Why So Many Men Are Struggling - And What Helps (with Gary Barker)

0:05Today's podcast episode is sponsored by KORU Kids.

0:09Elliott:Hello and welcome to To Be A Boy with me, Joeli Brilly. And me, Elliott Ray. Today we are joined by Gary Barker, the CEO of Ecumundo, one of the world's leading organisations working at the intersection of gender equality, masculinity and social justice. For more than two decades, Gary has been at the forefront of global research into the lives of boys and men, not from a place of blame or panic, but from a belief that gender equality only works when it includes everyone. His work has shaped policy, practice and public debate across more than 30 countries, influencing how governments, schools, health systems and communities think about masculinity, care and connection.

0:56Elliott:Their latest report, The State of UK Men in 2025, offers one of the clearest and most unsettling snapshots we've seen of men's lives today It reveals deep financial insecurity, widespread anxiety and distress and a profound sense of isolation Even as men overwhelmingly say that friendship and connection are central to what it means to be a man It's a report full of contradictions, pain, and also possibility. Gary Barker, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for having me. I feel like I want to engage you to introduce us all the time. That was a great summary of what we do. Thank you for that. I will follow you around on all those planes, Gary, and introduce you wherever you want me to be.

1:47Elliott:Firstly, because I think a few people that are listening won't have heard of Acumundi, so it'd be great if you could tell us a bit about what you do. Yeah. So we work on research, advocacy, programmatic approaches to promoting healthier ideas about manhood. Boys, young men, fathers. We do this in the U.S. and partner in about 20 countries. I started the organization, our predecessor organization in Brazil, doing direct community-based work with lots of great activists and community-based workers. And we've been doing that work for a long time, engaging governments, UN agencies, media, and how to have conversations.

2:27Yeah, about how do we promote the best in men? There's about 20 of us who do this work. Most of us are based in Washington, D.C., where I am.

2:36Elliott:And you've been doing this for such a long time. It must be really fascinating for you to see such an international sea change in the way we talk about boys and men. Yeah, it's, you know, it does feel like there's been a wake up call, right? If you are a man living this confusion, if you're a parent, a partner, a teacher, you are seeing there is something weird up with boys and men. How do we make sense of it? We've been thinking about it for a long time. I think it feels like what was like an isolated conversation or sort of a conversation among specialists. it's now the conversation at the dinner table um used to be when i said i'd worked on masculinities you know somebody would scratch their head in the airport check-in line now there's like an hour-long conversation you know until we're getting off the plane or whatever so yeah there's a wake-up call i wish it was because things are going you know smashingly well but it feels like a lot of the conversation is because we're deeply worried and there's good reason to be worried Yeah.

3:42Elliott:So you've done this really, I mean, fascinating and groundbreaking report alongside Beyond Equality, which many of us will know of Beyond Equality. We've had them on the podcast. They're a brilliant UK based organization and it's exploring the state of men in the UK. So give us a bit of background on the report, who you interviewed and what you were wanting to understand better. Yeah. So we've been doing these reports. We've got a global platform called the State of the World's Men. The UK is part of the first wave of that. We've done this in the US. It's happening in Brazil. It was just in Australia where we're also going to carry it out before the, well, early next year.

4:23So it is becoming an international study following up on some previous ones that we do. We do nationally representative samples, men and women ages 18 to 45. So we've got big enough samples in the countries we look at to be able to make comparisons across age groups, as well as to cover social class, ethnic background, etc. So we feel all that means to say we feel secure about the data. Obviously, questionnaires have all their challenges, but we feel secure about the data in terms of what they tell us and what they seem to represent.

4:58Elliott:Yeah, it's really good to know it's not rep. I'm a bit of a data geek. I'm a bit obsessed with data and I find it frustrating when people put out data and it's not nationally represented. No, we've got big enough numbers. I mean, can give you the samples. We've got, what did we do? 2 ,130 respondents from the UK. So that's a robust number to be able to say that we feel confident about it. We test the questionnaire ahead of time. The items have been used in a number of settings. Some of them come from standardized scales that we and other researchers have used and validate. That is, they seem to capture what people really believe with all the caveats of survey research.

5:39Elliott:And I was reading this report last week. I was reading it actually while watching my son do his karate lesson. I found it utterly devastating. I have to say, I came home and I immediately started relaying some of it to my partner. I mean, it shows lots of things, but it shows that 91 % of people in the UK say being a friend is the defining trait of masculinity. That gave me some joy. Yeah. Nearly two thirds of men feel they have to look out for themselves because no one has their back. How do you explain that gap between what men value and what they actually experience? Well, that's the big contradiction or these paradoxes that we face as men, right?

