Adolescence and the Crisis of Masculinity

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0:43BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, it's Amol in the Today Podcast studio. We've had a lot of conversations in the Today programme office this week about a new Netflix drama called Adolescence. And around about this time, just last week, I was sat where I am now in the Today Podcast studio talking to two stars from adolescence, Stephen Graham and Erin Doherty, about their amazing TV series. It is all about a teenage boy who is accused of murdering a girl from his school. What's happening today in society where a young boy is stabbing a young girl to death? And it was something that I wanted to look at and something that we wanted to try and raise a bit of awareness to.

1:22And I just had this idea for these four episodes. Everyone says it's fantastic TV, but it also alights on a really big theme, which is back in the news. And that is what it is to be a boy and a man today. There's been lots and lots of concern about social media influencers, Andrew Tate, all the others, about the impact of smartphones on young boys. But there's also big global, local, national trends that are redefining what it is to be a man and what boys think being a man actually involves. And it was a former England manager, Gareth Sourcate, who by complete coincidence this week gave the Dimbleby lecture in which he argued that there is a crisis of masculinity.

2:01So that's what we're talking about on the Today podcast this week. What does it mean to be a young man today? And what can be done to help boys navigate and overcome the challenges they're facing on the path to manhood? I'm going to be joined by two people. And I should say I've thought long and hard about this. and I'm going to be joined by two people who've thought very long and hard about this, indeed written about it and made great programs too. They are Richard Reeves, who wrote a book called Of Boys and Men, which has proved very influential, and Catherine Carr, who spoke to school kids from across the UK for a superb Radio 4 documentary, which you should check out.

2:33It's called About the Boys. Right, let's do it.

2:51Richard, Catherine, welcome to the Today podcast. Good to be here. Thank you for having me. It's wonderful to have you both here. Thank you so, so very much. Richard, where are you right now? Right now, I'm in Asheville, North Carolina. What was it about Britain that made you leave America? Well, I was a political advisor to Nick Clegg, the former Deputy Prime Minister. So maybe that answers your question. I think that does answer the question.

3:18Catherine, what about you? Whereabouts are you at the moment? In Cambridge. Oh, wonderful. City I know and love. Thank you both very, very much indeed for joining us. This is such an important subject. We've been talking about it a lot on the programme over the past few days, really. And I know you guys have done some tremendous work, which I want to get into. Just before we dive into it, I should say that Adolescence is the most watched show on Netflix around the world over the past weekend. That gives you an idea of how much the issues have cut through. But it's also worth saying it is just a fantastic bit of television.

3:47It has a very particular take on boyhood and masculinity. It puts a lot of weight on what's going on in the online world. But let's just reflect as we start off on some of those issues. Catherine, what's your sense about before? I mean, you could peg this to adolescence, if you like, or more broadly. You did this series for Radio 4. What in broad terms is the issue or set of issues that are changing what it is to be a boy and how boys are thinking about becoming men? I think that's quite difficult to answer in a pithy way because there's so many things going on. If you look at adolescence, for example, the boy is 13.

4:21So unlike the boys I've spoken to in my latest series, who are 16, perhaps less time on the internet growing up online. But from the boys I spoke to, and I spoke to boys all over the UK, I think there was just a sort of, a bit of a void without being too overdramatic about what it is that they're supposed to be doing, looking like, acting like, emulating and one of the boys in the series was so clever that he said and I think that depends on geography I'm in Carmarthen so I can only see one way of being a boy physically and then I go online and I see other ways of being a boy which may be good and probably maybe not so good if I lived in a metropolis I think I could or a big city I think I could see lots of different ways of being a boy so it's not that the boys don't know what's sort of being done to them on some levels they do but they also are aware that there aren't that many places to look and people to look to yeah often yeah to show them and that's what it felt like to me and I'm only talking from first-hand conversations it's not research do you know it's such it's such an interesting point and it's such a fantastic contribution to your radio 4 series actually let's hear that clip this is what Catherine's talking about here we go well in my head I've always been brought up that um if you're going to be a good man you've got to look after your family you've got to look after a woman and never raise your hand to a woman.

