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Oct. 21, 2025 00:41-01:30 - CSPAN

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Washington Journal Richard Reeves

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unidentified		A lot of it hits is on illegal immigration and standardization.
unidentified		I'm speechless.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		What a great call.
		Thank you.
		We'll go to Shirley, who's calling from Pasadena, Texas, Line for Republicans.
		Hi, Shirley.
unidentified		Hi, how are you?
		Good morning.
		I wanted to let your person know that you have on there right now that I agree with pretty much everything she's saying.
		I think that as far as the government shutdown goes right now, I think that if the Democrats would have not shut down the government, that they would have hashed all this insurance business out, and we wouldn't be dealing with this right now.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		I agree.
unidentified		Thank you so much for the call.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Batia Angar Sargon is host of Batia on News Nation.
		She is also author of Second Class, How the Elites Betrayed America's Working Men and Women.
		Batia, thank you so much for your time this morning.
		What an honor to be here with you and all of your callers.
unidentified		Thank you so much for having me and God bless.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Joining us now to discuss concerns over the current state of young men and boys in the United States is Richard Reeves.
		He is president of the American Institute for Boys and Men.
		Richard, welcome back to the program.
richard v reeves ▲ ● ▼		Thank you.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		We'll start by having you explain the mission of your organization.
richard v reeves ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, well, it's the first think tank to focus on the issues of boys and men.
		And this is probably one of the shows where I can actually talk proudly about a think tank.
		It was at the Brookings Institution for many years.
		And there are lots of organizations that do a great job drawing attention to the challenges of women and girls in various ways.
		And I really applaud and support their work.
		But there wasn't really anybody that was saying, hold on, what's happening to boys and men in school, in the labor market, in terms of health?
		And I see that as complementary to the efforts of the various groups and institutions that are working on women and girls issues.
		So I see them as our sister institutions, if you like.
		But that lack of an institution that was just every day waking up and saying, how are our boys and men doing? created something of a vacuum in our policymaking and in our understanding.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		So let's start with that question.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		How would you characterize the current state of young men and boys?
richard v reeves ▲ ● ▼		Well, particularly if they're from a low-income background or if they're young men or boys of color, the answer is on average maybe not so great.
		So we're seeing flatlining wages for men without a college degree.
		We're seeing a huge gap now opening up in universities and colleges.
		There's actually a bigger gender gap today on college campuses than there was in the 70s.
		It's just flipped.
		And so women are further ahead of men today on college campuses than men were ahead of women back in the 70s.
		And we've also seen, perhaps most distressingly, the rise of various mental health challenges.
		And to be clear, there are lots of mental health challenges facing women and girls as well.
		But we've seen a rise in the loss of life from suicide among young men of a third just since 2010.
		We're losing 40,000 men a year right now to suicide in the U.S.
		And I think that's the tip of the iceberg, which is a real mental health challenge that a lot of boys and young men are struggling with.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		A piece that you wrote recently, the alarm bells are sounding for young men.
		That's exactly what you're talking about, these issues, these alarm bells going off.
		When did they start going off?
		What is at the core of them?
richard v reeves ▲ ● ▼		Well, it depends which metric we're looking at, but educationally, this has been going on for some decades now.
		And what's interesting about the education gap is that's true internationally.
		As you can probably tell, I'm originally from the UK.
		I'm working there too, working a lot in Europe.
		And you see these education gaps have been opening up over the last few decades.
		The wage trends for the last couple of decades.
		I think the new development really has been this increase in the mental health challenges, particularly of young men.
		So I think we're used to thinking of what social scientists call deaths of despair from suicide, alcohol, drug overdoses.
		They really hit working class men through the Great Recession, but we're really seeing those rising now among younger men and especially, as I said, these deaths from suicide.
		So these have been, this has not happened in the last few years.
		This has been building now over at least the last few decades.
		But I think we're now seeing enough people noticing this combination of economic issues, social issues, family issues, forming families, struggling at school, to really, I think, as I said in that piece, to say, okay, the alarm bells really are now ringing much more loudly.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Something you point out in the post is that some men and boys are feeling lost.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Why?
richard v reeves ▲ ● ▼		I think the old days, so I'm in my late 50s now, and so my parents were in their 80s, and I think for a lot of people, they just knew what the script was, right?
		There was a certainty to the old world where men's job was to be the protector and the provider, especially the economic provider, the breadwinner.
		And women's job was to largely be the family maker, the homemaker.
		We've torn those old ideas up.
		We've torn up those old scripts for women, thank God.
		And we've said to women, you can be whatever you want.
		And we've got a lot more to do on that front, by the way.
		This is not mission accomplished for women and girls, but it is a different world.
		And 40% of breadwinners now are women in the US.
		And so that's a completely different world.
