Britain’s lost boys Sonia Sodha

[WarriorN]

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/mar/09/jobless-isolated-fed-misogynistic-porn-where-is-the-love-for-britains-lost-boys?CMP=ShareiOSAppp_Other

I do agree but feel it's men who need to step up here

Boys either want to be women or are turning to Tate et al neither of which is ultimately good for women and girls. Victoria Smith has been saying similar recently.

If you're not into sport there's so few decent role models or movements for boys. From experience they go off track at a very young age too.

but also echo about men liking women to be there because they bring cake, make tea and tidy up. My mum upended her art club for retirees when it became clear that the men would do nothing at all of the sort. They made a rota, and did it in 4s, and everything was fine until the group my mum was in (2 women, 2 men) lost the other woman and the men just wouldn't even step up and buy a packet of mini-rolls, let alone do the washing up.

FIL does washing and cooking as did my Dad - and actually one of my DGF - and in that generation several men have ended up doing elder care even when there were just as close females.

I have encountered that attitude though with kids - the expectation that I should look after their kids as I'm out with my own. While I wouldn't see a child injured beyond that it's not something I've entertained- and have been surpised over the years how many other women have.

You seem to have an entirely negative view of boys? We're not talking about being "aggressive" and "smashing things up". Boys can still have interest in and sensitivity towards, for example, small creatures and small children, but still need to express themselves in physically courageous or uninhibited ways.

Lots of men and boys have particular interest in sports, in motor racing, rugby, boxing so on. That doesn't mean they cannot be a loving parent or compassionate brother as well.

Women do most of the childrearing because it is women who become pregnant, give birth and feed babies. Equality measures will only go some of the way in trying to flatten out essential differences.

FIL does washing and cooking as did my Dad - and actually one of my DGF - and in that generation several men have ended up doing elder care even when there were just as close females.

there is zero need to #NotAllMen

@pursuitOfSomething as I say there are always acceptions to the rule and the setting does have girls.

I'm commenting on 20 years of send experience with moderate learning difficulties; speech, reading, writing and comprehension. it's always been around 10:1 ratio of boys to girls in that setting. These are learning difficulties that are picked up at eyfs/ ks1 and so ehcps have been very quickly given. Many don't have behavioural difficulties though often do have communication difficulties.
When in mainstream there were always higher ratios of boys than girls in the lower sets or listed as needing extra intervention.

A large percentage of men in prison also have learning difficulties.

@Shortshriftandlethal Ha, ha - if anyone does not fall over themselves to praise men they must have an entirely negative view. Someone needs to counter the rubbish being spouted here about how boys are different. They are different because we rear them and socialise them differently from infancy onwards

The most physically courageous children I've known were actually girls - jumping in the deep end before they'd learnt to swim being the outstanding example. But I've met plenty of parents excusing their son's unpleasant behaviour with boys will be boys. Boys can learn to be good parents too - but they need to be taught that just as much as girls do.

edit for typo

Poverty is really the largest driver here, though the numbers of privately educated boys subscribing to Tate is notable too.

An interesting watch. This is a private school.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-england-tyne-64611598

https://www.durham.ac.uk/research/current/thought-leadership/2023/11/girls-less-likely-to-be-diagnosed-with-special-educational-needs--new-research/

Of the roughly 1.5 million children in English schools identified for SEN services in 2022-23, only 0.5 million were girls. We found the same pattern across the country, with girls making up between 34% to 36% of all students accessing SEN support in most regions.
In some cases, this may be because certain disabilities are more common in boys. But it is likely to be also down to gender bias in assessment and from those referring children for assessment, as well as girls being better at hiding the challenges they face from some conditions.
...

Gender bias
But social factors can also play a big part. Past research has suggested that gender bias among people who refer students for diagnostic assessment, like teachers, contributes to this unequal distribution. One study of twins reports that teachers may be more likely to refer boys because boys are more disruptive and command more attention, while girls go under the radar.
Research on autism also points out the “camouflage effect”. This means girls may be better at masking or hiding their autism-related challenges, leading to under-identification or delayed diagnosis.
Some researchers have also reported that assessments used for diagnosis are typically based on male characteristics, and potentially overlook how autism spectrum disorder presents differently in girls.
This imbalance is likely to mean that some girls are not getting the recognition and support they need.