6:21The other, you know, that 91 % believe that being a friend is the key. I mean, it was followed closely by those who say, I've got to be a provider, which was the first, you know, that came in first in the U.S. and comes in first in most countries. Right. You know, the the world we step into says, all right, you know, this economic market is really not very stable, but your worth is measured on how much you can earn and what kind of job that you secure. good luck and you know if you fail at it well you know for you um you know in our kind of individualistic world we sort of believe that's your character failing instead of the system itself so you know men have this thing in their head that you know i've got to be this provider even now it's like i've got to get rich quick right i've got to have you know the flashy clothes that cool car that ability to have you know um lots of dollar signs or pound signs in my bank account at a very young age or I'm nothing, right?

7:19There's not, you know, what's the default?

7:21Elliott:Yeah. Well, that part really worries me of how much men feel like nobody's got your back, you're on your own, go provide, you know, make it on your own. At the same time, what beats in our heart is we want to be connected and we find in our mates, right? The kind of this possibility for deep connection. We're certainly having lots of fraught, you know, challenges in terms of relationships with potential intimate partners. And that's what the data is really clear about. But I, you know, I do feel hopeful in the part of boys and young men basically saying, you know, when no one feels like they've got our back, our mates, particularly our male friends, feel like a place we can show care, love, humanity.

8:00and doing, you know, apart from the surveys, if we talk to young men, you know, with some simple disarming questions around who do you care about and who cares about you, obviously, you know, parents and moms and lots of other will come in. But within a few minutes, you will hear, you know, just deep conversations about how much they love their friends and how much their friends love them. So that's the part when I get really, really gloomy is to, you know, kind of, you brought up your son at karate class I'm sure he can name one or more of those boys other boys you know that he feels just like he might not show to you but that he feels deep affection and care for so that's the part that I keep reaching into when it feels particularly pessimistic about men and boys at the moment yeah Gary we do lots of workshops with men and just last week I was with a company in Bristol and we do this activity where we ask them to write down their 11 aside support network team on a football pitch yeah I kind of talk through my team and and give the positions and the people in my team and then I'll ask the the men or the dads in this instance to write down their teams most of the time those dads they may have four or five people in their teams um often their partner if they have ones in there maybe a sibling maybe yeah and then their friendship group is like two or three and even within those friendship groups that are on the positions they haven't spoken to those people for ages and when they do speak it's more to celebrate or to do something big to go out with the kids it's never well it's not always not usually the everyday conversation that we just have like to keep each other informed yeah and I always say that the one thing that comes out of these like men's health workshops is call your friend on the way home it's a simple action but call your friend on the way home and I do it myself as well I'm always driving on the motorway that's the time when I have my hour-long conversations with my friends and I feel so much better when I do because you feel like there's a life outside of yourself you feel like you've shared something with someone else you've got a connection and it's just so special and so many men like don't invest the time into their friendships why do you think that is why do you think we've deprioritized our friends yeah i mean you know the i do i do feel that there's a sort of pruning of friendships right particularly after we finish secondary school um you know if if we go to uni and there's a group of friends that we find kind of right then um or if we stay you know in our in our communities but so many of us move now right depending on where, but the U.S.

10:42and the U.K., U.S. probably even more so. But we share that, right? You move to where the work is or to where you study. So we do find there's this kind of pruning from really close mates when we're in secondary school and a lot of those guys that we can draw on, maybe from school, maybe from sports. And then we go off into the, you know, this great big beyond of adulthood. And it really becomes tough for us to hang on to those friendships. And I liken it, you know, to you talked about the team. I mean, I liken it with talking with young men about sort of keeping your care muscles and your relational muscles in shape.

11:16I mean, they just sort of atrophy if we don't use them, right? Those long silences when you're trying to catch up with that mate that you haven't spoken with in months, like where do you start? You know, I think of myself as fairly self-aware on this stuff, but, you know, if there's friends you've not spoken to, male friends that I haven't spoken to for whatever, say six months or a year, it's like, where do I start? You know, you've got to kind of warm up to, you know, the, because we're really good at the, you know, how you're doing. I can't remember the, whatever the ancient Persian poet is like, if you ask me how I'm doing, I have a thousand brilliant lies.

11:53Right. It's so easy for us to hide behind, right. That, oh yeah, it's all okay. But it takes you that while to go, oh, actually this is up. And so I think we'd lose the skills at it, we just get so busy. I don't mean to do, you know, throw any of this back to you, Elliot, but like the fact that you're doing it in your car, right? That's great. But you know, you're going somewhere, you're right. That's what our days are like. It's like, I've got to squeeze it in. Right. And that's, you know, that's me too. I'm texting on the Metro into the office of going, like, why didn't I have a moment where that's just all I did to say, let me, let me exercise these muscles of like what it is to relate to others apart from our partner, if we're, you know, if we're lucky enough to have that or the two family members who are around us.

