Richard Reeves, from The Brookings Institute, a think tank where I had a brief stint, has written a seminal work Of Boys and Men.
Some nuggets from his book:
If you are parent of a young man or soon to be young man….
Men are also struggling in the workplace. One in three American men with only a high school diploma — 5 million men — is now out of the labor force. The biggest drop in employment is among young men ages 25 to 34. Men who entered the workforce in 1983 will earn about 10% less in real terms in their lifetimes than those who started a generation earlier. Over the same period, women’s lifetime earnings have increased 33%. Pretty much all of the income gains that middle-class American families have enjoyed since 1970 are because of increases in women’s earnings.
I have worked with teens and young adults for the last 20 years. Anecdotally, I have mounds of stories (that amount to evidence) related to the same.
Given that my client base consists primarily of those from the leafy suburbs of Connecticut, you would think I might not have found the same issue.
To be clear, I work with men and women at about an equal rate.
For women, the work is affirmative. They are building their careers.
For men, of course, that’s sometimes the case. But increasingly, I am helping them up from some challenge.
When I first started the work, boys and girls/men and women were achieving at the same rate. I then started noticing that boys were getting less motivated. I wrote my first book – Motivate Your Son based on my work. This was 10 years ago. Since then, the problem has only accelerated.
We can help.
Here’s an article that fully discusses