American men being left behind and feeling unhappy about it

Context

Analysis of the 2016 election indicated that a large majority of White men without college degrees supported the EXP (ex-president). The early analyses in peer-reviewed papers indicated that two things were the top vote drivers for the EXP, (i) fear, anger and resentment over demographic and social changes in the US and its place in the world, and (ii) wage stagnation and job worries. 

Other research independent of the election indicates that boys and men are increasingly facing more difficulties than women for a number of reasons that have nothing to do with politics. However, that research plausibly explains some of what astute opportunistic cynics could play on and manipulate for political gain if they were so-inclined. The modern Republican Party is clearly so-inclined.

Some of that other research was summarized in a New York Time editorial about the situation for men and boy, from last September, ‘It’s Become Increasingly Hard for Them to Feel Good About Themselves.’ The NYT writes:

Is there a whole class of men who no longer fit into the social order?

A decade ago, Marianne Bertrand and Jessica Pan, economists at the University of Chicago and the National University of Singapore, concluded in their paper “The Trouble With Boys: Social Influences and the Gender Gap in Disruptive Behavior”:

Family structure is an important correlate of boys’ behavioral deficit. Boys that are raised outside of a traditional family (with two biological parents present) fare especially poorly. For example, the gender gap in externalizing problems when the children are in fifth grade is nearly twice as large for children raised by single mothers compared to children raised in traditional families. By eighth grade, the gender gap in school suspension is close to 25 percentage points among children raised by single mothers, while only 10 percentage points among children in intact families. Boys raised by teenage mothers also appear to be much more likely to act out.

The effects on boys of being raised in a single-parent household are particularly acute in the development of noncognitive skills, according to Bertrand and Pan:

Most striking are our findings regarding gender differences in the noncognitive returns to parental inputs. Across all family structures, we observe that boys’ likelihood to act out is sharply reduced when faced with larger and better parental inputs. For girls, the relationship between parental inputs and behavioral outcomes appear to be much weaker. As these parental inputs are typically higher and of better quality in intact families, this largely contributes to why boys with single mothers are so much more disruptive and eventually face school suspension.

First, an excerpt from a 2016 paper by David Autor, an economist at M.I.T., and four colleagues:

In the United States in 2016, the female high school graduation rate exceeded the male rate by five percentage points, and the female college graduation rate exceeded the male rate by seven percentage points. What explains these gender gaps in educational attainment? Recent evidence indicates that boys and girls are differently affected by the quantity and quality of inputs received in childhood.

I sent the four references above to Arlie Hochschild, a professor of sociology at Berkeley and the author of “Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right,” for her views. She emailed back:

Since the 1970s offshoring and automation have hit blue collar men especially hard. Oil, coal — automating, manufacturing, offshoring, and truck-driving about to go down. Non-B.A. males are in an especially vulnerable place. I saw it in Louisiana, and again where I’m interviewing in Appalachia. It’s become increasingly hard for them to feel good about themselves.

In a 2018 essay in The New York Review of Books, “Male Trouble,” Hochschild described the predicament of less well educated men:

Compared to women, a shrinking proportion of men are earning B.A.s, even though more jobs than ever require a college degree, including many entry-level positions that used to require only a high school diploma. Among men between twenty-five and thirty-four, 30 percent now have a B.A. or more, while 38 percent of women in that age range do. The cost of this disadvantage has only grown with time: of the new jobs created between the end of the recession and 2016, 73 percent went to candidates with a B.A. or more. A shrinking proportion of men are even counted as part of the labor force; between 1970 and 2010, the percentage of adult men in a job or looking for work dropped from 80 to 70 while that of adult women rose from 43 to 58. Most of the men slipping out lack B.A.s.

While many of the men Hochschild writes about see a future of diminished, if not disappearing, prospects, men in elite professions continue to dominate the ranks of chief executives, top politicians and the highest-paying professorships.

Frances E. Jensen, chair of the department of neurology at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine, taking a different tack, argues that boys’ brains mature more slowly than girls’ brains do, a difference that is particularly striking in the adolescent years. In a 2017 interview with the School Superintendents Association, Jensen stressed the crucial role the still maturing brain plays in the lives of teenagers:

Teens go through a period of increased emotional fluctuation and are like a Ferrari with weak brakes. The emotional center of the brain, the limbic system, which controls emotions, is fully connected, but the frontal lobe that sharpens critical thinking isn’t well-connected. That means the part of the brain that makes them pause and say to themselves, “Bad idea. Don’t post that on Facebook because it might hurt my chances of getting a job in the future” or “Don’t jump in the lake, there may be a rock,” isn’t mature.