12:40And then go further in our careers, right? So then it's finding that first job. Do you find somebody you meet there who's a mate? Do you see them beyond, you know, the happy hour on a, you know, because somebody got promoted or whatever. And it's, you know, I think what we know from loneliness data is that you know loneliness literally kills i mean it is a we live it in our body it creates physical health problems um you know we get stress related diseases we get diabetes earlier we get you know there's a whole host of of care related health issues that we have if we're not in close contact to others i think there's also something in in men being used to having difficult conversations as well like we're asking men to talk more which is good of course yeah but I don't think we're educating men on how to hold space for others yeah I've got a friend I may have told this story before I've got a really good friend and it's really sad really sad story but he lost his wife during the birth of their second child and so he had a four-year-old and a newborn I've learned from him is how to hold that information first and foremost but yeah what what he told me is that when that happened, he lost a lot of his friends, a lot of his male friends, because they didn't know what to say to him.

14:01Some would just ignore him or ignore it. Some would be super awkward. Some would try to, you know, jump to solution and he just lost loads of friends, you know, in the years afterwards. And I think when we do our workshop workshops, it's like, yes, men talk, but also how do you hold space when someone tells you something that's really difficult and really sad and devastating? like how do you make sure for them that's a good experience and they they want to do it again because so many men will tell me you know i spoke about this thing because i was encouraged to talk and then i spoke and the guy ignored me or he just came out with some flippant solution that's not even you know feasible so i think we have to invest in kind of how do we hold space for people yeah listening i mean how do you know we're i mean we we sort of assume that you know it's an easy thing to learn, but I, and it feels awkward to sort of work with men, but we often do right on listening activities, right?

14:57How do you, it's what couples therapists do, right? It's also what we do in, you know, in, in group conversations, but how to make it feel like it's not a, you know, like it's not a foul tasting medicine that a group facilitator is making me do, but like, how do you learn how to listen? And I think particularly during something deeply emotional, like the loss of, you know, a friend who has lost his wife. I mean, how do you, it is tough for most men. I think what we're, we're most raised to do is like to fix shit and you can't fix that. Right. And, you know, whether it's someone feeling deeply sad for multiple things, clinically depressed, maybe at one point, something, you know, lots of stuff that we simply cannot fix.

15:40And so I think how to hold space around that of, I feel deeply for you. And even to say what is really hard for men is like, I don't know what to say. I'm not really sure. I'm afraid I might say something wrong, but I'm, I'm deeply concerned about you and I want to be able to listen. Um, but you know, I think one of the hardest thing for us to say as men is like, I don't know. Um, but it is so disarming to tell somebody, I really don't know what to say. I'm afraid I might mess up, but I'm going to stay here in the room with you. Um, you know, I don't know. I was, I had white hair before I learned how to say that so I'm not going to tell any men I don't know how to do it we're all learning there's my people around me who say Gary you still don't know how to do it but I'm gonna I will fake it

16:27Elliott:we're getting lonelier though aren't we I mean men and women are getting lonelier and we're neurologically primed for connection you know is it biologically built into us that this need for connection with other human beings and yet we feel more disconnected than ever is that a screens issue or is it why is that yeah yeah all the above right sociologists write a lot about you know i mean we've been writing about this in the u.s as well around um you know what is it about our individual you know the way that we live right in nuclear households the nature of work, which is, you know, moved all around and we've got to move with it.

17:11COVID came along as, you know, a huge disruptor of kicking us all back into our nuclear households. And then we were told, you know, don't go out because it'll kill you. And we're still in our brains. You know, I think that, you know, kind of COVID stranger fear, I still feel when we walk around on the streets, right, of people being like, okay, to say hello. Right. I mean, remember, it wasn't that many years back that we were like, you know, somebody's breath on you could be a fatal illness. Well, that, you know, that's like, I think we did some processing of that, but not really. That's, it was a pretty major disruptor.

17:48The children who grew up during that moment, right, with, you know, they're trying to understand us and read our faces when we all had masks on. And so I think that, you know, that kicked into it. And then, you know, add to that screen time that you brought up, right? There's so many things right at our fingertips, the, you know, on, on dating, like the way that we meet partners these days, right? The more than half of UK folks, men and women who told us they're on dating apps. In the US, we asked a different question around it, but about a third of, you know, currently coupled people have found their partner on a dating app.