		And so what I think we've done is we've replaced the old restrictive script for girls and women and we've replaced it with quite an empowering one.
		You go, girl, you can be whatever you want.
		The future's female.
		And look at us here.
		This is real advance.
		We tore up the old script for men, which is you're going to be the provider, the protector.
		We tore that up as well.
		But we didn't replace it with anything.
		And so what that's meant, I think, is that we have a generation of men coming up now who are genuinely asking the question of like, what am I supposed to do?
		Who am I supposed to be?
		How do I rewrite the script?
		What does it mean to be a good man today as opposed to 50 years ago?
		And we really haven't taken that question seriously enough.
		That's created a vacuum, which I'm sorry to say is being filled by quite a lot of reactionary voices, especially online.
		But that's our fault for not engaging with this question and these struggles that many young men and boys are having with empathy and understanding and curiosity.
		And I realize that can be difficult to do, but if we don't do it, somebody will.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Richard Reeves is president of the American Institute for Boys and Men.
		He is joining us for a discussion over the concern about the state of young men and boys in the United States.
		If you have a question or comment for him, you can start calling in now.
		The lines for this segment are broken down regionally.
		If you are in the Eastern or Central time zone, your line is 202-748-8000.
		If you are in the Mountain or Pacific, the line for you is 202-748-8001.
		Richard, you are also the author of a book.
		It's titled Of Boys and Men, Why the Modern Male is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do About It.
		One of the issues that you've already brought up, you already mentioned, was suicide and mental health.
		How would you describe the outlook when it comes to that particular problem?
richard v reeves ▲ ● ▼		What we're seeing is a growing number of men and especially young men being more isolated.
		So isolation and loneliness are an issue and obviously the former Surgeon General has drawn attention to this issue.
		There are big class gaps here again.
		I think it's worth pointing out that it is those from lower income backgrounds who are struggling most.
		But young men are actually the most socially isolated and on some measures the loneliest group in American society now.
		And that isolation, particularly for young men, I think can lead to some of these mental health challenges and not really feeling known.
		One of the surveys I looked at recently from Equilundo, which works on men's issues, found that two-thirds of men under the age of 30 said they felt no one really know them well, knew them well.
		Imagine that, like not knowing them well.
		And so there's a sense of disconnection.
		And what I think has happened is that the structures that used to make it easier, particularly for men, to feel bound into society, into family, et cetera, we're obviously marrying much later if we do or forming families much later.
		Fewer men in work, fewer men in the labor market.
		One in ten men in their early 20s are neither in college or in work.
		We don't quite know exactly what they're doing, but that's 10% of young men who are essentially detached from those institutions.
		That leads to isolation, which leads to mental health challenges, which can ultimately lead to real tragedy.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		And mental health, one of those issues that is affecting the group you're talking about affects across the board, groups across the board.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		The mental health care system, is it capable of meeting the specific needs of men and boys?
richard v reeves ▲ ● ▼		I don't think that we are thinking about the question that way yet, honestly.
		I don't think we've thought, well, are we serving men's health needs well enough?
		Because for a long time now, we have understandably focused on are we serving women's health needs well enough?
		And because there's a tendency to think about the health profession as being a little bit more biased towards men, actually now that the overwhelming majority of mental health professionals are women, I'm actually startled to learn that like one in five psychologists and social workers are men now and used to be half just a few years ago.
		So we're emptying those out.
		And what we see from surveys is that a lot of mental health professionals, they actually don't feel equipped to deal with a lot of male mental health challenges.
		And so we actually need to help them to get better.
		And there are various programs now.
		There's one called Men in Mind, which has been promoted by Movember, the men's health charity, which seems to just make mental health professionals a little bit more open to dealing with men's mental health challenges.
		The other thing I would say is that we have more obvious entry points around women's health, obviously around their reproductive health, they're getting to see the doctor much more, around childbirth, etc.
		And we use those opportunities in the health system to kind of, while women are there, to be doing all kinds of other health interventions and checks with them.
		We have an annual well-woman check under the Affordable Care Act.
		We don't, of course, have an annual check for men, and we don't have that kind of interaction with men.
		But when they become dads or when they're engaging with those institutions, we need to a better job of grabbing the men while we can.
		But our health system isn't geared that way.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		We have callers waiting to talk with you.
		Jane is calling from New Jersey.
		Good morning, Jane.
unidentified		Yes, good morning.
		Mr. Rees, thank you first of all for the work you do.
		It's very important.
		I have a twin sister who is a psychiatrist here in New Jersey.
		And she works primarily with families.
		And there are two things that she sees as that has been trending over the last couple of decades.
		And she thinks that we underestimate the addictive quality of pornography, A, and D, the thousands of hours that boys, some boys, and who do gaming with online.