5:41You see yourself as quite a kind of almost protecting figure, is that fair to say? Yeah. On social media, masculinity is expressed to you as strong, having loads of money, being really strong, being tall, and that can't be everyone. And when you try and be like that, then girls say to you they want an emotional person. You just don't know what the hell a man even is in today's society. This whole patriarchy that the girls complain about hasn't benefited men at all. It's just plummeted us down into, you know, men's mental health. 80 % of suicides are men, and I don't understand in what world they think that that means that we have such an advantage.

6:21People are pushing it more. Men should be more feminine if they want to be, or show, like, more feelings. I think it's an area thing as well. If I went to, like, a city, I think I'd find more people who are more in tune with their emotions than if I came to a more rural town. That is a selection of young male voices from Catherine's Radio 4 documentary about the boys. You can find that on BBC Sounds. It's a riveting listen. It sets up very nicely, Richard, the reasons for your getting into this whole issue. And just before we ask you, Richard, really to lay out the what of what's going on, what the crisis is, just give us the where and when.

6:58Where were you? What was going on in your life, Richard? Or what were you coming across culturally that made you think, actually, this is an issue that deserved a lot of really serious attention? Yeah, so I was raising three boys. I raised my sons in the UK and then in the US, right, I think, at the beginning of this move towards the online world. And so this is pre some of the more reactionary figures we've seen recently, like Andrew Tate, but certainly people like Jordan Peterson, we're getting a huge following his his book was in our house, 12 rules for life and of great interest to my to my sons.

7:30I used to joke with them that the first rule was make your own bed. Well, at least follow that one. But nonetheless, it was a discussion. It was, all I realised was that a conversation was happening about what does it mean to be a man today, like many of the people that Catherine interviewed. The question is not, is there going to be a conversation about what does it mean to be a man when we've seen this huge change in gender roles, shift to an online world, discussions about masculinity. The question is not, are we having that conversation? The question is, who's having that conversation? And I think the failure of lots of families and schools and institutions to have a good faith conversation about, tell us how you're feeling, tell us how you're thinking about this.

8:09What does it mean? Like Catherine did in her conversations. That has created a vacuum and a hunger, which has been filled by a lot of online figures. But the creation of the vacuum around that conversation is our fault for not having those conversations in a sympathetic and an open and a curious way with our boys and young men. And that has just driven them away too often we've engaged with boys with something closer to contempt than with curiosity and that has been that has fed the fuel um for the country online influencers your book richard is it's really terrific it's very very very engaging read i read it um closely when it came out and then i read it again before speaking to you on the today program and it's really in three parts as i if i could paraphrase it it's sort of it's the what is going on it's the why is it going on and then it's how to fix it could you just give us some of the overall indicators because you obviously look at it in a sort of transatlantic way there's a lot of common trends between america and the uk can you just spell out what is going on with boys obviously we focus a bit already on the online world but in educational attainment in workforce entry and so on there's a range of indicators suggesting some of what was solid uh 50 odd years ago two generations ago is no longer solid so what is going on with boys yeah i think the big story particularly for boys and young men is that the world of gender equality is almost reversed in many cases, certainly in schools and colleges.

9:32It's pretty well known by now that there is a significant gender gap in favour of girls and women. There are 60 % female now in both the UK and US and colleges, secondary schools, A-levels. There's a recent report from the Higher Education Policy Institute that lays this out very well. Just huge, actually it's true across the advanced economies now, just a massive gender gap in education. And that's now starting to feed into the labour market. I mean, you're really seeing young men being much more likely to be out of the labour market. The gender pay gap has actually closed for young workers, slightly reversed for 16 to 24-year-olds in the UK.

