Sean Kullman, Director of the Global Initiative of Boys and Men, and author of InHisWords on Substack, is doing some of the finest writing around on issues facing the sexes and genders.   We enjoy featuring his work in our Newsletter because of its depth and quality.   In this week’s post, Sean mentions our Gurian Institute work.

Sean’s post as a whole today includes an issue that is central to the progress of each person in our world and our culture as a whole.  Unfortunately, this issue has become politicized in the media when, as Sean points out, all of us need to join together to deal with it.  Now, here’s more from Sean.

A few weeks ago, Senator Marco Rubio of Florida addressed the challenges facing today’s working and non-working men as a national crisis (The State of the Working (and Non-Working) Man: Project for Strong Labor Markets and National Development).

Rubio is calling for massive reform in education, industry, policy, and tax structure to help men find meaningful work that leads to independence and a robust family dynamic that helps men and women, something that has been troubling the U.S. for the last several decades.

At the core of Rubio’s idea is something discussed by InHisWords and Global Initiative for Boys and Men, which called on the federal government to create a MANTO program (Men in Apprenticeship and Non-Traditional Occupations) under the U.S. Department of Labor. While GIBM saw a need to improve the pathway of men into education, healthcare fields, social work, and other professions where males are historically under-represented, Rubio is calling on a program more aligned with labor where Congress could “create a commission tasked with collecting…data and forecasting future needs for labor” (Rubio 32). Rubio certainly sees some value in encouraging men to pursue what Richard Reeves refers to as the HEAL professions (health, education, administration, and literacy), but Rubio knows more is needed for the non-academic type.

He [Reeves] proposes that the solution to the crisis of male work is to encourage more men to buck social convention by entering those professions. This may work in some cases—for example, adding more male teachers to schools may help boys’ academic performance—but it is hardly a panacea. Effort must be made to rejuvenate manufacturing and other sectors “left behind” by the new economy, and to restore the kind of solid jobs that will allow more men to start and provide for families (Rubio 17).

And there is no denying Reeves values trades that lead to careers with good wages, but Reeves also presents HEAL professions as one pathway at a time when those markets are in demand. Some of Reeves’ and Rubio’s concerns rest in something similar and are noted in Reeves’ book Of Boys and Men:

“Male jobs have been hit by a one-two punch of automation and free trade. Machines pose a greater threat to working men than to women for two reasons.

• First, the occupation most susceptible to automation are just more likely to employ men….
• Second, men often lack the skills required in an automatic world” (Reeves 21).

Rubio and Reeves would certainly agree on these points. Rubio, however, argues more forcefully about the affect illegal immigration, free-trade, and tariffs have worked against the interests of America’s working males. Reeves is certainly aware of these forces and touches on them in his book (21-23).

It would be safe to argue that Reeves would like to see a robust labor economy, but Reeves certainly knows that it requires a heavy lift from government, industry, and education to work collectively. And if Rubio can garner the support of those on the left or by some national mandate, there is still skepticism the country can muster the type of national program (MANTO) that prepares men for labor-automation professions and other jobs associated with labor and HEAL that help young men find careers with living wages that allow them to live with purpose and support families, something Rubio addresses head-on.

Some 34% of boys and girls are growing up in single-parent homes, and for young men this is a serious problem. Prisons in America are 93% male, and a “staggering 85% of youths in prison grew up in a fatherless home,” according to Warren Farrell, author of the Boy Crisis. As Farrell puts it, “prisons are centers for dad-deprived males—boys who never became men” (121).

Rubio sees the destruction of family formation as a core problem in America, and he’s calling on the nation to embrace a family formation model aided by government tax relief that helps men and women who are married or are looking to marry.

If more young men married, many of the problems discussed in this report would diminish, including the problem of worklessness. Ariel Binder, an economist for the U.S. Census Bureau, has found that young men are less likely to work because their marriage prospects have dimmed. Congress should take steps to eliminate roadblocks that are causing young men and women to delay, or forego altogether, marriage and family formation.

The first step is reforming welfare programs and the federal tax code, which penalize adults for getting married. The Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), which supplements the earnings of low-income workers, is a useful example. Consider a hypothetical couple, Stacy and Mark. Stacy has two children and earns $20,000 per year in a part-time administrative job at a hospital. Mark has one child and earns $35,000 per year at a construction job. If Stacy and Mark marry, they can expect a $1,763 EITC benefit when they file their taxes at the end of 2023. If they cohabitate instead, they can expect a combined $8,447 EITC benefit from their separate tax filings. That’s a $6,684 penalty, or 12 percent of Mark and Stacy’s earned income, from a single government program. The picture is even bleaker when other safety-net programs, such as SNAP, are considered. Research suggests that marriage penalties can surpass 30 percent of a couple’s annual income. And, as sociologist Brad Wilcox has noted, working class families that make between 100 percent and 250 percent of the federal poverty line usually suffer the largest penalties.

Congress can correct this problem by restructuring the EITC so that couples who marry can qualify for the same credit as those who cohabitate. Lawmakers should also explore reforming the eligibility for major safety-net programs such as SNAP and Section 8 housing assistance so that these programs do not impose harsh penalties on couples who marry.

Some scoff at the notion that couples forgo marriage because the benefits of cohabitation are financially better, but there is some truth in Rubio’s observations that correlate with an anti-commitment culture whose out of wedlock births rates have gone from 5% in 1960 to 40% from 2016 to 2021, particularly in economically depressed areas, where diseases of despair are hard hitting America’s men of all races and low employment is problematic.

And while America is trying to address the out-of-wedlock birth dilemma, our educational system has to handle the social realities of today, where 34% of children are living in single-parent homes, 72% of combined suicide, overdose, and alcohol deaths are male, and the majority of the high school dropouts and those with lesser academic skills are male.

Rubio argues “research suggests that single-sex education can offer advantages over coeducational schools for certain children” (38). While some argue for and against the effectiveness of this model, there is a need to address biological realities when it comes to the ways boys and girls learn differently that can function in single-sex and co-educational environments. The Gurian Institute has been at the forefront of educational research and actual practice in the classroom regarding the boys and girls learn differently model. Michael Gurian’s book Boys and Girls Learn Differently and the Gurian Institute’s THE MINDS OF BOYS AND GIRLS® Online Course for Educators should find its way into schools of education so teachers are equipped to address outcomes like the Boy Gender-Gap in reading and educational readiness for higher learning, helping lead boys to college, trades, and specialized programs that give them, not merely a sense of purpose, but an actual purpose that reminds them of their cultural importance. It’s not a coincidence that boys are behind in reading at all grade levels and are far less likely to attend and graduate college than their female counterparts.

Although some like Reeves have argued that the problem is the developmental lag of boys in the aggregate and that red-shirting is part of the solution, there is more to it than the developmental lag and that these two ideas (Boys and Girls Learn Differently and developmental differences) can coexist in ways that facilitate the learning of boys and girls.

Rubio’s proposal comes at a time when the American landscape of boys and men is troubling and presidential debates are already heating-up. The big fights, however, will not be about getting men to work, giving them purpose, and addressing the deaths of despair unless he and others can somehow manage to reach the mothers and grandmothers of the 60 million boys 30-and-under impacted by the historical precedent to ignore them in policy and only discuss them when politically convenient.