boss bitch, career woman with the ability to have no-strings-attached casual sex and high financial independence without family. But this is also while typically masculine values of things like aggression or emotional control or conquering or mastery have also become demonized. So it is this very strange situation that's going on at the moment. And I, I've been asking a lot of people about why it is that women are being told to be more, more, more masculine in a way. Why would that be seen as something that's preferential? Why is that something that's, that's pedestalized in a way?

   2. RRRichard V. Reeves5:01

      Well, I think that there, I mean, there are certain virtues or traits or strengths that are maybe traditionally associated with, with one sex or the other. And, you know, to make the boring social science point upfront, these are averages, the distributions overlap. Can we just edit that into every, pretty much every sentence we're gonna use? Because otherwise people think that like that it's, it's a dimorphic distribution, not a, not a binary one. Um, and I do think there are some elements of this that like to the extent the ki- the aspiration, leadership, ambitions on it, it, to the extent that those were previously seen as "masculine," if women are now being encouraged to express those, that's a good thing. I mean, that's what liberation is about. That's what equality is about. Um, without anybody, male or female, being forced into a box, whether that's the old box of...... stay-at-home wives, you know, don't trouble yourself with the labor market love approach. Or, a new box which is this is how you must be, you know, everyone has to be like Jeff Bezos. Instead, we want a world that allows us to flourish in our own way. Um, I will say that, uh, some of those terms you've just used about sort of, you know, female aspiration, um, are important not to kind of misunderstand, because they are against the course of history of lots of women being told the opposite, right? So there is something empowering about women, saying, "You can be everything." And it's also important to note that whilst there is a bit of a panic about fertility in a lot of countries right now, I don't share that panic really. You know, most women are having children, most women do want children. And so if you look beyond the pages of a few elite, you know, media outlets that are catering to, you know, a very small group of highly educated 30-something men and women, most people are having kids. Uh, and so, it, you know, the, the 35-year-old in New York or London or wherever is not necessarily the median person we should be worried about. And so, I don't share this view that, you know, all of a sudden we're surrounded by childless women. That's just not true. There is a rise in childlessness but we shouldn't freak out about it in the way that I see some social conservatives doing.

   3. CWChris Williamson7:06

      Interesting. Yeah, that's an interesting input. I think one of the things that I found very interesting after I spoke to a friend, he said, "My current belief is that male self-improvement sees the person as mutable and the world as immutable, so you need to be the best person possible while accepting the rules and environment you are in. This is in contrast with female self-improvement which sees the person as immutable and the world as mutable, so women are taught to accept yourself and try to change the support structures and society that's around you." I'm not sure that that's true across every situation, but there's something similar where you talk about, "The problems of boys and men are structural in nature rather than individual, but are rarely treated as such. The problem of men is typically framed as a problem of men. It is men who must be fixed one man or boy at a time."

   4. RRRichard V. Reeves7:56

      Yeah, and I, I think it's a really interesting and well-put observation. But, uh, I think in some ways, it, it's important to get a bit of a history here. So, I think right now there is a focus within the women's movement, um, using that term broadly, uh, around structure. So structures of care, you know, childcare, healthcare, you know, workplace flexibility and so on. But it wasn't that long ago, um, that it really was much more individualized. It was about empowerment. You know, remember assertiveness training? I mean, that was a huge thing in the women's movement for a while, it was like, "What women need to do is be more assertive." So we need to send them for more assertiveness training, and if you're not getting a pay rise, it's 'cause you're not being assertive enough. Um, uh, and even today you've got the whole power stance thing, you know, like, which I think has been now completely debunked. (laughs)

   5. CWChris Williamson8:47

      (laughs) It's, yeah, the revocation crisis came and decapitated that.

   6. RRRichard V. Reeves8:49

      (laughs) Uh, it just completely debunked.

   7. CWChris Williamson8:51

      Yeah.

   8. RRRichard V. Reeves8:52

      But, um, but like all things that get headlines and then get debunked, no one knows about the debunking. Um, we can, we could have a long list of things that people still believe.

   9. CWChris Williamson9:02

      Meanwhile, everyone stood, everyone stood like this, yep. (laughs)

   10. RRRichard V. Reeves9:04

       I've been doing it. And then I, and then you, and then you read the debunking, it's like, "God, I just wasted, you know, a year of my life standing like an idiot." But, so I do think, like, this, this balance between is this about you or is it about society is important, and your friend really kind of captures that well. Um, and I do think that the women's movement has moved on towards more structure. But I, I also think that it's true to say, and you just kind of quoted me on this, that as far as men are concerned, pretty much everyone seems to agree that it's about the individual, that men need to fix themselves in a way that, in a way that kind of older style feminism did for women. Um, and, and, and not try and change the world around it. And what that results in is a sort of unholy alliance between the progressive left that says it's toxic masculinity that's to blame for all men's problems, or, or miso- you know, regard misogyny. And a populous right that says it's because men aren't man- manly enough anymore. And so the left essentially says, "You just need to be like your sister and you'll be okay," and the right says, "You need to be like your dad and you'll be okay." And meanwhile us men in this world of more gender equality are trying to figure this out, and neither of those messages are very helpful. So the structure of the education system, which we might get to, is definitely less friendly to males structurally. Uh, the labor market has changed in ways that structurally have had a disproportionate effect on men. You know, the, there's not... De-industrialization, free trade, automation, et cetera, those are gender-neutral changes on their face but they've had a much bigger impact on men, and that's just a, a fact. And then the shift in the economic relationship between men and women has significantly changed family structures in a way that's challenged what it means to be a father. So in various d- ways, those are structural changes, those are the environment, to use your friend's terms. So the environment isn't immutable. In fact, the environment's been... I mean, it's just been like a kaleidoscope around men and women for the last few years, right? It's just been this dizzying cultural change. And so, recognizing that is part of a, I think, uh, is a necessary step to making progress, which is not to absolve individuals of responsibility for what they do with their lives. Certainly not a message I've said to my boys, right? I do want them to be counted and be responsible, but it's crazy to imagine that people are learning, working, and living in some kind of vacuum.

4. 11:30 – 20:24

   The Decline of Men in Education

   1. RRRichard V. Reeves11:30

   2. CWChris Williamson11:30

      What's happened to males in education then?

   3. RRRichard V. Reeves11:34

      Uh, what's happened is that males have fallen rapidly behind females at every stage of the education system, and in every advanced economy in the world. So if you just take the, all the OECD countries, which is a pretty good proxy for decently economically advanced, there are more young women with a college degree than young men. In both the UK and the US it's sort of 60/40 now on college campuses.... and that's happened incredibly quickly. You know, when I was born in 1969, it was about... College campuses were about 70% male, 30% female. By the time I went to college in the late '80s, it was about 50/50, and now it's, um, flipped to 60/40 the other way. And so on pretty much every measure you go and look at, um, uh, girls are ahead of boys. And that's increasingly true in subjects like math and science. So one of the ideas people have in their head is like, "Oh, we always knew girls were better at English and women better at English and those sorts of subjects, but aren't boys much better at math and science?" But the answer is not really anymore. Um, you know, in most places now, the, the, the girls and women have caught up on the... in the... in math and science as well, and in some cases, overtaken, and still have this huge lead in literacy in English. And literacy in English turned out to be more important for what happens to you after that. So there's been this huge overtaking, which by the way, no one predicted. It's really interesting. You go back and you read the stuff from the '70s when we were really pushing for gender equality in education to get more women into college, and especially into more male-dominated subjects, and everybody was pushing forwards parity. Nobody predicted that the lines would keep going. Nobody predicted that once girls and women caught up with boys and men that they would keep going, and that we would now have a bigger gender gap in higher education than we did 50 years ago, just the other way around. So we've flipped the inequality now, and it's actually wider now than it was when I was born (laughs) almost. And certainly in the US it's wide, where I think in the UK it's getting close. So, that's an extraordinary fact that no one predicted and can only be the result of structural factors. If it's happening everywhere and every level, it's not the kid, right? It's not Chris's problem in secondary school in a particular education system, you know, or my son's problem in the US K-12 t-... it's, it's a structural problem with the education system that's just not male-friendly enough.