10:06Now, that's for one very good reason, which is women are doing a lot better. But it's also for one very bad reason, which is men are doing worse in terms of their wages. And then, of course, that has long-run implications for the family. We see more fathers struggling to be in their kids' lives. And so So across those different dimensions, the struggles of men, especially working class men, are real. They're not the confections of the online manosphere. These are real economic and social problems. The question is, how do we stop them becoming grievances? And the way you stop a problem from becoming a grievance is to not ignore it.

10:39And I think for too long, many boys and men have felt like those problems are being ignored, almost as if they couldn't have problems as men because men are the problem. And that framing, I'm afraid, has just created this very difficult situation in which many young boys and men find themselves, which is the cultural environment where we're just not taking seriously the problems of boys and men, while simultaneously continuing to take seriously the problems of women and girls. It's almost like we can't think two things at once. We're not allowed to care about both. And that has created a huge imbalance in the cultural messaging that too many young boys and men are hearing.

11:14and then they hear it amplified and confirmed by online reactionaries who tell them that society doesn't care about them. And if that sounds true to them, that's dangerous. Can I just ask you, Catherine, if you broadly concur with those different themes Richard raises as to explain what is going on? Because the evidence is clear, as he says, in terms of educational attainment, in terms of workplace entry. Is that your sense as well of what's going on, having spoken to as many teenagers as you have? it is I think what I sort of overwhelmingly felt was that the boys knew what was expected of them and it wasn't good it wasn't very much it wasn't good they weren't expected to excel a teacher who did this fantastic project up in Rochdale about closing the attainment gap in education said you know I looked at the research and it was like we were rewarding boys for just not being a prat and girls meanwhile were being very very good and having to work twice as hard to get a house point or a gold star and they expected so little of the boys that they just got rewarded for not being an idiot in class and he said so what he did was quite simple he just started respecting the boys more and expecting more from them and if they were a prat forgiving them and just sort of extending this grace to them and he closed the gap in his school in one year in a big school in Rochdale which is on the edge of a very big mixed estate and I thought isn't that interesting likewise just like Richard the idea for the series came about because of a conversation I heard well one was about sex and consent we can get onto that but one was broadly about a quite a young boy sort of head in hand saying if I go to another assembly on girls in STEM I don't know what I'm going to do because these are boys born into a world in which has been unfair for women and girls for a long time I'm a feminist I agree with that let's get women into STEM all of that but the sort of lag has been to then tell a story to young boys about well, there isn't space for you, maybe, or we're not talking about you, we're not focusing on you.

13:13And some kids in Commandment said, oh, yeah, we had a mental health... This isn't accurate, but it was funny, their perception. Yeah, we had like a month when we talked about girls' mental health. I think we had about like half an assembly for boys. It's that. Well, is that... Is the implication of what you're saying, Catherine, that there is a kind of... I don't want to... Almost, not feminist overreach, but the focus on a feminist... I mean, because a lot of people say, by the way, If you look around the world, the work of feminism is far from done. But there has been one of the main messages I took from Richard's book was that the message to young women these days from liberal feminism is a series of do's.

13:49Do you know, it's empowerment. Do do this. Do do that. You can be this. You can be that. You could do this. You could make you want to get to the moon. You could do it. Be anything you want to be. Whereas what a lot of boys are hearing is a series of don'ts. Don't be strong. Don't be a provider. Don't do traditional roles. and it's so interesting Catherine that in the clips that we heard it was one of the young boys who raised the word patriarchy now I don't know I don't think I knew what patriarchy meant when I was 16 but this young boy you spoke to clearly did and it made him feel bad yeah I think it's what Richard said really can't we be imaginative and nuanced enough to look after all of our young people at the same time and I don't think it's a feminist overreach I don't think the pendulum has swung too far I don't think it's swung you talk about a gender gap pay gap closing for you You know, younger people, well, it hasn't closed for my age, so I will continue to be furious about that.