		And these two things are very addictive to these young men.
		And she also sees a trending of these boys molesting younger sisters because of this exposure to pornography.
		And she finds it very disturbing.
		And I personally do too.
		And if you could address that, I'd appreciate it, Mr. Rees.
		Have a great day.
richard v reeves ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Thank you, Jane.
		Well, I think on the last that obviously any kind of internal family abuse is to be taken very seriously.
		And I think it has to be said that that typically skews male.
		The good news is overall those forms of violence and crime are on the decline.
		But I think Jane's point, or right through her sister, which is that we're in a whole new world now, this online world.
		I completely agree.
		Men are more sensitive to addiction anyway, almost any addiction you look at.
		Actually, there does seem to be something of a difference here, that men are more vulnerable to it.
		And I think that the shock of this online world now that men and women are navigating is something that we're only just coming to terms with.
		I'm glad that you mentioned pornography, Jane, because that's something that actually it's quite hard, I think, to talk about.
		It's hard to get good research on.
		And where I think that that's just a whole new world.
		And so understanding how two things can happen.
		One is that for some men, any of these online activities can become genuinely problematic, addictive, getting in the way of their flourishing.
		But there's also something that happens even well before that, which is even if they're not directly harming the young man or those around them, they're displacing real life.
		And so there's a displacement effect here too, which is that actually while you're online, you're not doing something else.
		And so it's what you're not doing while you're online that can become the issue.
		Because if you're gaming, and I have sons in their 20s, they use gaming to stay in touch with their friends.
		It's very social, it's fun, and this is strong evidence that men do use gaming to connect.
		But of course, to excess, it's a problem.
		And I think that pornography is actually shockingly understudied phenomenon right now.
		It's one of the things that my institute is really determined to learn a bit more because there's a real tendency for people to just, nobody wants to be the porn professor.
		Nobody wants to be the expert on porn.
		But that means actually we just genuinely don't have a good understanding of it.
		And so we do need to understand the impact of that on young men.
		There's a tendency either to be very libertarian and say, how dare you?
		Everyone should be sex positive.
		It's great.
		Brave new world we live in now where everything's allowed.
		Or to be very puritanical and just immediately go to a kind of judgmental view on it.
		And the truth is, as always, the truth is somewhere in between.
		And we've got to engage with it with more understanding than we currently have.
		And so I know that researchers say this, but this is genuinely an area, Jane, where we do need more research to help your sister.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Fernando is calling from Seattle, Washington.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Good morning, Fernando.
unidentified		Good morning, ma'am.
		Good morning, Mr. Reed.
		Good morning.
		Thank you.
		This is a very interesting subject.
		And my question is, do you have an opinion on what the president's role as an example to boys?
		You know, me growing up, I'm not a Trump.
		I don't like, and my main reason is for him setting up, for example, as a president, using social media as a weapon to influence the way he uses it.
		It's discussed it.
		Thank you, sir.
richard v reeves ▲ ● ▼		Well, thank you for the question.
		I mean, I should stress that my work is strictly non-partisan.
		But I do think that the role models that we have around us, particularly in real life, are very important.
		But of course, to some extent, public figures as well.
		And what I will say is that the version of masculinity that I see a lot of young men searching for now is actually not one which is based on dominance or bullying.
		For all of the online reactionaries that we see, for all some of the kind of political atmosphere we have around now, it's very interesting to me, for example, that if you look at young men and young women who don't have children, a much higher share of young men say they really want to become dads.
		They really want to become fathers.
		More than even than women are saying that now.
		And so what I interpret that to mean is actually what I think is there is a hunger among young men for purpose, for connection and for meaning.
		You're seeing all kinds of evidence for that.
		And so what I think has happened politically is that I'll risk saying that I think the centre left and more on the Democrat side, there's been a reluctance actually to celebrate positive male role models for fear that would somehow seem anti-women.
		And I think that created an opening for other politicians to come along, especially those perhaps on the right, who basically signal to kind of men.
		It's like, we like you, we like the things men do, and have a very overtly kind of masculine affect, if you like.
		And I think that that was an opening that was created.
		I don't see that many young men aspiring to a form of masculinity which is based on dominance or bullying or that classically alpha male phenomenon.
		But I do think they've been turned off by what they see as an overly prescriptive, narrow, and to some extent judgmental political left.
		And so I think there's a space here for politicians from both sides to honestly not just talk about this issue, but just model it in a way that I think presidents can and should.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Let's broaden that beyond the president at HHS under the administration for children and families.
		There's a section devoted to, quote, responsible fatherhood.
		What do you think of federal programs providing those types of programs?
richard v reeves ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, well, it is very interesting that the program is called responsible fatherhood, isn't it?
		Right built in there, there's an assumption that, of course, we have to just promote that kind of fatherhood.