This is why we need actual reasearch into problems.

Exactly - it does happen in many families - yet read posts on here and you'd think men never did anything ever.

We shouldnt be normalising men doing nothing - we should be point out in can does and should be happening.

boys will be boys

I was furious with an experienced eyfs teacher who said this to a mother who was an acquaintance about her son. Mother had raised concerns.

He was regularly pushing and shoving reception children for fun. It was completely excused. It should not have been accepted at all. It definitely wouldn't have been if a girl. Fast forward a few years and not only was it clear he had some learning needs he had no friends at all and was seen as a bully. To later be bullied horribly when they moved to senior school. They ended up being able to move him to a private school though I've no idea if it got any better.

Poverty and class are not always barriers - but if you remove free libraries then you limit social mobilty. I am from a working class family but one that believed in education as a route out of the pit or the factory and away from poverty. We had free libraries and grammar schools though.

It's not class, it's not poverty - unless you count poverty of expectation.

@pursuitOfSomething fully agree that both challenging behaviour and boys' autistic presentation generally attract quicker diagnosis and support.

yep, i learned a lot of my feminism from my dad. A senior soldier who cooked and cleaned as much as my mum, and who never stopped us doing hobbies, having toys or decorating our rooms exactly as we wanted. As a result my brother can cook and clean and fix a motorbike, and i can cook and clean and shoot and do woodwork and sew.

The exceptions really make the non-exceptions stand out. I used to reinforce the partriarchy with my grandad: on a sunday when i was there for a visit, we'd go to the local working men's club while grandma magicked up Sunday lunch. He'd go to the bar and order a pint and a half of shandy. And the question always came back to him "is the half for a lady?" and thus my half of shandy would come in a half pint ladies (stemmed) glass. It tickled me pink. When i started drinking pints we got a few comments about it but no real pushback.

IIRC studies show that girls do better in single-sex education while boys do better in mixed? As to English - at my all-girls school we had to read Lord of the Flies. None of us complained that it wasn't all hearts, flowers and Mr Darcy.

Agree that working class boys are often neglected. Why is that? oh, i know. It is because women are in charge of absolutely everything everywhere and are intentionally cutting them out of everything.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/_chat/5287812-1-in-10-women-murdered-by-a-man-are-murdered-by-their-son-and-this-is-an-increasing-trendedone-in-en?page=6&reply=142720290

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/mar/05/more-than-170-mothers-killed-by-sons-15-years-uk-report

I don't know what the cause is - and think research a bloody good idea - but some women are paying a high price being left picking up the peices when problems with their sons occur.

If nothing else your post shows that its not just men that mansplain things.

I have been in the community for years and am passing on what I and others have seen and lived through.

The most there is, is a lack of knowledge (which you are also displaying here, thinking these are online things)**

I'm not sure where you even get the idea that I think that these are online things.

Boys have more T in utero.

Here's a fascinating (if tangential) article on male and female twins, and prenatal T transfer in utero, and effects in later life:

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30886089/

As Warrior says, it's always a mix of nature and nurture, and always will be.

(And I'm not someone who permits bullying or aggressive behaviour from boys.)

The discrepancy between girls and boys achieving Grade 4 and above in English (@noblegiraffe · Yesterday 10:43) is not a stereotype. It's a statistic that has implications for us all and, as a feminist and mother of a son, I welcome the chance to talk about it and exchange ideas and views, even if I don't agree with every post.

Are you aware there's a middle ground that lets people volunteer without heaps of unnecessary paperwork?

so how do you feel as the mother of a son, that boys are still doing better in maths and science?

I want to see girls catch up, of course I do, and as the discrepancy in maths (I don't know about science) appears to be down to 0.4%, that seems pretty achievable to me. That gap in English is over 11%.

I absolutely agree with this - like in the NHS, league tables tend to lead to gaming the system, rather than analysing what's lead to a poor result and working to actually improve it.