18:23That's fantastic. And at the same time, it means we sort of forgot how to, you know, or lots of us forgot like the other ways we used to meet people, potential friends and friends and all the rest. So, yeah, I think it's all the above. And for men, it seems to have been we were already, you know, kind of told to, you know, show the stiff upper lip and not show too much concern and care. And it was already more difficult for us. So, you know, COVID and that whole wave and screens, I think, sent us into a deeper spiral. But women are living with this, too.

18:56Elliott:But if we saw it as a public health issue, which I think it is loneliness, if we really genuinely embedded it in policy led by governments so that we could decrease loneliness and improve friendships, because as you say in your report, I can't remember how you phrased it, but friendship is a defence mechanism for wellbeing. You know, it will improve men's well-being overall. And well-being comes up a lot in this report of men. So it is a public health issue. What does that look like? Have you seen any of the countries do anything in this area that really has changed that outlook of loneliness for humans, not just for men?

19:41Yeah, I'm not sure if I know lots of examples in this space. I mean, you know, and the UK wins out on, you know, some of the campaigns about talk to your mate. I think about Calm and their, you know, enjoiners of us to talk to each other. You know, there is a human-centered design field that is trying to say, how do we design housing spaces, right, in public spaces that feel more like you're kind of, you were made to go into the direction that the in and out of whether it's a school or a workplace or housing that makes you go to public, you know, to the public square, so to speak, to get around.

20:22So it basically makes you cross paths with other humans. I think those, you know, those certainly help. So, you know, it feels like an awareness issue and then a lot of, you know, a thousand daily practices. So we need teachers doing it, healthcare workers doing it. You know, Elliot, your point of, you know, reaching out to a mate. I think a lot of these are going to be spontaneous. And I think what we often need is policymakers to be aware, you know, amplify those, put some public resources behind the campaign. We've partnered with some folks in New York City when there's the dad, you know, the Brooklyn stroller group and just a spontaneous group of dads, you know, saying we want to get out, you know, Elliot, you talked about this as well.

21:06Like this feels so lonely, right? I'm caring for the child. Then maybe she's caring for the child. We're mostly here, maybe with a family member helping out, but it is, you know, you have to sort of structure play dates, et cetera. And this one says, Hey dads, there's a place, everybody come here. We will be here X number of hours. Um, and you know, it's almost like a, one of those cool love actually scenes where just everybody shows up and said, I want that too. And, you know, I mean, watching the stuff and talking to the folks who set it up, you're like, oh my God, there's a lovely movie in here of just dads want to connect.

21:37And if you make it possible, you know, cue the mushy music and we'll all cry because dads really do want to connect with others. So I think there's a policy thing, but I think it's also about we need more third spaces, right? Not home, not workplace. So public investment in the space um i do hear you know more policymakers talking about but then the other part is you know humans have to be enjoined um to then use them and feel safe and comfortable and the barriers you know broken and so i think that's where you know it's like a thousand acts of reaching out to someone um and then somebody to make that first move so sure you need a sherpa yeah yeah yeah i feel like we've designed a world where it's so convenient now like you know before you had to go to the cinema to watch a movie you can yeah flicks you had to go to get a takeaway you had to go to the shop to actually pick it up um now you just do delivery you don't have to even talk to the delivery driver just open the door give your code and bring it in you know even looking for a job we all remember handing out your cv right going up the high street to like JD Sports and H &M and now you just do it online and I think there's in the UK so many pubs have closed you know so many places where I think men would have traditionally socialized they're gone I guess one thing I do try to do with my children my eldest particularly is like get her out and when we are out make sure she's like interacting with people so if we go to a shop you speak to the the shopkeeper um if if we need something out you go and pay you go and do it and so i i'm hoping that those little things as you're saying gary those little kind of micro behaviors will help shape her in the world where she's interacting with people and she's not just experiencing the whole world on her on her phone at home on the sofa you know she's actually she has to engage with someone to get what she wants yeah and and you know good for the the dads and you know the parents who are out in the world as well right i mean babies are great like you know of sort of universal invitations to come and speak to me as the adult, right?

23:44Elliott:Yeah. Babies and dogs. Babies and dogs. I think dogs are more than babies, you know. When Jesse was a puppy, I would get stopped. There would be a queue, a queue of people waiting to speak to him. The funny thing is when people know your dog, but they don't know you, and so you're walking down the street and they'll be like, Jesse, and I'm like, I don't know who you are, but you know my dog. This is weird. This is very strange now. Today's podcast episode is sponsored by Kauru Kids. When my kids were younger, I never considered getting a nanny. It just seemed like something posh people do, something completely out of reach, certainly for me.