14:38Thank you very much. But I just think it's almost like some of the noise around the very positive messages for encouraging girls and women to reach for whatever it is they want to reach for has sort of just left a silence, really, for boys to be able to be whatever kind of boy they want to be. maybe strong, maybe into something much more traditionally feminine in air quotes, maybe sporty, maybe not sporty. Can't we be intelligent enough to raise young people in a variety of different ways together? Because as one boy says in the series, it's not girls against boys, it should be girls and boys against the problem.

15:18So one problem is the zero-sum thinking that says, you know, whatever's good for women has to be bad for men. So that zero-sum thinking is bad and damaging. That seems common sense. But Richard, I mean, you're someone who used to work for the Lib Dem, Deputy Prime Minister, someone who's written a biography of John Stuart Mill. Is the problem here that sometimes a liberal message, which is be anything you want to be, is more confusing than the older, more traditional message, which is be strong, provide for your family? It is more difficult when we've lost those clear cultural roles. It was much easier for my dad, who knew he was going to be the breadwinner.

15:55There was no question about that. And when he lost his job, worked in manufacturing, he had to get another job, right? There wasn't this sort of juggling and this question mark over the male role. Now, that's a wonderful thing in principle. And for those who have the skills and opportunities to navigate this new world, we've had much more choice as men than our fathers and certainly our grandfathers did. But I think we have to be honest about the fact that it is harder. It takes more work. and improvising that role as opposed to having it handed down to you is just culturally more difficult. And so I don't think we have to reconstruct these old roles or prescribe the one way of being a man or a woman.

16:34That's been huge progress. But we do have to communicate a positive message to both men and women, which is we need you. And we might need you in some ways that are subtly different to each other without in any way giving up the goal of equality. So for example, I think that we just don't say enough about the importance of fathers. not as heads of household or necessarily as breadwinners, but fatherhood is an incredibly important institution. And I just don't think we talk enough about that. It's kind of taken for granted. And so that's an example of cultural messaging that we just need to make sure that, as you just said a moment ago, Amal, was that we don't just tell don'ts to our boys.

17:09I think that the sense that a lot of young men and boys have is not being sure that they're going to be needed. And they're not going to be needed in the same way as in previous generations, thank goodness. but if we give them the sense that maybe they're surplus to requirements maybe we're not going to need you does the labor market need you does the family need you do your kids need you that sense of being unneeded is what leaves i think a lot of young men feel adrift and so for all the problems of the old stereotypical unfair role models they did very clearly communicate to both men and women why we need you now we've unraveled a lot of that which is good and but we've said to women still need you need to be in stem or to do this and so it's basically about sending this joyful empowering message to women and girls which i am here for without in any way stopping doing that for boys but not in the old way and i think that's a really difficult problem but just because it's a difficult problem doesn't mean we should duck it and leave it to andrew tate so that's in the culture can i ask you richard about the economics of this we talked about cultural messaging about the difference between the do's of feminism and the don'ts that a lot of young boys are hearing there There are some, what do you tell me?

18:15What are the deep underlying economic trends that are leading to this kind of confusion and dislocation among young boys? I mean, I would point to sort of three broad umbrellas that you might want to mention. One is the weakened or attenuated connection between physical hard labor and providing for your family. And that might well be a good thing. People might say it's a good thing you don't have to go and work in coal mines as once you did and break your back and sell your physical labor. But that had a clear masculine message, perhaps, to previous generations. Secondly, is that we have, as we're discussing a lot on the Today programme at the moment, a huge challenge in this country with the sharp rise in benefits and welfare and social security going to people of working age, in particular young people, in particular young men, dropping out of the workforce.

19:02And then the third thing is that women, as you say, have entered the workplace in a massive way since the war. And most people would say that's a very, very, very good thing. But it did have one economic consequence, which is that it meant that men lost their monopoly on the workplace, which you might say is a very good thing, but it might be dislocating. So what are those economic trends that are creating the cultural messaging you're talking about, Richard? Yes, the way I think about this is we've seen a coincidence of different trends. You've seen the significant removal, almost removal, of many of those traditional male industries.