		It's very difficult to imagine a federal program for responsible motherhood.
		And so there is right in there, there's something of a deficit model, although it's called responsible fatherhood.
		The implication, of course, is that there's lots of irresponsible fatherhood.
		So I think even the framing is a bit difficult.
		But that's been around for a very long time.
		It's had bipartisan support.
		And the evidence for the effectiveness of those programs is candidly somewhat mixed.
		We've had some successes with some programs, less so with others.
		But I do think that it's very important that the government at all levels is supporting through paid leave policies, through flexible working policies, through healthcare policies, engaged and involved fatherhood.
		The challenge is to do that in a way that recognizes that today that means a lot of dads who are not living with the mother of the children.
		So the other part of those federal grants is healthy marriages.
		And so there's always been this connection between to be a responsible father, you have to be in a quote healthy marriage.
		And of course, that's not true anymore.
		Most kids to non-college educated parents are born outside of marriage.
		And so we have to kind of adapt our view of fatherhood and fatherhood policy.
		So for example, one of the things that our institute, I think, almost uniquely calls for in the US is specific paternity leave.
		So that dads should get leave as well.
		If we really think that dads are important as parents, why do they not get paternity leave?
		Now, of course, there's a whole issue about US paid leave generally.
		But if we're going to have paid leave, why shouldn't dads get paid leave as well as mums?
		And so it's one of the things we're pushing hard for.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Herbert is calling from Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Good morning, Herbert.
unidentified		Good morning.
		I'm interested in the comment the gentleman made in the beginning of before he started talking.
		He said men of colour.
		What the heck, you know, what does that have to do with anything?
		Men or men, idiot?
		Thank you.
richard v reeves ▲ ● ▼		Interesting.
		Did you call me an idiot there at the end?
		It's not the first time, Herbert, and I can assure you, I'm a father, so I'm used to that.
		Well, actually, it's a term that I don't really like, so I actually appreciate you calling me up on it, because I think the term in some ways, it disguises quite a lot of difference between different groups of men.
		But the reason I raise that in particular is because it's very clear that on some indicators, the outcomes are much worse for black men, for example.
		And so most, so just give you one example, living to 75 is seen as like a good lifespan.
		Most black men don't hit that margin.
		So the majority of black men don't make it to 75.
		There are huge life expectancy gaps for black men.
		The gap between black women and black men in schools and in universities is bigger than for any other group.
		So for every two black women going to college now, there's only one black man.
		And so when we think about this through a racial lens, the reason I do that is because I'm a researcher.
		And so I'm going to look and I'm going to say, okay, here's the average situation, but let's look at it for specific groups as well.
		So to give you a counterexample, the suicide rates are highest among white men.
		They're higher among white men, especially from rural areas, than they are amongst most other men.
		So the reason I raise that, Herbert, is because I think it's important as a policymaker to just look at the differences within groups.
		And by the way, that's just as true of women as it is of men.
		Like Hispanic women have very different challenges to white women, for example.
		And so the reason I raise that is because I'm a researcher and that's where the data takes me.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Renee is calling from Iowa.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Good morning, Renee.
unidentified		Good morning.
		Thank you for taking the call.
		I went to a women's college and I graduated in 1999.
		And I did take some women's studies courses.
		And there was always a lot of division between the women and the men.
		There were men who attended these classes and there were a lot of volatile conversations.
		I'm wondering if a shift of perspective to just gender studies would be more beneficial to us.
		Because in my view, there are many genders, not only two.
		And so it would encompass everyone and kind of take the easy exit of blame out of these conversations.
richard v reeves ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, thank you for that, Renee.
		I mean, I actually think in the long run, we might be able to get to a world where we do think about gender gaps, gender equality, gender studies in this very even-handed way that you've just described.
		Right now, when you say gender gap, gender equality, or in most cases, gender studies, that's really a euphemism for women's studies or women's health or women's gender gaps.
		And so I like that idea.
		I like the idea that we'll actually look just as much at what's happening to men and boys and masculinity and manhood as we are about women.
		But that's not the case right now.
		And so just to give you a specific example, if you look at all of the reports on gender equality that get most attention, so you get this ranking of countries, for example, the Global Gender Gap Report, it doesn't actually even consider gender gaps the other way.
		So if there are gender gaps that are disfavoring boys and men, they don't count in that report.
		So they're really women's gender equality reports, and they should really be called women's empowerment reports.
		And so I like what you've said because it would bring an even-handedness to this.
		One of the things I proposed was that the Gender Policy Council in the White House should not be abolished as it has been under the new administration, but that it should be expanded to include boys and men because under the Democrats, the Gender Policy Council refused to acknowledge or treat any issues about boys and men.
		It said, no, with the Gender Policy Council, we do women.