   4. CWChris Williamson13:54

      Structurally, what's changed then? Because just that more women are going to college and more women are performing better doesn't mean that men should be doing worse.

   5. RRRichard V. Reeves14:05

      No, and it's important to d- distinguish, of course, as you imply there, between relative and absolute, right? So (laughs) if, if one group is doing better than another, then by definition, there... the other group's doing relatively less well. It's like the gender pay gap, right? So, uh, the fact that women are earning a huge ton more than they were 50 years ago, but that doesn't mean they're caught up with men yet. So, uh, absolutely wages have gone up. Um, but in some ca-... in some cases, as the absolute educational performance of boys has flattened or has dropped, and so if you look at white working-class boys in the UK, for example, or Black boys in the US, actually, in some... in many areas, they're actually sliding backwards. Um, but you're right to kind of point to the distinction between relative and absolute. What I think has happened is that the e- education system is just structured in favor of women and girls because it, it rewards certain kinds of behaviors at critical ages, in particular, turning your homework in, being planful, being organized, being committed, sticking on the task, being future-oriented a- about the age of 16, which is when the gender gap in those skills is at its widest. And so what happens is that girls' brains just develop earlier than boys'. It's just a biological fact. And in particular, in the, in the prefrontal cortex, that's the bit of the brain that's the CEO of the brain, it is the bit that turns your homework in, that k-... that, that says... it's the bit of your brain that stops you going to the party and makes you stay in studying chemistry, right? It's the bit of the brain that every parent waits to develop in their sons. Basically, parenting is like a, a 10-year process of being the substitute prefrontal cortex for your boy. Have you got kids? Have you got sons?

   6. CWChris Williamson15:46

      No, not yet.

   7. RRRichard V. Reeves15:48

      All right. Well, t- t- trust me, that's what it is. You're basically just gonna be their prefrontal cortex until it... you know, "When is it coming? When is it coming?" And the answer is much (laughs) later than in girls. And so it's no surprise that girls are doing better. The surprise is that they weren't doing better before. Why weren't they doing better before? Because of sexism. The truth is that girls were always at a structural advantage in education, but we couldn't see it because it was never expressed in things like college going, exam taking, and so on, because they were preparing for a life of being a wife and mother. As s- soon as we took the brain out of women, the structural advantage that women had was exposed. So in a sense, by leveling, apparently leveling the playing field in education, what we revealed was that the women are much better players, uh, and they are, as a result, largely, in my view of, of development. It's also true that we don't have enough male teachers, that the pedagogy is not male-friendly and so on too. There's a whole bunch of things going on. But taken as a whole, you look at the school system, it's impossible to come to any conclusion other than that this suits girls better than it does boys.

   8. CWChris Williamson16:48

      That's fascinating, the fact that this has always been lurking below the surface. This has always been the way that the population within schools has been performing. But because of lack of access, lack of encouragement, gendered discrimination that has restricted women from being a- females from being able to reach their full potential in the education system, it's only when you've been able to open up those doors that the underlying, um, disparity has been able to fully show itself. And I suppose that it's difficult, because if that was the case previously, the assumption now is that the only reason there could be a disparity between boys' and girls' performance is now due to some other type of restriction or sexism. It's by boys being told something, restricted in some way. So using the previous model of what was the solution to the problem-

   9. RRRichard V. Reeves17:45

      Mm-hmm.

   10. CWChris Williamson17:45

       ... for women, and now mapping that onto the issue that men are facing, or boys. So it, it seems like it's more deep-rooted than that. This isn't the sort of thing-

   11. RRRichard V. Reeves17:56

       Yes.

   12. CWChris Williamson17:56

       ... that is e- that is occurring in the culture. This is something which is occurring in biology from a very early age.

   13. RRRichard V. Reeves18:02

       Yeah. It's, uh, it's happening in the system itself. That's, uh, that's a, a great distinction. So I think that the main problem that, that, uh, women and girls faced before was they just had brakes on. They just had barriers. It was, like, didn't

   14. CWChris Williamson18:14

       Yeah.

   15. RRRichard V. Reeves18:14

       ... go to college. Like, my, my dad went to college because, you know, that's, was the way he was gonna hopefully earn more money and be able to raise a family. My, my mum was basically encouraged to leave high school at 17 and said, "Do you wanna be a nurse?" Um, and the idea that she would've gone to college just would, just didn't happen. Um, you know, and so you don't have to g- ... And it's so quick, this change, um, that's taken place. But you're, you're exactly right. And it's hard, I think, for people to get their head around that because it's happened so quickly that the ide- ... That people ... It's tough to get people to s- ... to get their head (laughs) around the idea that boys could be at a structural disadvantage in the education system, which until incredibly recently seemed to be serving boys and men much better than girls and women, like, literally in the blink of an eye. And then there's the mistake that's made along exactly the lines that you've just identified, which is that some people say, "Oh, there must be discrimination against boys in education then." And you get books like The War Against Boys, The War on Men, et cetera, which is that there is intentional discrimination against boys. And there's almost no evidence, no evidence of that. Like, no one is saying to, but no one said to my boys when they were going through high school, "Oh, don't you worry about college. Just find yourself a nice wife and settle down." No one was saying that. They were saying, "For God's sake, turn your homework in so that you stand a chance of going to college, you idiot." So it isn't discrimination, but it, it is instead the mixture of the chrono- ... The, the difference between the chronological age and developmental age of the average boy and girl, especially in adolescence, has been revealed by, by the women's movement. And also, progressively, teaching as a profession has become more and more female over time. And so there are fewer and fewer male teachers in schools, and that does seem to affect male performance for reasons that are complex and so on too. And there's been a bit of a shift away from the styles of learning that seem a bit more boy-friendly and male-friendly, like vocational education, for example, which does seem to suit, on average, overlapping distributions, seem to suit males, uh, more than females and so for a- ... Uh, so there's been a series of trends in education that have, that have, I think, exacerbated this underlying structural problem, which is a 16-year-old girl is older than a 16-year-old boy in terms of her developmental, uh, abilities.

5. 20:24 – 27:27

   Gap Between Male & Female Teachers

   1. RRRichard V. Reeves20:24

   2. CWChris Williamson20:25

      Just how big is the ... Did I hear you say that it was 2% of kindergarten teachers in America are male? It's an insanely small proportion.

   3. RRRichard V. Reeves20:38

      Yes. It's about, it's about 2%. Yeah. Um, and it's not going up either. Uh, it's, uh, similar in the UK. Um, these numbers actually do map pretty well across US and UK. Uh, one in 10, um, uh, elementary school teachers or primary school teachers are male. And in, in, uh ... And it, you know, one of my, one of my sons actually works in early years education, so I get this, you know, a lot of this, you know, through him. And he's one of the very few males, of course, working in that space. Uh, and so when you dig into the numbers, yeah, it's about 2%, which is very low number. And to put it in perspective, as a share of the profession, there are twice as many or even three times as many women flying US military planes as there are men teaching kindergarten and pre-K classes. So we have about three times as m- ... So, so (laughs) three times as ... It's about 7%. 7% of US military pilots now are women. Now, I'm happy to have a conversation about whether that's too low. You know, what should that number be? And, uh, uh, what's actually happening, of course, is that the ... All, most of the air forces are doing this. The US have. They're redesigning their cockpits of planes so that they're not designed anymore around a presumed kind of ma- male, uh, height, which will allow shorter men to be pilots too.

