Breakpoint
Author: John Stonestreet, and Glenn Stanton
A few weeks ago, a New York Times op-ed piece declared “America has a masculinity crisis.” Today on Breakpoint, Glenn Stanton, the director of Global Family Formation Studies at Focus on the Family, discusses the state of young men in American culture:
Scott Galloway, a NYU business professor and manhood guru on the Left, recently told Ross Douthat on his Interesting Times podcast, “I worry that we’re evolving a new species of asocial, asexual males.” Galloway is not alone in his concern. It is well established that men are floundering today like never before. But is the picture wholly negative?
The Institute for Family Studies has released the second part of their essential two-part series (part one here) taking inventory of how young men are doing today. They noted, “We find that a large majority of men (73%) believe that in recent decades it has become harder to know what it is to be a man.” Working from a nationally representative YouGov sample of 2,000 young men, ages 18-29, IFS explained their aim “was to allow young men to express themselves on a range of personal issues.”
Part one of this report, released last March, found that a notable majority of young men today desire to be married and be fathers, with 68% and 62% reporting this longing respectively. Encouragingly, young men feel both are important milestones in becoming good men. Yet, 21% of men are unsure they want to marry, but only 10% currently express no interest. Sadly, 59% of young men are not presently in a romantic relationship.
Matchmakers should get busy helping change this because marriage and the generation of babies don’t happen unless boy meets girl.
Young men are not their parents’ self-absorbed basement dwellers. A full 89% agreed that being a man “involves strength, responsibility and leadership” and just fewer at 85% believe being a man “requires a willingness to sacrifice for others.”
IFS found “two-thirds of young men view financial independence from parents and being able to provide for others as either ‘extremely’ or ‘very’ important for becoming an adult.” They see this as a fundamental prerequisite to becoming the good husband and father most of them aspire to.
Nor are they slackers. Young men report relatively high levels of satisfaction with the work they do. A full 42% saying they are “very satisfied” at work while another 46% say they are “somewhat satisfied.” Only 12% said they were “very or somewhat dissatisfied.”
Part two of this report, released in early August, looks at important social aspects of contemporary manhood and hopefully appraises young American men as “demoralized, but not defeated.” This demoralization is not insignificant to be sure. Nearly half of young men today (43%) agree that “I am inclined to think that I am a failure.” This is certainly not good news, but it means they feel they are not living up to their own expectations.
Most troubling, a quarter of men today say they feel lonely “all/most of the time” (25%) or isolated (25%). Only 48% say they feel “loved or wanted by others” all or most of the time and only 20% feel this way “never or not often.” Not surprisingly, young men who work and/or go to school are much less likely to feel isolated and lonely, with work providing greater social connection and satisfaction over school.
Most interestingly, IFS scholars found marriage and fatherhood are not a ball and chain. Men who are married with children have richer and more rewarding social connections. Young married dads are most likely to say they have “never” or seldom felt lonely in the past 30 days at 68%, while husbands without kids yet were the second highest at 60%. Being secular, out of school, and not working had greater association with being lonely “all or most of the time” in the last 30 days—at 29% for those with no faith and no school, and 32% for those unemployed. Only 13% of married dads felt lonely that often, with marriage and fatherhood cutting such feelings by more than half!
Married fathers among this 18- 29-year age group were also most likely to report having a larger number of close friends. Those with strong faith and those with at least a bachelor’s degree were the runners-up in the friend race behind married dads. Forty-two percent of young men in the survey reported two or fewer close friends. Yet, 31% of husbands and 36% of fathers reported this lower number of friends.
Marriage and fatherhood give men real, essential purpose, connecting them to a larger and more dynamic network of rewarding and purposeful friendships. This is another reason we must work to connect more men to wives and children.
That was Glenn Stanton, director of Global Family Formation Studies at Focus on the Family.