19:34Certainly a serious decline in the kinds of jobs that, I mean, in my family, on my mother's side, there were slate miners for as long as anybody can remember. Going down into a slate mine was a job that definitely rewarded those with more physical strength and arguably with more of a risk appetite. And maybe the people who you said in the end you could do without should the worst happen. That's gone away, by and large. And that's a good thing. It's good that I'm very pleased that my sons don't have to go down the slate mine and I didn't have to go down the slate mine and they have more choices.

20:07They can be as they are a teacher and a marketeer and whatever the third one's going to be. But that shock to the labor market has disproportionately affected the sorts of jobs that men traditionally did. That's true. It is also true that women have entered the labor market and as a result of that have achieved close to what that wave of feminism wanted, which is more economic independence for women. As Gloria Steinem said, we have to make marriage a choice rather than a necessity. That's great. Those two things haven't caused each other in any way, but they have created a new world where the jobs that your dad and granddad did probably aren't there anymore.

20:44Oh, and by the way, your wife and or girlfriend might be able to look after herself. Those two things have coincided, I think, to create this huge question mark over what it is to act as a man today as an adult man, what it means to go from boy to man. But the last thing I want to say on this is that the irony is that so many young men and young women feel that their interests are pitted against each other. And I think that on different sides of the political spectrum, what you find is the online reactionaries in particular saying to young men, you're struggling, that's the fault of women. But I would say that on the other side, there's been a tendency to say to young women, you're struggling, and that's the fault of the patriarchy and the men and mansplaining and toxic masculinity.

21:27And there's a certain savage irony to the fact that young people today should be arm in arm. They should be working shoulder to shoulder because that generation is being somewhat screwed economically, men and women. and so there's something quite bizarre about the fact that 25 year old men and women are seeing each other as the enemy when in fact they should be allies in an economy and in the labour market that is actually screwing them both in different ways and that actually their interests are much more aligned economically. Catherine would you go along with that? Yeah I really I really would I mean I spoke to much younger boys and I haven't done the economic research but it's interesting that even at the age of the boys I spoke to, between sort of 13 and 19, they were aware that girls had messaging that was very anti-men.

22:17So one said, you know, I was more interested in playing Hot Wheels in year seven and I was at school thinking about playing Hot Wheels. And what did I hear? All men must die. You know, the idea that toxic always goes with masculinity and male always goes with privilege. It's like we don't unpick these things and think what elements of masculinity could be considered toxic we just sort of say it together and boys hear it of course they hear it and so this boy at the age of 13 was hearing these terms from the internet from girls being bandied around and he was quite shocked and upset and thinking am I am I am I the baddie I didn't realize I was the baddie like I'm literally 13 years old I haven't done anything yet I don't think that makes me the baddie and so that sort of combative dialogue is set up so I think what was interesting about the series is the teacher I've mentioned already from Cardinal Langley School in Rochdale was one thing.

23:08Another thing was a much earlier intervention at the Oasis network of schools in a primary school where they took boys out from reception onwards to do one-on-one talking about emotions and what's difficult and what makes you sad and let you know they took kids away from literacy numeracy and all the rest of it. After a year what happened? Steve Chalk said the SATS results went through the roof because these kids were learning to sort of regulate and communicate and understand what they felt and why they felt it. Steve Chalk is the founder of, I think it's a schools trust called the Oasis Schools Trust, and he's a very influential figure in modern British education.