   4. CWChris Williamson21:53

      (laughs) .

   5. RRRichard V. Reeves21:53

      Um, but it also, most importantly, allow more women. So they're actively recruiting, they're changing the design of fighter planes to get more women. Great. What's happening to get more men into early education? Answer: nothing. And so there is, isn't even seen as a problem to be addressed, let alone one that we're proffering solutions for. And so it's one of the reasons I'm really emphasizing this point.

   6. CWChris Williamson22:17

      Why would that matter? Why would it matter to have male teachers in schools?

   7. RRRichard V. Reeves22:23

      So there's two big reasons. One is because the evidence suggests that when there are male teachers in schools, especially in certain subjects like English, but even in early years, the boys seem to do a bit better, uh, in just the same way that girls seem to do a bit better when there are female teachers, uh, especially when it's in subjects that go against the sort of stereotypical grain. So girls do especially well when they have female science teachers, but boys do especially well when they have male English teachers. Um, uh, and in the early years, there's some evidence that a bigger mix will be good for boys in the long run. As to why, we don't really know. There's a whole series of theories. Could be role models. It could be that male teachers have a, a more intuitive understanding of male behavior. So we do know, for example, that male teachers, and this is true at all levels, they're less likely to see a boy's behavior as problematic, uh, kind of compared to a female teacher. They're more likely to understand it for, for what it is perhaps. This is intuitive. We don't know. But the other reason I think is that if we're trying to change gender stereotypes, you know, there's a nice line from the women's movement is, wh- which is you have to see it to be it. Well, I gotta tell you, if boys don't see any men in any of those roles, then it's not surprising that it's tough to get men to think about changing their lives so that (laughs) they fill more of those roles. Gloria Steinem said that the idea we get about what it means to be male and female comes in our earliest years. And so you'd think in some ways that feminists should be leading the charge for more men in those professions 'cause it helps to break down, reduce the power of gender stereotypes. I'm not suggesting for a moment we're gonna get to 50%, uh-... early years teachers are male any more than we're gonna get to 50% fighter pilots are female. There are some differences that are not going to disappear. Um, not everything we see in the labor market is the result of socialization, but 2% is definitely fewer than the number of men who both could and would be willing to do those kinds of jobs.

   8. CWChris Williamson24:24

      There was a reply to an article, I think you wrote in the Atlantic, by Kathryn Paige Harden. Paige has been on the show before.

   9. RRRichard V. Reeves24:31

      Mm-hmm.

   10. CWChris Williamson24:31

       And she linked to a study, Sex Differences in the Developmental Trajectories of Impulse Control and Sensation Seeking From Early Adolescence to Early Adulthood. They really know how to name these journal-

   11. RRRichard V. Reeves24:42

       Yeah.

   12. CWChris Williamson24:43

       ... publications.

   13. RRRichard V. Reeves24:43

       They re- they really do. (laughs)

   14. CWChris Williamson24:45

       Riveting, riveting stuff. Uh, but I'll, uh, the graph will be up on the screen and basically it shows that the age that boys or men have to be before they have the same average level of impulse control as a 10 to 11-year-old girl is age 24 to 25.

   15. RRRichard V. Reeves25:05

       Yeah. I know-

   16. CWChris Williamson25:06

       That-

   17. RRRichard V. Reeves25:06

       ... it's like-

   18. CWChris Williamson25:06

       It does dip. It, it does-

   19. RRRichard V. Reeves25:07

       Everyone's, "Tell me, tell me."

   20. CWChris Williamson25:09

       It does dip a little bit during puberty-

   21. RRRichard V. Reeves25:11

       For girls.

   22. CWChris Williamson25:11

       ... to, to give it its due.

   23. RRRichard V. Reeves25:12

       For, for girls as well.

   24. CWChris Williamson25:13

       Yes.

   25. RRRichard V. Reeves25:13

       Yeah. It does. Um, yeah, it's interesting. Of course, you know, again, all the caveats about means and so on too, um, that these are, these are averages. Um, but for sure there's a huge difference in the development of, of impulse control, and that's really this, this concern a- about this prefrontal cortex. So, the way that psychologists talk about impulse control on the other side... It's in the same paper actually, so if we link to the paper, the other side of it is sensation seeking. So you've got impulse control and sensation seeking. And the way to think about that is, uh, uh, and this is how psychologists and those talk about it, it's like the ga- it's like the gas or the, the, the accelerator and the brake, right? Um, uh, and during adolescence you get a whole lot more accelerator and a bit not enough brake, and so that's when you do the crazy stuff as imba- and then gradually the two start to balance out a bit more. But two things. One is the gap is much, much bigger, as that chart suggests, if you add sensation seeking to it too, there's just this huge gap, um, uh, for boys and for girls. So it's bigger in adolescence for both, much bigger for boys than girls, this difference. Boys are just all, they're just all, all go, very little brake for a few years, like, "Tell me something." Uh, again, this falls into the category of, you know, tell my mum something she didn't know, right? She didn't need to read the Journal of Adolescence, whatever it is. Um, uh, but also the, the impulse control development does come much later for boys as that chart shows, uh, on average. And that's the kind of skill that does allow you, as I said, to study chemistry rather than go out. It's the kind of thing that allows you to just, you know, work on your GPA, et cetera, or your, uh, your practice for your exams at 16 or and so on. And so it's just that, you know, those, they're sometimes called soft skills or non-cognitive skills or whatever you want to call them. That's where the gap is. It's really important. There's some people who misunderstand my argument here. In terms of smarts, there's not that much difference in the development between boys and girls, but what really counts is actually it is those skills, it is organization, impulse control, and so on too. And that, that paper that Kath- uh, Kathryn Paige Harden did, uh, with Elizabeth Shulman and Larry Steinberg, had a, quite a big influence on me.

   26. CWChris Williamson27:26

       Something that I've

6. 27:27 – 32:14

   Solutions for the Education Imbalance

   1. CWChris Williamson27:27

      just considered there, I think that, on average, girls are more conscientious than boys, females are more than men. Now, that is something that-

   2. RRRichard V. Reeves27:37

      Yeah.

   3. CWChris Williamson27:37

      ... that you can't, that isn't going to change no matter what you do with regards to the time that people begin school, any structural issues that you've got going on in there. That is a gendered skew like men tend to be stronger than women. But what you can look at doing is, where are the areas where we can begin to close this gap? What are the sort of tools that we can use? What are the elements of this that are more mutable rather than immutable? So, given the current nightmare of trying to improve men's, males' successes in school whilst not rolling back the progress that we've made for girls, what's a solution?