24:24Elliott:But times have really changed. And with nurseries, childminders and wraparound care, costs can really mount. And just imagine, imagine the peace of mind of having one person who your kids love, who you can rely on implicitly to look after your child in your home, someone who can handle school pickups, help with homework, sort dinner and help the kids wind down. So you can finish your work guilt-free and come home to peace and serenity and be totally present with your kids. If I was to have another baby, which you know I definitely won't be because I bought a dog instead, I would be considering nannies as an option.

25:06Elliott:The flexibility, the simplicity, having one person you can fully trust. I hear you shout out to the dog parents, me included. I need that in my life now. Coral Kids has full and part-time nannies that can work when your family actually needs them. Their nannies are vetted and trained and they work all across the UK so they will be where you are at so why not have a look at their website korukids.co.uk it is free to search and you can see what the cost difference is and whether it's a good fit for you the korukids.co.uk that's k-o-r-u-kids.co.uk one of the things i found really really shocking in your report and i hadn't quite realize that it got this bad was that more than 40 percent of men say they've thought about self-harm or suicide in the past two weeks yeah i mean that is an astonishing astonishing figure why why do you think men's distress has become has become so normalized we almost don't notice it Yeah, I mean, it's alarmingly high among young women as well.

26:30So, you know, as we've seen that in the U.S. and the U.K. and some other countries, the big difference is men's loneliness and isolation. So what we've talked about before, men not feeling we are allowed to ask for help. We're allowed to say it's not okay. It doesn't feel okay. I think there's several things going on there, right? We have this thing that we call doom scrolling online, right? Which is if that's become the go-to place, like I'm not doing okay, put in your profile as a young man, type in, you know, not feeling okay. You will find lots of folks who don't mean the best for you, who will quickly fill up your screen with lots of stuff that is, you know, here's the angry place you can go.

27:13Here's the hateful place you can go. So here's who's responsible for why you feel so alienated and alone. So that's one part. That's not the only part, of course. And then this, you know, we find the more we find a strong association with the men who are more in what we call the man box, right? Who've got this, who believe in a set of ideas that I can't ask for help. I've got to show that I'm tough. I can, you know, I can work it out on my own. And again, all I was talking about at the beginning of this, this idea of men as, you know, the individual who can conquer it all. And we're, you know, if we used to compare ourselves to the neighbor guy or the other classmate, you know, I've talked to a lot of young men who say like, now I'm comparing myself to all of humanity because it's all on my phone.

27:57So I've got to be, you know, as ripped as that guy. I've got to have as many, you know, sexual partners as that guy. I've got to have sex that looks like that, you know, hyper real stuff that shows up on the porn feed that you're likely looking at. I've got to have achieved my multi millions before I'm 30. Right. This is the sort of ideal that's fed to you.

28:20Elliott:Yeah. And so, you know, I think it is, you know, to be human and self-aware and the fact that you're, you know, this individual body is existentially, you know, it's a challenge for all of us to like, I'm finite, I'm mortal. I've got, you know, there's only one life that I like, all this stuff is weighty enough. And then we tell men, you're not really supposed to talk about it. And there's an ideal that you're held up to and against that is unattainable. And then we've got this hyper capitalistic model that says, you know, it's kind of, if you can get to the next conversation with men, it's trying to say, basically, you are following a model that was never designed to work.

29:06and how to step away from that and say everyone realizes it wasn't designed to work, but we're not allowed to tell the other that we know it doesn't work well. We're all sort of in these, you know, going around thinking, oh, he thinks it works and he's going to win. So I've got to keep up with him. Whereas if we can sort of step away from that and say it is fraught. We all need to work together on changing it, break the silence around it, seek help, acknowledge when you're vulnerable. it's kind of, you know, that's where I think we make the real connection that bring men back from that sense of nobody's got my back, you know, to that other piece of data, the nearly two thirds who think no one cares if men are okay.

29:46And the 40 % of women who agreed, yeah, we don't really care if men are okay. So I don't think my future looks very bleak. I mean, it looks well. I think no one cares about me. I don't think anybody knows me. Those are all the conditions of a sense of social isolation that makes you think is life worth living. I think the important part of that is let us lean into that and say, this is not a flaw of individual men. This is in the system. This is all of us figuring out how do we make the world feel like we need you, we care about you, you've got a function, you've got a purpose, life has meaning, and that meaning is going to be in your connection with others.

30:26I think that's what I hope people take from it. It's not, yes, be worried about your individual son, but realize that the problem is not, the fault is not in his head. The fault is in all of us who've got to make men feel like there's a connected humanity right around them if we can reach out to them and help them see it.