Britain’s lost boys Sonia Sodha

I think in general, there's been a switch from 'just cope' to 'poor dear can't be expected to cope' in child-raising/life in general.

Now, I'd say that how my father was raised, where if you weren't able to do something you were just forgotten (or worse, punished) also wasn't right, but in my mind, encouraging resilience is a million times better than leading young people to expect the world to bend around you.

This relates to boys because for whatever reason, a lot of the male half of society have struggled to keep up with change, and they resent it. Where girl's worlds have expanded - being allowed to work and make choices for themselves, boys see their world as being more restricted, because the women aren't doing what they're told/stepping back to allow the men to go first. And rather than be resilient, figure out a way to exist in that world, they just blame the women for changing.

ARe there plenty of men who have come along with us? Yeah, loads, but there's also still an awful lot of unconscious bias all the way through to outright hatred at a bloke's 'birthright' being taken away because a woman can earn their own money now, and doesn't have to stay with an abusive arsehole.

Steve Biddulph talked about boys needing 'uncle' figures - men who are not their fathers - to help coach and role model for them.

Of course, covid has had a huge impact on current generation, too. More social isolation.

General lifestyle and societal factors are also at play. Sedentary lifestyles, indoor living, UPFs, BPAs, antibiotics, soil depletion, screens, community fragmentation, poverty, austerity, loss of libraries, sports facilities, school cutbacks, loss of community structures like social groups, churches ...

I also think boys and men need their own spaces, like Scouts and Men's Sheds - but these have been forced to open to women, too.

There was backlash against whatever gains the women's movement made in the 70s and 80s, and we have discussed here the role of the wall-to-wall pink/princess/butterfly/glitter fad in re-girly-ing girls.

The opposite happened for boys, as they were pushed more and more into not-pink/not-princess/not-butterfly/not-glitter boy-ness. Boys just can't be expected to sit still. Boys just don't like reading. Boys just this, boys just that... and then surprise surprise boys do worse at school, which is full of girly stuff like sitting still, and books.

And any boy who doesn't like pink glittery things can't really be a proper boy in this polarised gender universe, can he? and a girl who doesn't like the girly stuff? We all know where that led...

There are common values that are not exclusively feminine or masculine but human and humane, and it looks like the 'lost boys' didn't get a chance to acquire them in a society which re-enforced the rats and snails and puppy-dogs' tails stereotypes to boys as strongly as it re-enforced the sugar and spice stereotypes to little girls.

One result is the 'lost boys' Sonia Sodha writes about; another is the 'transing' of children who don't fit the rats and snails/sugar and spice stereotypes.

Sure men have a role - but women need to stop excusing, and therefore encouraging, their son's bad behaviour too. "Gentle parenting" has probably contributed to this.

Unfortunately many boys do admire the 'moral compass' of other men. Other men whose moral compass does not encompass people who diverge from what they consider reasonable.

Emphatically, men need to be fully prepared to discuss and strategise this. And then to act.

One of the greatest dangers is that so many perceive that there are few incentives for being model fathers, partners, citizens etc.

The boys will be boys permissive environment that tolerates egregious behaviour gives them little reason to respect boundaries or admire the moral compass of others.