   4. RRRichard V. Reeves28:18

      Well, one headline solution is, is th- the headline of the Atlantic article you just referred to that, um, Kathryn Paige Harden responded to is to start boys in school a year later than girls. Um, so in the US it's kinda referred to as redshirting, it's a term borrowed, borrowed from athletics. Um, uh, because of this developmental gap. Uh, you know, age is a very crude proxy for development, uh, and it turns out that it's, that it's the difference for boys and girls. And so my proposal is that, you know, whatev- whatever the school starting age is, that it should be staggered. And so the boys should be going in chronologically a year older than girls. And I think that that will really start to pay dividends for the boys in adolescence, because they will have developed a bit more of a prefrontal cortex, a bit more impulse control, a little bit, uh, time to mature a little bit more. And so actually it will create more of a level playing field, uh, developmentally. Um, uh, and so that's one, that's one proposal. We've already touched on the need to get many more male teachers, especially in early years, uh, and English, and the, the need to do much more vocational training. But, but I, I, I think all, what those, all of those reforms share is the characteristic of structural reforms. The other thing I will say is there is some quite good evidence that, that there are programs that can help to develop those sorts of skills. It's not like the chart that we just showed, that level of impulse control is somehow... It's not fixed. It is true that on average it's gonna be harder for boys to develop that skill. They, they don't h- it's not as innately strong, impulse control, in boys, and men actually, as it is in girls and women. But we can learn. And, you know, we can learn to be more confident and assertive maybe, if you like that, but we can also learn impulse control. And there's a very good study that just came out that looked in, looked at five-year-olds, and it was specifically targeted on, uh, you know, disadvantaged boys, teaching them these skills, these, exactly the skills we just talked about. And it paid-... it paid dividends in terms of lifelong learning. There are programs like Boys, um, Boys to Men in Chicago, which works predominantly w- with black k- boys. I'm sure you know about it t- and it's all about these skills. It's not math, it's how to keep your act together, how to be in the world, how to organize yourself, and how to control some of your impulses, about behavior control too. That's just harder for boys. And so there are also programs that we could invest much more and that would be specifically targeted at boys.

   5. CWChris Williamson30:43

      So that would be a gendered curriculum almost-

   6. RRRichard V. Reeves30:48

      Yeah.

   7. CWChris Williamson30:49

      ... in, in certain elements.

   8. RRRichard V. Reeves30:50

      It would be a gender-sensitive thing, yeah. I mean, there's an argument for saying, look, y- you, some of these you might just say, "Well, we'll give it to the kids that most need it," (laughs) and it will turn out to be mostly boys, uh, depending on the nature of the program. But not, not entirely. Um, but that's okay, we have programs that do the opposite. Um, and it may also be that there are bits of the curriculum, um, bits of the pedagogy, and I know that you've, you've, you've talked to people like, uh, have you had Louise Perion?

   9. CWChris Williamson31:16

      Yes.

   10. RRRichard V. Reeves31:17

       Yeah, um, a- and I think this whole area of sex and the need for porn education in schools, um, is actually one where I think I'd make quite a strong argument for separating the sexes, um, when you're doing that bit of the curriculum. I think that's a bit of sex ed or I think porn ed, is what we would call it, is actually gonna, that's gonna go much better if you're gonna do that just with the boys because-

   11. CWChris Williamson31:41

       Yes.

   12. RRRichard V. Reeves31:41

       ... the relationship of boys and men to pornography is very different to the relationship of women and girls. And that's a distribution, by the way, that doesn't overlap very much, right? So some of the distributions we're talking about, they're pretty like conscientiousness, you're right, but the distributions overlap quite a lot there, right? This one doesn't overlap very much. Um, it's not that it doesn't overlap at all, but-

   13. CWChris Williamson32:03

       Yeah.

   14. RRRichard V. Reeves32:03

       ... it's, it's a very bimodal distribution when it comes to porn use. And, and sex generally is one of the areas where we see quite a... And I talk a bit about this in the book, a big difference between, between men and women and boys and

7. 32:14 – 46:36

   Why are Men leaving the Labour Market?

   1. RRRichard V. Reeves32:14

      girls.

   2. CWChris Williamson32:15

      What has been the change in the labor market then?

   3. RRRichard V. Reeves32:19

      The big change over the last, uh, 40, 50 years has been, and this won't, this, you know, not w- won't be a, uh, breaking news to you or to anybody listening probably, has been a big shift away from heavy industry manufacturing. Um, that's a result of two, uh, uh, particularly in advanced economies, and that's the result of two big forces. One is more competition from overseas, you know, the introd- the introduction of China into the World Trade Organization was a big deal, uh, in terms of what it did to manufacturing jobs in the West, um, just because of price competition. Uh, s- straightforwardly, it's not, not that I... To be clear, it's not that I'm arguing against that, I'm talking about what the consequences of it were. Uh, and the other is automation. Some of these, some of the roles, uh, that would perhaps have been traditionally performed by men, factory work, et cetera, have been automated. My dad's first job out of, out of, uh, you know, college, he actually got in the Ford Graduate Trainee Scheme and was... But he had to do some time on the floor. And I tell you what, the Ford factories look a lot different today than they did in the '60s and they needed a lot fewer men in there putting the doors on and stuff. It's basically being done by robots now. And so those, those trends have particularly affected male employment and the result has been a drop in male labor force participation and a stagnation in male wages. In, uh, the first true in every, uh, OECD country and the second true in most OECD countries. In the US actually male, male wages have gone backwards. So most men in the US actually earn less today than most men did in '79. That's not quite as sharp in most other countries. Uh, in most other countries, it's just been very slow wage growth for men, especially in the bottom half of the distribution. At the top, men have seen wage growth s- as a result. So this is all against the backdrop of rising economic inequality generally.

   4. CWChris Williamson34:00

      So automation, globalization has meant that the typical brawn-based economy that we used to have has now been replaced with a more brain-based economy. W- what's happened that's caused men to not adapt to this? I mean, women were not working at all. They were in the house, and then they just got dumped into the labor force and they seemed to adapt. They weren't doing washing machines and cleaning up th- house tasks around the domestic area. W- what's caused men to not be quite so malleable given that they were already in the workforce?

   5. RRRichard V. Reeves34:35

      Well, I think there's a few things. One is that for a lot of the women, of course, a lot of it seemed like pretty much all upside in terms of, like, the economics of it. So for, for women it was getting into the labor market and earning, earning money for themselves. Uh, I think it was important even in my own life, you know, my mom worked part-time. She was an industrial nurse, uh, and so on. But actually, even though she wasn't the main breadwinner, it was important to her to have some sort of, you know, uh, eco- econo- a degree of economic independence. And then you just multiply that by a factor of 100 for the next generation, which is, no, no, no, you're going to be economically independent. And why shouldn't we have better wages? Why shouldn't we earn more? Why shouldn't... That's, those are incentives that should apply to everybody. And it has been striking, just the movement of women into p- higher end male-dominated occupations, uh, in the professions especially, much less so in lower end. So if you look at things like construction, for example, that remains very male, uh, dominated. Um, there are not many women on construction sites but there are a lot of women in law offices, um, and hospitals and so on too. And so, so it's important because that tells you some of the incentives here are just about economic upward mobility for women, which is like, don't particularly want to be a laborer, but I'd very much like to be a lawyer, um, uh, because of just the obviously the huge rewards you get from that. But there has been this really interesting shift in women's identity and the, and the way that women can take on a lot of these roles. And including, like, if you do become a, you know, firewoman or a construction worker, people are going to celebrate that. Very few people are going to think there's something wrong with you anymore if you become a woman engineer or a woman in construction. Whereas for men, the identity cost, this is the, you know, R- Rachel Kranton and George Akerlof had a article in the year 2000 called Identity Economics and what it basically said was when people make apparently just an economic decision, they're also making an identity decision.... what kind of person am I? What does this decision say about me? What does it signal about my identity? And up until this point, many of the areas of strong growth have remained very female in orientation, very, very gender segregated. And men have not yet, by and large, been able to adjust to a world in which you're gonna have a better chance of making a good living as a nurse or some kind of living as a social care assistant than you are as, say, a factory worker or a laborer. Um, and, and so that's, uh, one of the big parts of my argument is that they really need a kind of cultural transformation around a lot of those jobs so they do become more accessible to men and they don't seem as female. Because the, the demasculinization, if I can put it that way, of some of those other professions I just talked about didn't just happen by itself. It happened as a result of concerted, intentional policy effort, massive campaigning on the part of lots of well-funded organizations to really kind of batter the doors down on behalf of women. But there's no equivalent on the other side. We haven't really tried yet to help men make that transition, which means that for a lot of men, especially working class men, that's a pretty tough transition for a lot of them to make. They don't see them as male jobs. So you've got the male jobs disappearing, the female jobs rising, and men stuck between the two. And the worst thing that can happen is for politicians to come up, come along and promise that they can bring back those old male jobs, 'cause a lot of men want to hear that. But that's an incredibly dangerous message, because we can't bring those male jobs back, and all you're doing is selling a dream, selling a nostalgic dream rather than helping men adjust to the world as it is rather than the world as it used to be. And I think a lot of men are just stuck in the vice between those two right now.