		So I like what you're saying, Renee, but I have to tell you that politically, we're a very long way from that point now.
		And I'd love a world where if you said gender, everyone just didn't immediately think women.
		That's kind of my work right now.
		But right now, it was impossible to get the Democrats to think about expanding the remit of the Gender Policy Council so that it would do what you've said to do boys and men as well and think about it both directions.
		But of course, then the result of that was that when the new administration came in, they abolished it entirely.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Staying on the topic of education, Kristen in Portland, Maine sent in this question.
		Says, good morning, Mr. Reeves.
		I believe it would really help if more men were teachers in our public schools.
		Currently, only 23% of teachers are men.
		A good teacher can be a positive role model and a life changer.
		Men should really be equally represented as teachers.
		What are your thoughts on this?
richard v reeves ▲ ● ▼		I could not agree more with you, Kristen.
		It's a big part of our work.
		We're signing up a whole new program around this.
		You're right.
		It's 23% male now.
		When Ronald Reagan was president, it was 33%.
		So we've seen a 10 percentage point drop in the share of teachers who are male.
		I agree with you that they're role models.
		My own son is now a fifth grade teacher in Baltimore City, and I think of him a lot.
		He's not telling the boys and girls in his class what it means to be a man.
		He's showing them.
		And I think showing, not telling, is important.
		The other thing is that male teachers are much more likely to be coaches for various reasons, but they're like about three or four times more likely to be coaching after school.
		And we have a decline in the share of boys playing sport, partly because of a decline in the share of coaches.
		But I agree with Kristen.
		I think there are hugely important male role models.
		And I actually get quite frustrated when politicians talk about the need for positive male role models in many of these boys' lives.
		You say, I agree, senator or governor.
		And then I ask, what's your policy to increase the share of male teachers then?
		And usually the answer is nothing.
		Just as we have programs and policies to increase the share of women in STEM professions, scholarships, outreach programs, marketing campaigns, institutions to get more women into engineering and tech, and we need to do a lot better, especially on tech, but we have an infrastructure now to do that.
		Where's the equivalent infrastructure?
		Where are the equivalent policies to get more men into teaching?
		And by the way, mental health care.
		And I'm pleased to see a number of governors now really stepping up and saying, we've got to do something about this.
		We cannot just let the male share continue to decline.
		So I completely agree, Kristen.
		And if you have any influence at all over local policymakers, this can happen at a school level, at school district level, at state level, a federal level.
		If we can't do something about that and getting more men into our classrooms, then I'm a little bit skeptical about the seriousness of politicians talking about this, frankly.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		How does a man's job shape their well-being?
richard v reeves ▲ ● ▼		Massively.
		And we're still in a place now where it is true that for men right now, more of their identity, more of their sense of self is wrapped up in their job.
		Even as we've moved to a world where, as I said earlier, there's much more economic equality between men and women.
		It is still very important for men to feel that they are.
		They don't have to be the sole provider anymore.
		But I think that feeling like they're economically contributing is very important to men.
		And I'll also add that work provides a structure and a place and a purpose for all of us.
		But it seems to be particularly true for men, perhaps because at least right now, women are still able to, on average, derive more of their sense of self from their role in the family than men are.
		I hope that that will change in the long run.
		But right now, that's a bit less true for men.
		And so what that means is that unemployment, just at the average, does hurt men psychologically a little bit more than it does women.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Sharon is calling from Dave City, Florida.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Good morning, Sharon.
unidentified		Good morning.
		Good morning, C-SPAN listeners and Mr. Reese.
		Thank you for what you do.
		In this country right now we have a very pressing urgent problem with school shootings and other violent crimes against innocent people that are predominantly committed by young men.
		So we hear a lot about mental health issues and it being that being a product of that.
		But women have mental health issues also and they don't just go grab a gun and blow away innocent people to solve their problems.
		So I see it more as an aggressive problem and a societal problem on how we raise our young boys.
		And perhaps we need to focus more on them being empathetic and maybe concerned a little more about their fellow citizens.
		So I'd like to ask Mr. Reeves, like, what do you see as an answer to solving this and the vicious cycle being, you know, coming to an end?
		Because it is a very pressing problem in this country.
		We've seen more and more of it.
richard v reeves ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		Yeah, thank you for that question, Sharon.
		It's true everywhere that and always that the overwhelming majority of violent crime is committed by men, especially young men.
		So that's true in every human society and it always has been.
		And so there's clearly something there, which means that if you're looking at perpetrators of violent crime, it's typically 95% of the perpetrators will be men.
		I think the question then becomes, and that share doesn't change with the level of crime, right?
		So even as you bring down crime, and I think it's important to note that over the last few decades, violent crime rates have gone down very significantly in the US, have almost halved overall.
