The Boy Crisis
A multi-partisan commission of many of the nation’s leading experts have articulated five components to the boy crisis, and suggested solutions, including the coordination of a White House Council on Boys and Men. See the right sidebar for the full proposal. Click here for a video explaining the crisis.
Why. A nationwide crisis of boys and men already exists. The Commission identifies five components:
• Education. Boys are behind girls in almost every subject, especially reading and writing. Yet boy-friendly programs (e.g., recess and vocational education) are being curtailed.
• Jobs. Our sons are not being prepared for jobs where the jobs will be. Yet women rarely marry men in unemployment lines.
• Fatherlessness. A third of boys are raised in father-absent homes; yet boys and girls with significant father involvement do better in more than 25 areas.
• Physical health. Life expectancy has gone from one to five years less for males than for females, yet federal offices of boys and men’s health are non-existent.
• Emotional health. Boys’ suicide rate goes from equal to girls to five times girls’ between ages 13 and 20, as boys feel the pressures of the male role.
Each of the five crisis components is potentially handled by a different department of the government; therefore coordination and prioritization is best handled at the White House level.
Short-Term Investment. One million dollars.
Long-Term Savings. Many billions of dollars. (For example, boys who are cared for become men who care for–men who pay taxes for schools rather than drain taxes for prisons.)
Quality-of-Life Savings. Priceless.
Timing. The mere presidential announcement of a White House Council on Boys to Men makes visible an invisible crisis. A White House Conference on Boys to Men to present “best practices” within one year after the Council is created.
Prominent Women Championing a White House Council on Boys and Men
The following women leaders, both conservative and liberal, either serve on the commission to create a White House Council on Boys and Men–to work with the already-formed White House Council on Women and Girls–or are taking a leadership role in petitioning President Obama to create a White House Council on Boys and Men.
Jennifer M. Granholm was the two-term governor of Michigan from 2003-2011. She currently teaches law and public policy at the University of California, Berkeley and is a regular contributor to “Meet the Press.” Jennifer is co-author (with husband Dan Mulhern) of A Governor’s Story: The Fight for Jobs and America’s Economic Future. She is an advisor to the Pew Charitable Trust and is a director for The Dow Chemical Company.
Dr. Christina Hoff Sommers is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. Before joining AEI she was a professor of philosophy at Clark University where she specialized in moral theory. Her academic articles have appeared in publications such as The Journal of Philosophy and The New England Journal of Medicine, Sommers is the author of Who Stole Feminism? and The War Against Boys—the latter was a New York Times “Notable Book of the Year.”