   6. CWChris Williamson38:08

      That's fascinating, the fact that politicians are running on a LARP basically. There's no way that this is gonna hap- What are you gonna do? Are you gonna roll back automation? Is everyone gonna start paying more for their-

   7. RRRichard V. Reeves38:18

      No.

   8. CWChris Williamson38:19

      No one's gonna do that. You want cost of living to go up even more than it already is? And then on the flip side, I, I, I agree that, you know, talking about getting more women and girls into STEM fields and getting them to do more, uh, of those sorts of subjects in school, in college, but there hasn't been the equivalent push for men to become carers or nurses or to work in HR or to work as teachers. And I imagine that if you were ... This isn't just from a, "We need to find a place for men in the workforce." This is, how much better could the service be-

   9. RRRichard V. Reeves38:54

      Mm.

   10. CWChris Williamson38:54

       ... for the users of that service? If you are a guy that needs care because you have some disability or perhaps you're elderly, I would imagine it is significantly better for you to be looked after in some of your more intimate moments by a male than by a female, and there are no males around. And that, to me-

   11. RRRichard V. Reeves39:16

       Exactly.

   12. CWChris Williamson39:16

       I- i- is it a typically masculine job? Not culturally, but I mean, you've had medics on the battlefield for a very long time. You've had the doctors. This is you helping your fellow man to r- retain some of his dignity. This doesn't feel like a step down. I don't think it would be too far of a jump culturally to be able to make this pedestalized again and something that's praised and applauded for men to go into, and it would be great for the users of it, but it hasn't been.

   13. RRRichard V. Reeves39:45

       Correct. Uh, and, and of course, you know, historically, I mean, it was Florence Nightingale that turned nursing into a female profession. She, she said, she actually ... Uh, men were, men were banned. Men were not allowed to be nurses after Florence Nightingale got her way, uh, 'cause she just said, "They are not equipped for it. They can't do it." And so she feminized the nursing profession. She also professionalized it, to be fair to her. Um, but yeah, you're exactly right. That's, that's the ... The dilemma is that we haven't really done very much to change these, these roles. And I'm glad you mentioned the point about, about users, because when I s- uh, I know I talk about this, the need to get them into what I call HEAL professions, health, education, administration, and literacy. So there's the acronym to match STEM, to mirror STEM, right? You, you have to have an acronym. You know that. Everyone knows that. Uh, so I mean the US, you know, in the US especially. Um, and so, um, well, we actually see fewer men in HEAL, declining numbers of men in psychology, social work, et cetera, tiny increases in nursing. Um, and right now, uh, only about 15% of care workers are male. Uh, David Goodhart had a very good piece actually in, uh, I think in the London Times about this, where there's this discussion about immigration, how we're gonna ... We need more immigrants to fill these care roles. And his point, and he's much more skeptical about immigration than I am, but his point was, "Well, how about trying to get more men to do these jobs?" Uh, and that again from a s- from a workforce f- flas- point of view. But if I was a- making this argument again, I'd lead with the argument you just made, which is the users of the services, right? If you're a guy in a care home and you go- you need to go to the bathroom and you need help or you need r- ... Or even if you're, let's say you're a guy struggling with porn addiction.

   14. CWChris Williamson41:30

       Yup.

   15. RRRichard V. Reeves41:30

       Uh ...

   16. CWChris Williamson41:30

       I was literally about to say therapy. We're trying to get more men-

   17. RRRichard V. Reeves41:33

       Therapy.

   18. CWChris Williamson41:34

       ... into therapy to have conversations. The, what is it? 2% of men, it's like a 10, 10X difference between the number of men in therapy and women in therapy. Y- you get to fix the labor force issue. You get to give men jobs. You get to make the users of that service have a better experience, because the people they're speaking to, they can resonate more with. And downstream from that, those people are more well balanced, which means that they become better members of society, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, all the way down.

   19. RRRichard V. Reeves42:00

       Exactly. And when you, when you see such strong set of arguments for something, then I think it's really hard not to come to the conclusion that we shouldn't do stuff about that, that we shouldn't have, like, concerted efforts. And I, you know, I, we, I want male-only scholarships to encourage men into those sorts of professions

   20. CWChris Williamson42:20

       Mm-hmm.

   21. RRRichard V. Reeves42:20

       I want subsidies to employers that hire more men into those roles. I want diversity. All the things we've done to get women into STEM-... we should be doing the same. Right now, it's quite hard even to get past the idea people... "Well, only men are gonna benefit from this scholarship?" And like, "Yeah, you, you betcha because that's what we need." For all the reasons you've just said, if we agree that that's important. So we realize, as a society, we needed to do more to help women break some of these barriers down, so we threw money and political capital and institutional power at that problem, and it's been great. We need to do exactly the same and with exactly the same, uh, level of intention and force to try and help men get into these jobs. Um, and there's ways you can describe these jobs that are actually just much more appealing to men, you know, without indulging in, you know, cr- simplistic stereotypes. There are lots of aspects of these jobs that actually, actually are quite male, you know, quite physical in many cases, as you talked about dignity, and so on too. And so w- without leaning too hard into stereotypes, you can definitely describe these jobs in ways that are more appealing to men than we currently do.

   22. CWChris Williamson43:21

       What about when it comes to family life? What's happening with men as fathers and husbands and stuff?

   23. RRRichard V. Reeves43:29

       In some ways, I think this is the deepest problem of all, the biggest challenge. And it may run beneath some of the others or overlap or, with some of the others too, which is the, the primary goal of the women's movement second wave, I guess, I'm not very good at my waves, but, um, the, certainly the kind of Steinem kind of wave was economic independence, was, you know, postwar especially was to say women needed to become economically independent, needed to break the chain of dependency that women had on men, that would make marriage a choice rather than economic necessity and rebalance power relationships. And so it was all about material stuff. Uh, obviously since then feminism's become much more cultural and ideological. But, um, that has been secured to a very large extent in two ways. One, by massively increased employment and earnings for women, and two, by the expansion of the welfare state, especially to help mothers with children. So those two things have basically broken the chain of dependency that women used to have with men in the blink of an eye, almost in my lifetime. I mean, just incredibly short period of time. You know, 10,000 years of some kind of patriarchy, 50 years to do a huge amount of demolition of, of that institution. Amazing. I mean, just extraordinary revolution that we've seen. So they were right. Feminists were right. They've been largely successful. The big question is, what does that mean for Dad? If the previous role for dad was breadwinner largely, he did other things as well, but it was kind of provider, and that was the relationship he had, so, uh, th- with the, with the woman, and then they had kids together. What if she's now a provider, doesn't need him as a provider, but she's also still the main carer? The risk is that dad's become redundant. They're just not needed anymore. Uh, and I think that's the world we're living in now, especially for unmarried fathers, especially for those who are out of work or who are struggling in the labor market. Um, actually, they basically get benched. Um, like, "Who needs them anymore?" Um, because we're, we're in this cultural lag moment now whereas actually fathers matter hugely as fathers. But there's a, uh, a real problem of, um, fatherlessness, um, in many parts of, uh, the Western world now, particularly in less affluent areas, working class. And it is, I think it's because of this profound shock that has, that has, you know, hollowed out the basis for the traditional family, which was economic dependency. Uh, and great, except now what? (laughs) Uh, so I think we have a responsibility to deal with some of the consequences of even very positive social changes. And to be clear, I think we agree that the, the w- the women's movement has been by and large an incredibly positive change, but it has had a bunch of side effects. And one of them has been to ask real questions about the role of fathers and the role of men. And unless we, you know, re-pedestalize, to borrow some language from you, fatherhood as an institution in and of itself, I think a lot of men are gonna feel like they're failing.

