Boys need men

I asked a Big Brother once about what he did with his "Little." He said they liked to go to the hardware store, maybe buy something for a project they could do together, maybe just wander around and look at stuff. "It sounds silly," he said.

It sounded great. A study had just come out finding that boys matched with Big Brothers did better in the long run than boys who'd been put on a wait list and never got their match. It made a difference.

But many boys don't have a man who will take them to the hardware store to look at stuff. And the groups that formed in the early 20th century to support boys are having trouble finding male volunteers, write Robert D. Putnam and Richard V. Reeves in a New York Times op-ed.

Boys have fallen behind girls in school, and now earn only 41 percent of college degrees. Young men struggle to qualify for a steady job. "One in 10 men aged 20 to 24 is effectively doing nothing — neither enrolled in school nor working," twice the rate in 1990, they write. "Marriage rates have collapsed in lower-income communities." But suicide rates are rising for young men.

In the early 20th century, worried about boys skipping school, hanging out on the streets and getting caught up in crime, the Progressives founded an array of organizations, including Big Brothers (1904), the Federated Boys’ Clubs (1906), Boy Scouts (1910) and 4-H (1912), Putnam and Reeves write. "Crucial to all of these civic innovations were mentors, especially male mentors — scoutmasters, coaches, pastors, Big Brothers and the like."

Most of the groups founded to serve boys are now coed. Boy Scouts is Scouting America: about 20 percent of members are girls, write Putnam and Reeves. Including the all-female Girl Scouts, "there are 50 percent more girls than boys in scouting."

"Most Y.M.C.A. members are female, and more than two-thirds of Y.M.C.A. employees — including, strikingly, all six senior executives — are women," they write. "The Y.W.C.A. remains a single-sex organization with an explicit mission to empower women."

When these groups try to serve boys, they have trouble recruiting enough male volunteers. Men are less likely to volunteer to work with kids, in part because of "the fear of being seen as a potential predator," Putnam and Reeves write. "Only 20 percent of young 4-H volunteers are men," and "there are almost twice as many women as men signing up to be a mentor through Big Brothers Big Sisters."

"Historically, sports have provided boys with structure, mentorship and camaraderie, often in a single-sex environment, especially as all other extracurricular activities skew toward girls," they write. But male coaches are in short supply. Only 41 percent of high school boys play a sport, down from 50 percent in 2012, and the share has dropped to 25 percent for boys from lower-income families.

Putnam and Reeves hope to match the "lost boys" with young men who are "hungry for a sense of purpose and for opportunities to contribute to society," and willing to serve as mentors, coaches and tutors. Older men could be useful too.

I really hope we can stop talking about masculinity as "toxic," and stop trying to fix boys by making them more like girls.

By the way, Dave Barry has wise words about "mankeeping" and why men don't talk about their feelings. "Men are reluctant to share our feelings, in large part because we often don't have any. . . . As a man who has spent many, many hours in the company of other men in situations where for whatever reason, such as tequila, we felt totally free to express ourselves — to reveal what was really going on, deep down inside us, as men — I believe I am being completely accurate when I say: Not much."