23:42Yeah, and the third thing is sort of tethered to Steve Chalk because he does that, right? He's just set up a secure unit for boys in the criminal justice system. He does all of these fantastic things, but actually if you ask him how he describes himself, he's a youth worker. And that was the main takeaway from my series that I felt was the the more marginal angrier boys who had bigger challenges and fewer role models and a greater hill to climb whatever it is you want to have you want to put it the ones that we managed to get to talk to we managed to get to talk to them because they were in projects they were in Dance United Yorkshire they were at Dr M's in Carmarthen they were at the Oasis they had people who provided them with space to holistically care for them listen to them talk to them listen to them again and kind of be role models but not in a sort of like here's your football coach it's you know all community and I there's not very many of those places and it's no accident that Steve Chalk is a youth leader and he's doing what he's doing it's no accident so you're saying there's a sort of class dimension and the kids from poorer backgrounds are the one who the ones who are likely to perhaps lose the most from this some of these narratives But can I ask you, Catherine, how you actually sell an attractive 21st century vision of masculinity to these boys?

25:00Because if I really, I was thinking in preparation for this, rereading Richard's book, listening to your series. If I think about the attractive sell of masculinity over the eras across cultures, whatever, I think of Hollywood in the age of the great, you know, Cary Grant and Fred Astaire and these sort of beautiful kind of manicured figures from Hollywood that came down from the gods and were on our screens. If I think of Bollywood in the 1980s and 90s, I've got Indian heritage. I think about, you know, the icons of Bollywood cinema. They always had enormous material success. Andrew Tate has enormous material success.

25:33He drives a Bugatti. He's got something called the Hustle University. He's rich. And if you want to make the case and advocate for a different sort of modern manhood, you still have strength, you still provide, but you provide in slightly different ways, like being there emotionally for your kids or doing nappies, a subject close to my heart because I've got four young kids. How do you sell that in a way that really appeals to young boys? Because if I'm really honest, I hear what you guys are saying, so I was very rational in your analysis. I'm trying to work out how you persuade young boys that it's cool, sexy, strong, important and noble to change nappies at two in the morning.

26:13isn't it sort of what we've been saying all along it's about men and women working together and having better relationships like it might be hard obviously to explain to a much younger boy about the value of a of a great relationship when you're older where things are equitable and your wife might like you more because you pull your weight but actually that's what you're working towards isn't it and that doesn't mean that you can't at the same time you know be ambitious or play rugby or do a physical job it's not a zero sum of course not but I just love the idea that through the sorts of interventions I've been talking about through the sort of youth work that is being done patchily unfortunately that you might help young people see that it really is mainly about relationships better relationships and listening and talking to each other I just feel like if you reduce it to something I don't know if you reduce it to anything it just becomes problematic because it just becomes like a sort of football to kick about and it's not that and the kids were not like that I will say overwhelmingly the kids I spoke to gave me an enormous sense of hope and I carried that hope around with me alongside a tremendous sense of having failed them pretty badly.

27:30Richard, what's the vision of manhood, other than your glorious self, what's the vision of manhood that you're selling to your boys? Well, back at you. I mean, I think the first thing is that kids believe their eyes more than their ears. And so it's not about the words, it's about what they see. I did not sit my boys down and have seminars on modern masculinity. But I hope that by seeing I was a stay-at-home dad for a while, my wife and I kind of shared various things. We didn't do everything the same, to be clear, but I hope that they saw from the way I treated her, the way I treated the world, like, oh, okay.

28:02But I was also a coach, a scout leader, did stuff with them that my wife would not have done with them. And I think it's quite important that we don't think that equality requires androgyny, and that we don't think that men are sort of slightly defective women, and that we use the female standard for everything, including parenting against which to judge men. And so, for example, I've just been learning about fatherhood. And what's very interesting is that fathers get a rise in oxytocin, you know, the so-called love hormone from being with their kids, as mothers do, but they get it from something different.

28:39Mothers tend to get it from like cuddling, very close, very, you know, skin-on-skin contact. And dads get it when they throw their kids up in the air and then catch them again, right? The kid squeals, the dad laughs, et cetera. And their love hormone goes up. And so next time you see a dad throwing his kid up in the air, know that he is bonding with his kid on a hormonal level every bit as much as a mother who is nursing her baby. And so I think that's just a beautiful example of the fact that most of what parents do is the same, but some of it's a bit different, and that dads have something a little bit different to bring to the party.