		And so we are seeing a long-run decline in overall violent crime.
		I do want to stress that because I sometimes think there's a tendency for us to forget the kind of broader picture, which is that we have made significant progress in reducing violent crime.
		As to what happens then in a particular country or a particular situation, unfortunately one of the reasons why, of course, the US has this issue with school shootings is because of the prevalence of an access to guns in the US.
		You don't see the same in other nations where there's just much prevalence, more prevalence.
		And I will add that, of course, even given the concerns about these horrific events, young men are still very much more likely to use a gun to take their own lives than they are to take somebody else's.
		It's a big risk factor for suicide as well.
		And I just think the challenging thing here is to acknowledge the tragedy of these horrific events, but not to make the mistake of assuming that that's indicative of what's happening to our young men in general.
		And that's a very difficult thing to do.
		It's almost a difficult thing to say because you don't want to sound like you're in any way diminishing the tragedy of those events.
		But that is nonetheless, by definition, an infinitesimally small minority of those young men.
		And I'm very worried that we don't in some way sort of indicate that that could be that potentially they're all headed in that direction when obviously that's not true given the decline in the rate of violence overall.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		You've mentioned suicide a couple times when it comes to this group.
		Talk a little bit about the trend.
		How has it changed over the years?
richard v reeves ▲ ● ▼		One of the things that's really struck me is that there is this rise in suicide rates among men and among women in the US.
		So this is not just a male issue, but it's four times higher among men than it is among women.
		Is that up until about 2010, most of that rise was among middle-aged men.
		And so you saw it as men in their 40s and 50s.
		And that did seem to be related to what's happening in the economy and the difficulty we had around the Great Recession.
		Since 2010, that pattern has radically changed such that it's actually leveled off.
		the suicide rates have thankfully leveled off among middle-aged men.
		They haven't really gone down.
		I will say there's a bit of a race difference there too.
		They've leveled off less for white men.
		But they've really risen for young men.
		And so it's men under 30, men under 35 where we've seen this kind of really big rise in the loss of life from suicide.
		And in fact, by some estimations, that's actually higher now among younger men than it is among middle-aged men, which is, as far as I know, has never happened before.
		So I think it's a different question where you're starting to lose your 25-year-olds to suicide for reasons that, frankly, we don't yet fully understand.
		But I think it comes back, Tammy, to your earlier point about isolation and a script and a sense of not really knowing what your place in society is.
		I think that's the gap that we need to fill.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Robert is calling from Fayetteville, North Carolina.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Good morning, Robert.
unidentified		Good morning.
		Mr. Reeves, I just want to commend you on what you explained to the people because that's what I've been talking about at my grassroots level ever since the 70s up until this time.
		And when people, people would say a couple of decades.
		No, this has been going on ever since the 70s and now it's bearing some really bad fruit.
		And I hate to say I told you so, but so I turn around and if I will develop, I'm developing a program of mentorship with young kids.
		It was called the Cadet Corps in New York.
		I'm working with some people.
		But I would love to continue to collaborate with you because I'm in the fight now and I'm 69 years old and I get people knocking on my door and I'm mentoring them.
		And I've seen everything that you said.
		Thank you very much, sir.
richard v reeves ▲ ● ▼		Well, let me first of all thank you for your work, Robert.
		Mentorship is incredibly important for young men and young women.
		One of the challenges right now is a lack of male mentors.
		So if you take a formal mentoring program like Big Brothers, Big Sisters, they actually have a much longer waiting list for the boys than they do for the girls.
		It's very often 12 months for the boys, three months for the girls, because they don't have enough male volunteers.
		That's why governors around the country are working on this.
		Recently, Governor Gavin Newsom issued explicitly a call to men and pledged to try and increase the share of men in those roles, get 10,000 more men in California into those roles.
		I think other governors will follow suit.
		Boys don't become men just with the passage of time, and I think it does require other men to do the work that you're doing.
		I will just say one thing about this has been going on for a while now, Robert, since the 70s.
		The challenge is that there is still quite a lot to do for women and girls.
		And in the 70s, the share of CEOs that were women, a Fortune 500 companies, was 0%.
		It's now 10% of CEOs are women.
		A third of our members of Congress are women.
		3% of venture capital goes to female firms.
		And the reason I'm doing that is because, in saying all of that, is because the challenge here, I think, for a lot of people is to think both of those thoughts at once.
		And the reason people can be resistant to the work around boys and men is because they somehow think that it means rolling back the gains of women and girls, that it's zero-sum.
		And that zero-sum thinking, I think, has really gotten in the way of positive work on this.
		I'm just as committed to continuing to do the work for women and girls, as I suspect you are, as to do the work for boys and men.