In my kid's primary they did a thing where they raced through 2 years of a subject in 1 year, then did it again the following year. They felt that it let them stretch the kids that need stretching, and repeat stuff for the kids that needed the repetition - that it let them individualise better for the students. They're also willing to move kids up and down a year (not UK) - so my son, who couldn't read when he started, they moved down a year so he had time to catch up. My other son, they just abandoned the idea of teaching him cursive when it became clear that was causing more problems and stress than it would solve.

At primary especially, they need to balance academics with social development, and that is hard, but that is also very important.

Sorry, I didn't realise you were an AD&D player/were into Warhammer - since you were saying things that seemed very stereotyped, and not my experience at all. Felt like someone who's only seen US TV shows ridiculing it all.

On various threads on MN where RPG players have been brought up as a better source of male partner, it has been shot down as those that play are seen as basement dwellers, socially award and still live with mum and dad.

This really - just saying 'RPG' - rather than tabletop RPG, or LARP generally suggests computer games to me - along with the idea that they're basement dwellers still living with mum or dad - that's more of an online gamer stereotype, since the other role-play games do involve getting out and meeting people, and as I say, I've been doing it for nearly 30 years, and the vast majority of people I've gamed with were utterly normal people, reflecting the wide range of society.

I do see where you are coming from.
My point was that people believe in those stereotypes, and can be shocked and in some cases aggressive when they realise that the upstairs rooms of their local pub is booked out for RPGs/ board games/ table top battles.
Very few people will know that games workshop has open evenings/days where people can go and paint and play games all day. Even less know that sometimes the results from these games are recorded and have an influence on the direction that the global story goes.
My worry about this is that various games are now being changed to pacify those that claim (make big noises) that the games are not inclusive especially when these people are never (even after the changes) going to play.

I did use RPG as a generic term. but online to me would be mmorpg.

It's not rubbish. Males and females are different in biological make-up and there are clearly some generalised differences which result from that. Of course individual personality often over-rides some of these factors, but at a deeper level there is a hard drive. Why would human beings be any different from other mammals and species which are divided into two sexes? Male bodies, even in childhood are programmed to be receptive to large surges of testosterone in puberty, in a way that girls bodies are not.....which is why women suffer negative health effects when they take artificial testosterone in quantities typical with males.

Testosterone, and oestrogen, both impact our mental state as well as our physical state. When you become pregnant your body is flooded with hormones which compel you to respond in certai ways; and after birth the same flood happens. Female brains are receptive to this in ways that male brains are not.Nobody is trying to put girls down. Girls ands women have absolute value and integrity as females, as well as through being individualised human beings.

Recognising that there are some generalised differences between boys and girls and between men and women is not to suggest that women are inferior. Part of the reason we are now beset by gender ideology is because of the crusade to suggest that there are no obvious differences: that being a woman or a man is just a matter of sociaisation, and that anyone, even the male of the species, can become a woman, for example, by performing gender.

Recognising that there are some differences between the sexes - in terms of trends and averages - is not to suggest that we must all be forced to perform gender roles whethere they suit us, or work for us, or not.

Girls have absolute equal opportunity when it comes to being unpleasant, mean, and so on.

It's really problematic for children to perpetuate gender stereotypes in terms of character and expectations for children. Unfortunately I do think this is a cultural issue in many parts of the country across all levels of socioeconomic status.

However it's ok to acknowledge, include and celebrate l stereotyped "interests and pursuits," as long as the opposite sex isn't excluded or mocked for also having those interests. For example, boys loving football. It's ok for girls to also. It does seem to still be harder on some parts of society for boys to have stereotypical interests of girls.

Colour stereotyping on packaging can be problematic there too (eg crafting kits marketed heavily at girls, dinosaurs marketed heavily at boys)

Clothing slogans often perpetuate character and expectation stereotypes.

All children need physical exercise; my personal experience with local football teams is that they're another good avenue of positive development and role models for boys. However sports and physical activity participation is woefully lacking for girls and definitely needs to be fostered and encouraged. Obviously single sex.

OK I'm generalising.
Yes most boys have male best friends but it was rare to find a boy at school or college who DIDN'T prefer to be around us.
The problem isn't so much "they want or need male friends" as "they will do anything to get RID of male friends and know me instead".
And I am NOT being pretentious - i could name 20 other young women who'd say the same.