The brain also becomes more efficient, Jensen said,

during a process called myelination. This is when a fatty substance called myelin grows slowly and wraps itself around miles of brain cells to better insulate them. Insulation makes the brain more efficient at sending and receiving signals. Myelination is a slow process that finishes in the mid-20s. Our brains have thousands of miles of networks and to insulate all of them with myelin takes over two and a half decades to finish.

Using M.R.I. images, Jensen continued,

you can actually see the brain is laying down a layer of myelin over time when looked at year over year. You can measure those layers and see a dynamic process where the insulation is sharpening the rapidity of our signaling from one part of our brain to another.

And then she added a crucial point:

In adolescence, on average girls are more developed by about two to three years in terms of the peak of their synapses and in their connectivity processes.

In a 2019 paper, “Family Disadvantage and the Gender Gap in Behavioral and Educational Outcomes,” Autor and Wasserman, along with David Figlio, Krzysztof Karbownik and Jeffrey Roth, conclude that:

Family disadvantage disproportionately negatively affects the behavioral and academic outcomes of school-age boys relative to girls. The differential effect of family disadvantage on the outcomes of boys relative to girls is already evident by the time of kindergarten entry, is further manifested in behavioral and educational gaps in elementary and middle school performance, and crystallizes into sharp differences in high school graduations by age 18.

In a 2020 article, “Educational Gender Gaps,” Lundberg argues:

Social and cultural forces linked to gender identity are important drivers of educational goals and performance. A peer-driven search for masculine identity drives some boys toward risk-taking and noncompliance with school demands that hampers school achievement, relative to girls. Aspirations are linked to social identities — what you want and expect depends on who you think you are — and profound differences in the norms defining masculinity and femininity create a gender gap in educational trajectories.

What is going on here?

This kind of research provides some plausible explanations for why White men without college degrees would feel some combination of fear, anger, alienation and/or resentment. Not only is America’s social and economic sand shifting under their feet, their brains develop more slowly and males tend to be treated differently than females in at least some stressed families, e.g., single parent families, low income households, etc. 

All of that provides the raw material, i.e., a pliable mindset, that cynical political opportunists can take advantage of. Thus, instead of suggesting possible actions to ameliorate the situation, opportunists use propaganda to play on the pliable mind for political advantage. Cynics do things such as turning minorities into enemies, elevating wedge issues into moral outrages, vilifying political opposition as the reason for personal problems, and so forth. That is cynical politics.

By contrast, good faith politics would look at the problems and their sources to inform and guide policy. For example, teaching in ways that boys are known to respond to (boys are kinesthetic learners who benefit from hands-on activities where they learn by touch, exploration and manipulation[1]), adding a year to public education and an optional year or two of public service between high school and college would give male’s brains more time to mature. That might leave them at least somewhat better able to succeed in college.

Parents sense there is a problem with the boys

Poll data analysis shows that parents are more concerned about the success of their sons than their daughters. In 2020, the Brookings Institution commented on the results of the American Family Survey. All four groups analyzed, liberals, conservatives, mothers, and fathers, indicated that all are more worried about their sons than their daughters.  

Despite the foregoing, it is still the case that men tend to hold the high level positions and power. Nonetheless, the changes that society is experiencing are complicated. This generates significant psychological discomfort with how society is changing and how that affects people's lives. If some children and young adults are experiencing difficulties government could play a constructive role if it is allowed to do so. To the extent is it not being allowed to act, the reasons for that are pretty clear, e.g., anti-government ideology, etc.

Acknowledgement: This post was inspired by some remarks and links to information that PD gave in this comment.

Questions: 

1. Are the concerns about some men and their mental states that researchers identified mostly real and significant or mostly academic curiosities with little real world impacts in politics, the economy and/or society in general? 

2. Should government try to foster policies directed to reducing the psychological discomfort that many men are experiencing?

Footnote: 

1. That article comments:

The absence of these opportunities during the pandemic when so many students were learning online has had a considerable impact on educational advancement, especially so for boys.

In all-boys schools and classrooms, where teachers are focused on the unique social, emotional and learning needs of boys, young men are thriving. But I’m not issuing a rallying cry to nationalize single-gender education.

All-boys and all-girls schools work well for some students and not as well for others. Exploring different schooling options for your child is just common sense.