		But too often, folks, frankly, on the left and the right, say we have to choose, and that to be in favor of boys and men and worrying about them somehow means you're anti-women and girls, or vice versa.
		And that's just not true.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Barbara is calling from Blacksburg, Virginia.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Good morning, Barbara.
unidentified		Good morning, and thank you for C-SPAN.
		Some years ago, I remember seeing something like 60 Minutes where they did a feature on a timber frame temple in Japan.
		But every 20 years it was half of it was dismantled.
		The timbers were taken out and replaced by another generation of young people, young men I imagine at that time.
		And so every generation learned the craft of timber frame.
		And on our first trip out west, I remember meeting people who had worked on the WPA projects to build picnic shelters and welcome centers and restrooms.
		And they took such pride in the work that they had done over those decades before.
		And I'm wondering if instead of sending some young men and women for certain crimes to prison, maybe they would be better off being sent to a public works project that would benefit everybody, not just them, but all of the citizens of our country.
		I know I came from a family of carpenters and engineers, and we were always doing great do-it-your-home, do-it-yourself projects.
		And I just feel so sorry for someone who has ideas in their minds but are unable to carry it through because they don't have the skills.
richard v reeves ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, well, thank you for sharing that story.
		I'd heard the same story.
		I haven't seen it myself, but it's a rather beautiful tradition of each generation taking their part in building and rebuilding.
		What's the line about, you know, tradition exists to remind us of the things we would otherwise forget?
		And what it speaks to, I think, is this need for all of us to feel a role, all of us to feel like the community needs us, needs us to build, to rebuild, to raise our kids, etc.
		I think that the sense of feeling surplus to requirements, of feeling unneeded is fatal to everybody.
		And right now that's affecting, on average, more men than women, because at some very, very basic level, I think it's a bit less clear to men that the tribe needs us.
		This is a risky area to get into, but at some level, like if you, every sci-fi novel, every sci-fi movie, or you recolonize another planet, always sends way more women than men.
		Of course.
		You need more women.
		Women's role in keeping the tribe going is just more obvious.
		And I think to some extent more physical.
		I think that for men, we do need, to some extent, we need structure.
		We need a script.
		We need ways to find our place within society.
		Every society has worked very hard to figure out how to help boys become men.
		And it comes back to the earlier conversation that Robert was leading around mentorship, etc.
		I think that's incredibly important.
		And the other thing I'll say is just on average, one of the most striking findings in the research is that technical forms of learning, CTE as it's called, career and technical education, vocational apprenticeships, they're good for many girls and young women, but they're especially good for boys and young men.
		There's something about that more quote hands-on learning.
		And I'm using that advisedly.
		Don't mean putting all the boys in shop class, but boys and young men seem to do a bit better with more applied forms of learning rather than the abstract learning that we see in so many of our schools now.
		And so I'm just inspired by your story about the Japanese temples to think that actually there is something about the physical creation of things that just on average seems to appeal a little bit more to boys and young men.
		So that's, if we can't do Japanese temples, maybe we could invest more in vocational training.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Ian is calling from Orlando, Florida.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Good morning, Ian.
unidentified		Hey, good morning.
		So I. Sorry, one second I got on speaker.
		So I was wondering if you think there's any way that we can change the whole stereotype or stigma of how men are supposed to be just strong and not really react to their emotions.
		I'm 33, and for as long as I've been around, I haven't seen that really change.
		And I know that's pretty much been a thing for a couple of hundred years, probably longer at this point.
		And I figured it would have gotten better by now, but that is not something I've seen.
		So I'm just wondering if you have an opinion on that.
richard v reeves ▲ ● ▼		Thank you.
		Yeah, well, I'm sorry that you feel it hasn't changed.
		It is a real issue that some researchers refer to this as the man box.
		In other words, the box that we're kind of trapped within, and we're only supposed to behave a certain way.
		We're not supposed to show vulnerability or emotion, etc.
		And it's important to say that whilst men very often police men around that behavior, it's also true that women will sometimes police men around that behavior too.
		And so that leaves a lot of men quite confused.
		So John De La Volpe, who's a researcher, says that a lot of men are suffering from masculinity vertigo, which is on Monday you're being told you're too masculine and you need to cry more and be more emotional and more available and be more like a woman.
		And on Tuesday you're being told you're not masculine enough.
		You need to work out more, bulk up, go to the gym, eat more protein, be more assertive, etc.
		And then on Wednesday, you're back to being told that you're too masculine.
		So I do think we're in this really messy and difficult period of change now.
		I'm really encouraged by the fact that young men, at least in surveys and in my own experience and observation, have made real progress on this issue.
		That they are much less likely to come down hard on a friend for expressing emotion, et cetera, than would have been the case recently.
		So just a bit of data point on it, because I'm a data person.