8. 46:36 – 58:48

   Expanding the Role of Fatherhood

   1. RRRichard V. Reeves46:36

   2. CWChris Williamson46:37

      Well, think about how strange it is that men working less has made them worse fathers. Men being in the workforce less and potentially spending more time in the home has somehow made them into less of the father figure that they wanted to be.

   3. RRRichard V. Reeves46:57

      Yeah. That's because we haven't expanded the role of fathers enough into that more direct kind of caring role. Um, and so it is this kind of sense of, well, w- you know, one or the other. And now, and now I say again from personal experience, like, just comparing my father with my brother. So my, my dad lost his job in the recession of the '80s, who obviously worked in manufacturing. And he got up every morning and put his tie on and had breakfast with us. And I asked him, "Why are you wearing a tie?" He said, "Because I have to get another job." And he'd go and sit in his resume. So, and his way of signaling to himself he was still working. The idea that he would sort of take some time out of the labor market while my mum, you know, took the economic load was unthinkable at the time. Um, whereas my brother, he's a doctor, and, um, you know, uh, he's taken time, he's taken his parental leave when his kids are in adolescence 'cause their mum is also a doctor. Uh, and so they have that kind of flexibility, right? Doctor/doctor is a very, very different world. Um, and he is able to step into that role much more easily, um, than in the past. But by and large, that's not happening because all of us have failed to update our models of fatherhood for a world of gender equality and f- and failed to honor and valorize the role of fathers as fathers, period. Dads matter, period. Um, not just as breadwinners, not just as... but period. And in some ways, if you're not a breadwinner, you matter even more perhaps (laughs) to your kids' lives 'cause you're gonna be more involved in their care and so on too. Uh, and so-

   4. CWChris Williamson48:23

      Well, that's the, that's the, um-... how would you say? Counterintuitive example that I just thought of there, that when you think about what a father is, at least w- a little bit more archaic, sort of most of the 1900s, it's the one that's setting the rules, perhaps the taskmaster, the one that goes to work and comes home. They are, uh, creating a role model that's hard work and conscientiousness and discipline and motivation and all this sort of stuff. Okay. Uh, assessing my own assumptions around that particular stereotype, which part of that involves fathering? Not much of-

   5. RRRichard V. Reeves48:59

      Yeah.

   6. CWChris Williamson48:59

      ... that actually has anything to do with you being a father. It's to do with your economic utility, how you contribute to the family, and some byproduct of it. What are the values of someone that would be a good economic utility creator? They would be disciplined, they would be a disciplinarian-

   7. RRRichard V. Reeves49:18

      Yes.

   8. CWChris Williamson49:18

      ... they would be aspirational, so on and so forth. Okay, well, what does it mean? Uh, adding-

   9. RRRichard V. Reeves49:23

      Mm-hmm.

   10. CWChris Williamson49:23

       ... another element in that I'd love to get your thoughts on. I spoke to Roy, Roy Baumeister, uh, not long ago.

   11. RRRichard V. Reeves49:29

       Mm-hmm.

   12. CWChris Williamson49:29

       And Roy was talking about the fact that there seems to be a bit of a question about why men were needed other than as sperm donors ancestrally. And after a long, uh, diatribe about what it's not, it's not this, it's not that, it's not the other, he said it's a hired gun problem. He said that men, it seemed, mostly were there to protect. They were there to enforce norms within the group. They were also there as security from either other tribes or from animals or from elements, to go out and do things. It seems like even the big game hunting that men went to go and do netted an energy loss. So, the-

   13. RRRichard V. Reeves50:08

       Mm-hmm.

   14. CWChris Williamson50:09

       ... lack of likelihood of them bringing it down, the amount of times that someone got injured or killed and the amount of energy that you got back if you did finally take down the woolly mammoth or whatever, was almost always a negative. However, it was great mate signaling. So, it was fantastic as a peacock's tail that, "Look at how competent I am that I've brought this down." But as, uh, women could have absolutely survived on berries and nuts and things they pulled out of the ground. So, my question as he went through all of this was, well, okay, well, what is the role of men? If that's the case, if we didn't need them to go and hunt and women, they do alloparenting. You've got the grandmother hypothesis now for why-

   15. RRRichard V. Reeves50:41

       Mm-hmm.

   16. CWChris Williamson50:42

       ... menopause occurs, so it seems like women stick about and they do this sort of shared parenting thing. Unbelievably rare, even in, uh, other primates. Alloparenting, very, very rare. It's like the mother takes care of her child. Not in humans. It's the mother and the grandmother and some of the aunties and sisters and maybe a friend. That's, and, and it's this big, big group. Okay, so what's the use of men? I wonder whether we are seeing again, in the same way that women or females having equal access to education unearthed some of the underlying, um, disparities within the system. I'm wondering whether the same thing has occurred within the family, that with women no longer needing men around-

   17. RRRichard V. Reeves51:27

       Mm-hmm.

   18. CWChris Williamson51:27

       ... that the surplusness of men within the family has now finally been revealed.

   19. RRRichard V. Reeves51:37

       So interesting. I mean, I love, uh, I love Roy's stuff. I, uh, cite him quite a bit. Um, but I've been, um, I've been quite influenced by in, uh, by the work of, uh, Sarah Hrdy and Anna Machin. Um, Anna Machin has a book that, uh, I think you'd be very interested in. It's called The Life of Dad. She's an Oxford evolutionary psychologist, um, and talks about how fatherhood devel- developed precisely for the, the reasons that you just hinted at, which is the increased calorific requirements of raising kids. 'Cause our brains grew, we needed a lot more calories. It went to, I, I botched the number, but, you know, suddenly it was 13 million calories or whatever to raise a kid. Um, and actually, that was impossible. Her view was that it was impossible for moms to provide that on their own. And so that's why you, that's when fatherhood became a social institution, like 10,000 years ago when, 'cause the dad, if the dad wanted his kids to survive, they needed more calories than mom could provide. And so he had to get, he had to create some surplus calories for the kid. And that's the creation of fatherhood in her view, which sounds like it's a different view to the one that, uh, Roy had, which is actually, she could have done fine and so it was just basically, it was like a, a, a sport, uh, uh, right? Uh-

   20. CWChris Williamson52:58

       The big game hunting, big game hunting was the sport and the other element was the bodyguard hypothesis.

   21. RRRichard V. Reeves53:04

       Okay, so he could protect you. So, it was a way he could show that he could protect, so it wasn't about calories. Okay, so it's more about the protector than the provider side of it. Interesting.

   22. CWChris Williamson53:10

       Seems like that.

   23. RRRichard V. Reeves53:11

       Yeah, well, that's very interesting and incredibly depressing if true. Um-

   24. CWChris Williamson53:15

       Dude, I think about the, think about the fact that everything that we've spoken about so far, the change in education has unearthed some disparity that very much pulls the floor out from under where men thought their position was in society.

   25. RRRichard V. Reeves53:31

       Mm-hmm.

   26. CWChris Williamson53:31

       And this family thing, I'm, I'm, it's the first time I've thought about it. I didn't even think about it while I was reading the book and as I'm trying to join these dots now, I, I, I'm gonna have to email Roy about it and see what he thinks. But it's, I'm f- dude, it feels like a vacuum. It feels like-

   27. RRRichard V. Reeves53:46

       Yeah.

   28. CWChris Williamson53:46

       ... a hole being pulled out.

   29. RRRichard V. Reeves53:47

       You sh- you should have Anna on as well, I think, um, because I've got a useful exchange, definitely. I mean, it's hard, it's hard for me ge- to believe, just, you know, what little I know from Joe Henrich's work and able to, and, and, you know, and Catherine Page Harden's work and, uh, Anna's work and so on too, that it's, that it can all be, that it's all protector. Uh-

   30. CWChris Williamson54:07

       Oh, no. I, I'm pretty sure that's-
9. 58:48 – 1:04:48

   The ‘Checked-out’ Men

   1. RRRichard V. Reeves58:48

   2. CWChris Williamson58:48

      An interesting consideration here that I learned about from Diana Fleischman's paper, Uncanny Vulvas, which is much more interesting-

   3. RRRichard V. Reeves59:00

      Not a-

   4. CWChris Williamson59:01

      ... when it comes to paper titles.

   5. RRRichard V. Reeves59:03

      Not, not a reference I'm, uh, that has crossed my desk at the Brookings Institution, but you're right, it's a better, it's a better title-

   6. CWChris Williamson59:07

      Not reading the right things, Richard. You're not reading the right things.

   7. RRRichard V. Reeves59:10

      (laughs)

   8. CWChris Williamson59:10

      And she makes a hypothesis that men who utilize porn and are not going out to seek partners are getting simulacrum fitness cues that they are being successful from using porn.

   9. RRRichard V. Reeves59:29

      Mm.

   10. CWChris Williamson59:29

       And you could roll that, uh, thought process forward for, well, what are computer games?

   11. RRRichard V. Reeves59:37

       Mm.

   12. CWChris Williamson59:37

       What's a, what's a computer game? Well, that's progress over time. That's conscientiousness. It's a band of brothers. You've got community, you've got belonging, you've got a sense of all of this stuff. Okay, so if you are able to provide proxy fitness cues that manage to keep men going and you can basically sedate them out of being the roving band of miscreants causing trouble-

   13. RRRichard V. Reeves1:00:00

       Yeah.

   14. CWChris Williamson1:00:00

       ... and pushing over granny that we were concerned about originally. But now you've got something which is l- less tumultuous, but even more sort of nihilistic-

   15. RRRichard V. Reeves1:00:12

       Mm-hmm.

   16. CWChris Williamson1:00:13

       ... which is this-

   17. RRRichard V. Reeves1:00:13

       Yeah.

   18. CWChris Williamson1:00:14

       ... group of sedated, checked out men.

   19. RRRichard V. Reeves1:00:17

       The checked out thing.

   20. CWChris Williamson1:00:18

       Yeah.

   21. RRRichard V. Reeves1:00:18

       Yeah. The checked out rather than acting out. Yeah, I mean, I, I think that if we pursue this thought a bit further...... um, the argument very often is made that the internet, um, particularly video games, uh, the technology in the form of video games especially, and pornography, um, uh, have been, you know, there's this h- horrible thing, right? And I know Jonathan Haidt very well and worked with him, and I think there are a lot of, a lot of issues there. But you could flip it on its head and say given what we've seen about the declining marginal utility of males, actually those things came along just in time to save us. And that even if it's not optimal, and we can get into some of the claims that you've just made, some of which I- I'm more skeptical about than you are, I think, um, it's certainly better than the alternative. Right? Uh, it's certainly-

   22. CWChris Williamson1:01:09

       That's very interesting.

   23. RRRichard V. Reeves1:01:11

       ... it's ... So, so were we, were we a- ... Are we actually being saved by games and porn r- r- now? We're so focused on the problems that there might be with those that we're like, "Well, what's the counterfactual?" Imagine, imagine that we'd had none of those technological changes at all, right? There were no video games for men to play, there was no porn for men to look at, and they were increasingly out of work and dislocated, et cetera. Uh, maybe some of the things that conservatives wondered about would have been a bit more true. Maybe we wouldn't have seen this incredible decline in crime that has accompanied ... No, no one ... again, nobody predicted that the falling employment of prime age men and the growing detachment of men from their families, et cetera, would be accompanied by historic decline in crime. No one predicted that. Everybody would have predicted the opposite of that. And so I think that's important. So why ... and maybe you've got this, this escape valve in a way. Now, how bad are those problems? (sighs) I- I'm not convinced that they're that bad, actually. I looked at the video gaming evidence and I just, like, uh, I don't ... I don't think there's much going on there. I looked at the evidence on porn. I was gonna have a whole chapter on sex. It's still there but I cut it out, because there's only so many things you can, you know ... And a f- a friend of mine said, "Look, if you have a chapter on sex, you, you'll never get people to talk about education or the labor market." And that was probably good advice. Um, but I do think that some ... you've, you've mentioned some, you know, people like Louise and there's Christine Ember and so on too that I think are talking interestingly about sex. So I'm not convinced for hugely negative effects from porn either. To the extent ... except for the h- a minority who are highly addicted. That is a problem, as it is for alcohol or anything else. I think the issue with things like games and porn, you've hinted at this, is, is less what boys and men are doing when they're doing those things. It's more what they're not doing. It's the displacement of other activities that's the problem, not the activity itself. And it could be that it displaces, say, going out, right? So I'm old enough to know that if you wanted to, you know, to get any kind of action at all with a girl, you had to go through various, various phases. You had to shower. You had to dress properly. You had to go out. You had to be ... you had to risk multiple rejections until perhaps finally something happened that broke in your favor. It was humiliating. It was exhausting. And you had to do it every Friday and Saturday night from the age of 15 to whatever it was. Okay, so that's not the world that my boys grew up in, because there's porn, and there's games, and there's weed. And I- I'm not, I'm not even necessarily sure that my world was better, but I do know that it was riskier, and I do know that you had to put yourself out there a lot more, and I do know that you had to make much more of an effort. Um, and so I worry a little bit about the ease with which you can opt out of some of those difficult things like ma- like, like, uh, like a mature mating strategy. And that might be de-skilling some young men in ways that are quite important. But th- I think ... I honestly think it's a bit too early to tell. And I'm, again, a bit worried about the stereotyping here, the stereotype, "Well, guys just lie around smoking weed and, you know, looking at porn, and, you know, playing video games." And I have three sons in their 20s. I can assure you that young men do lie around in the basement doing all of those things, but they don't do that all the time. They also have jobs and girlfriends and college studies and tennis coaching and j- you know, so, so I'm just ... It, it, it veers a bit close to the toxic masculinity stuff we started with actually, if we're not careful. There, there are some quite pernicious stereotypes about men that, that I think can get in the way of a better conversation. And these get close to those for me.

10. 1:04:48 – 1:13:04

    Men’s Rights Vs Women’s Rights

    1. RRRichard V. Reeves1:04:48

    2. CWChris Williamson1:04:48

       It seems to me that this debate about men's and women's rights is being treated as a zero-sum game. That seems to be one of the fundamental issues that we're butting heads against. And you say that people believe arguing for the rights of men and boys would automatically mean rolling back women's rights or denying the existence of misogyny. That has to be probably one of the prime flashpoints when it comes to putting this forward and how it's going to be received culturally.