		The share of boys in high school who've been in a physical fight has halved in the last 15 years or so, halved.
		I have three sons all in their 20s.
		None of them have been in a serious physical fight.
		I think that's an extraordinary change just in the space of a generation, which is this kind of change in physicality, physical violence, bullying, etc.
		So I'm sorry you don't feel it, Ian.
		I agree that there's much more to do.
		And to some extent, I think we have to model it.
		I also think that some of the figures who were getting most attention from young men, somebody like, I don't know if you know Jordan Peterson, but the Canadian psychologist who got a huge following, the guy's constantly weeping.
		He's constantly emoting.
		And so it's interesting how some of the figures who are dismissed as quite reactionary in many cases are actually modelling an incredible emotional vulnerability.
		Now, I'm not endorsing everything Jordan Peterson says, we have serious disagreements, but it is nonetheless interesting.
		I think that's part of his appeal.
		I think he actually is quite emotionally available.
		And we just need more politicians and leaders and teachers and coaches showing that you can actually do that as a man.
		But also, you can also not do it.
		You don't have to do it.
		Sometimes it can feel a little bit like an order to be more, to cry more, for example.
		We can't cry to order.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		We only have a couple minutes left, but for young men who may be listening or somebody who knows a young man who may be struggling with something we talked about today, feeling lost, a mental health challenge, maybe not knowing what they want to do for work or facing an addiction.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		What advice do you have for them or where can they go to get help?
unidentified		Yeah.
richard v reeves ▲ ● ▼		Well, there are obviously amazing resources online, AIBM.org, we act as a bit of a clearinghouse for some of this work.
		I've mentioned Movember, who are amazing mental health charity.
		If you're a man out there, maybe of a certain age, a little bit older, there is a boy or a young man in your life who you need to call or text right now and ask them, how are you?
		And then ask them again, how are you really?
		They will benefit from you reaching out.
		I guarantee you there is someone in your life right now, a nephew, a neighbor, a friend.
		Just think about who that is.
		And just know that you just reaching out to him could make a huge difference to that young man.
		Those boys, those young men need you.
		So do it now.
		Pick up your phone, call or text that boy or young man in your life you haven't been in touch with for a while.
		Number two, if you are a boy or a young man and you're kind of struggling, we need you.
		You're awesome.
		We can't do it without you.
		Our society needs you to flourish and do well.
		We've got your backs.
		We're on it.
		But don't think for a moment that we can do this without you.
		We need every single one of you to make a good society.
		And if you're struggling and you're worried about yourself, the best advice I've got is, and it's the advice my mother gave me, and I think she got it from my mother's Welsh, from a Welsh saint, which is try to do something for somebody else.
		Try to serve somebody else.
		Try to give somebody else what you think you most need right now.
		And in that act, you will find connection and you'll find purpose too.
		We need you to help each other.
		And so the call here is not to just look after yourself.
		This is not a call for self-care, important that it is.
		It's actually a call to service.
		We actually need our boys.
		We actually need our young men.
		We need them in our schools, our communities, and our families.
		So that would be my main message.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		We only have a minute or so left, but Jean is calling from Virginia.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Good morning, Jean.
unidentified		Good morning.
		Thanks for taking my call.
		I just, something I, you know, when I see gentlemen like this on the television and I see both sides talk about it, you know, a few months ago, there was a big discussion that the Democratic Party needed to win back, quote, beer-drinking guys who watch the NFL.
		That kind of insulted me because that sounded like the same code you'd hear for NASCAR dads.
		In other words, knuckle-dragging Neanderthals.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, yeah.
unidentified		Well, bad news is, and by the way, I lived in England for a number of years.
		I was an engineer in Formula One.
		Tell me that ain't toxic masculinity.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Gene, I'm sorry we're going to have to leave it there.
		We only have about 45 seconds left.
		Richard, I'll give you the last minute to respond.
richard v reeves ▲ ● ▼		It's not for me to be a political advisor, but you actually have to win all the votes you can get.
		And I don't know the numbers, but I suspect there are quite a few American men who drink beer and watch the NFL.
		And so it's a bad idea to rule them out altogether.
		But I agree there's a risk of stereotyping.
		I think the broader point here is that both parties need actually to be reaching out to men and women.
		I worry that we'll see the Democrats being increasingly seen as the women's party, the Republicans as a men's party.
		That would be a disaster for everybody.
		And so I want this to be a bipartisan issue where we try to win the votes of everybody.
		I want both sides competing for the votes of men and women.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Richard Reeves is author of the book of Boys and Men, Why the Modern Male is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do About It as well.
		As president of the American Institute for Boys and Men, you can find their work online at AIBM.org.
		Richard, thank you so much for being with us this morning.
richard v reeves ▲ ● ▼		Thank you.
unidentified		That was fun.
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