    3. RRRichard V. Reeves1:05:15

       Yeah, I think that's a, a big, a big part of the problem on both sides. I think sometimes the opposite is true perhaps on, you know, on the other side of the political spectrum. It depends who you're talking, talking to. But, uh, for sure, I think, that one of the problems is that, that even, even conceding that we should do some stuff for boys and men, that there is a problem for them, is seen as ... E- even if not necessarily diverting resources away from things for girls and women, although it could mean that, it's much m- more about the distraction of attention. It's more the, "Are you kidding me?" problem, right? It's more the, "You want me to talk about boys and men when, you know, 6% of companies are led by women, when a new core of parliamentarians ..." You know, and I have ... My, my wife actually is in the, in the process of raising money, uh, for a startup business. So I know that only 2% of venture capital money goes to female founders. I, I'm reminded of that on a, on a nightly basis, Chris. Um, so I'm acutely aware that there's still a lot of work to do (laughs) for, uh, for women in many areas, especially at the top of society. And so just, just a sense of like ...... no, no, no. We've, w- there's unfinished business over here, a lot of unfinished business over here. And it's really difficult right now in the current environment to get people to think two thoughts at once. It's really hard to break away from this sense of like, "Can I still care about that and care about this? Or am I having to choose?" And unfortunately, the way it's framed is that very often it is a choice. So even if it's not a resource zero sum... And let's be clear, sometimes it could be, right? If there's only so much money to spend on education, say, and some of it does go for policies that are pro-male, which I would argue for, you could argue that that means less money is going into some of the money for women's scholarships into STEM or whatever it is. Okay, so I think you have to be honest about that. I would argue that that's now justified. But it's a deeper problem than that, it's more just almost in the, in the conversation you've got to pick sides. And that merely saying, "Boys and men are in trouble, we need to do, help more of the boys and men," is to betray any commitment to the, uh, needs, uh, o- of women and girls. And that false binary is really crippling the conversation, I think, around this subject. It's one of the reasons I wrote the book, honestly, is because I just didn't see that many good faith attempts to try and do this, to try and (laughs) think two thoughts at once and say, "Okay, create a permission space for a conversation around this which does not require people to give up previous commitments." But also opens their eyes to the fact there are some pretty big gender inequalities running the other way now. And so you have to decide, are you interested in inequality or you're interested in girls and women? And if you're interested in girls and women 'cause that's what you care about, your, that's what your institution does, fine. But then we do need countervailing institutions or policies that take the other gender inequalities seriously. We can't just look through one eye.

    4. CWChris Williamson1:08:04

       I think this very much has a social signaling stated preferences thing going on as well, that a lot of women at the moment, uh, a lot of people that are pushing for the upholding of women and the pushing forward for the progression that they can have in terms of access to education, employment, family support, so on, are not thinking sufficiently deeply about the problem. Do you not want your daughters to grow up in a school where they have strong male role models so that they actually understand that they don't need to fear men? Perhaps they come from a fatherless home. Let's remember as well that a lot of the policies are chosen by people in the upper elites, and yet they most harshly impact the people that are poverty stricken.

    5. RRRichard V. Reeves1:08:48

       Mm.

    6. CWChris Williamson1:08:48

       It's very much a disparity between those that make the rules and those that follow the rules. Would it not be better for your sons that you have to be able to grow up with good examples, good role models in and around school? The grandfather that you've got, that you care about, that's going to be looked after. Would it not be better for the daughters that you have, that you say that you're trying to make the world better for, to have some partners that they can actually respect and contend with? Someone that's going to be a competent, caring, well-respected, well-contributing father figure, partner in life, breadwinner, whatever it might be. It seems like not understanding the challenges that are facing men and boys is putting women at a disadvantage as well.

    7. RRRichard V. Reeves1:09:33

       Mm.

    8. CWChris Williamson1:09:33

       Do you really want your daughters to be in school with boys that can't sit still and are so disruptive that that must lead to worse-

    9. RRRichard V. Reeves1:09:41

       Correct.

    10. CWChris Williamson1:09:41

        ... education outcomes for the girls that are in class with them as well? Like all-

    11. RRRichard V. Reeves1:09:45

        That's why I think, yeah, that's exactly why, that's why I think redshirting, you know, boys or starting boys will be good for girls actually. It's one of the reasons parents very often put their girls into single sex schools if they get the option to, is, is to get them away from the disruptions that the boys have. But I think, I think you're raising quite a, a deep point here, which is how we think about human flourishing across different groups. And outside of a very small separatist part of the feminist movement, I don't think many women would disagree with pretty much everything you've just said, right? Including those who would consider themselves card-carrying feminists, right? Do they want boys and men to flourish? Do they want their husbands to be doing well? Do they want their brothers to be doing well? Do they want their d- yes. They would say, "Yeses, yes, to, to all of, all of the above." Um, the question then is do you agree that some of them are struggling? Okay. Do you agree that some of the reasons they're struggling are not just their own individual frailties, like some, like as we discussed, it's not just a psychological problem with your son, it's a problem with the school system (laughs) , right? Do you agree with that? There are structural things here. Okay. Thirdly, do you agree we should do something about those in order to try and help boys and men succeed? We've got to go through all three of those stages. And I think a lot of people are at stage one, some people are at stage two. I'm hoping to get people to stage three which is, "Okay, let's do some stuff about this then. Let's, let's do some stuff to, to help, if we agree." There is this strand of utopian feminism which has always been about female-only societies. And, and you see it back from Charlotte, uh, Perkins, Her Land, uh, all the way through to that Rick and Morty episode. Um, what's it raising Gaza, Gaza Thorpe or something?

    12. CWChris Williamson1:11:38

        I know the one that you mean.

    13. RRRichard V. Reeves1:11:39

        Um, yeah, where the guys are all like living as barbarians on the planet and, and then there's this kind of serene society above. And they kind of, they brutally kill them. They, they throw the males out and they just get them to inseminate and stuff. But there's actually that, that... And there's a lot of literature around this. And of course, you know, Wonder Woman from an all female, all female island, the Amazons and so on too. And it's really speaking to something I think, which is this idea that you could kind of create this perfect society if only you could kind of get rid of all the men. Or some cordon them off or put them on a different planet or, or something like that. Um, and it's always been an interesting strand. There's been much less of it lately. And of course the real world that women want to live in is not a world like that. If you'd spoke to most women, they don't want to live in a world without men. They want to live in a world where men are doing well and men treat them well and they treat men well, the world you just described so well. Um, and so assuming that men and women are going to continue to live together and that there are going to be lots of men and women around, then helping each other to flourish is surely the project here. And for a very long time, that has meant paying a lot more attention to women and girls. And in lots of the world, that is still true. I wouldn't want to be misunderstood here. I don't think there's a big market for my argument in Afghanistan. But in many parts of the world, it's absolutely true now that for, to help women flourish and kids to flourish, we need to help men to flourish as well.

11. 1:13:04 – 1:13:49

    Where to Find Richard

    1. RRRichard V. Reeves1:13:04

    2. CWChris Williamson1:13:04

       Richard Reeves, ladies and gentlemen. If people want to check out what you do and keep up to date with your work, where should they go?

    3. RRRichard V. Reeves1:13:10

       They should go to my website, which is richardvreeves.com. I have a Substack, uh, which is called Of Boys and Men, where I post weekly on, on these p- particular themes. Check out the Brookings website where my scholarship is. I'm on Twitter, same RichardVReeves. Uh, and it's been a great conversation, Chris. I really appreciate this. Thank you.

    4. CWChris Williamson1:13:28

       I appreciate you too. Thanks, Richard. (instrumental music) What's happening people? Thank you very much for tuning in. If you enjoyed that episode, then press here for a selection of the best clips from the podcast over the last few weeks. And don't forget to subscribe. Peace.

Episode duration: 1:13:49