We Are Failing Our Boys

We are failing our boys, and the consequences are deadly. There was another mass shooting at a school this week. These have become all too familiar. We know what to expect. A young man found or bought a gun and used it to commit a terrible atrocity.

The rush to politicize these events is always the same. We scream for gun control. We demand mental health help. What we never seem to do is look in the mirror.

The demands placed on society are always pointed at someone else. Democrats point at Republicans. Republicans point at Democrats. Red states blame blue states, blue states blame red states.

But nothing changes. And, of course, the carnage is much worse than we usually admit. Boys and young men are killing at a terrible rate. Two mass killings in our country in just a few weeks grab the national headlines, but that isn’t all. The news in South Carolina has been dominated in recent weeks with stories of teenagers killing and being killed.

Who is to blame? We all are. We are failing our boys.

How do we know we are failing our boys? Because our boys are failing or falling behind in nearly every category imaginable.

• Nationally, 70% of high school valedictorians are female.
• In 2010 only 44% of college applicants were male.
• At the turn of the 21st century, boys received 70% of “D”s and “F”s and only 40% of “A”s.
• As of 2016, the dropout rate for boys is 40% higher than for girls.
• 2/3 of the population labeled as “learning-disabled” is boys.
• For every 100 girls who repeat kindergarten, 194 boys repeat.
• Boys are 50% more likely to be held back a grade than eighth-grade girls.
• The average 8th grade girl writes at the level of the average 11th grade boy.
• Boys make up 70% of medicated preschoolers and kindergartners.
• Boys make up 80% of the suspects in juvenile courts.
• Boys are punished more harshly than girls.
• In the past two decades, ADHD diagnosis rates have doubled. Boys make up a majority of these cases–often because they can’t sit still for extended periods in class.
• Male prisoners make up 93% of the prison population.

Every time we endure another outbreak of violence, we lament. We yell. We wring our hands, we blame others, and we look for a quick solution.

But we don’t look in the mirror. We don’t look into our communities and ask the question of why our boys are the way they are. We resist hard questions and even harder answers.

We must begin to ask hard questions. Hard questions that may cause uncomfortable answers.

If we ask how we are failing our boys, we may discover that we are failing our boys because our boys are not being raised in intact homes with men of character loving them well. If we ask hard questions, we are going to be forced to deal with hard realities.

It is hard for us to acknowledge that broken families lead to broken boys and more broken families. It is hard to acknowledge this because we love those broken families. We don’t want to single out or stigmatize single moms. We don’t want to stigmatize kids growing up in single-parent homes. We don’t want to admit that our education system is slanted toward little girls and boys are left holding the bag and trying to catch up.

Our unwillingness to deal with reality is leaving a trail of death and destruction.

We are failing our boys. We give them role models that are no role models at all. Too many of our boys are growing up with a mom at home and a dad somewhere else with brothers and sisters in different homes.

We live in a day and age when coaches are more important to teenage boys than ever before, and yet too many coaches are not men of character and discipline.

I don’t have all of the answers. I am left grieving. We as a society have to begin to ask the hard questions. Let’s ask the gun-control questions. Let’s ask the mental health questions. But let’s also ask the larger question that plagues us all:

HOW CAN WE STOP FAILING OUR BOYS?

For every lawmaker, celebrity, and news reporter who will offer a suggestion for how to stop violence in our society, I want to ask them if they are mentoring young boys?

Are our lawmakers working on tax-codes that incentivize marriage and healthy homes?

How many good men are coaching little league, volunteering in our schools, or sticking it out with their wife and kids? Are you?

How many of our educators are asking how they can care better for boys?

How many of our churches are focusing on helping boys?

I trust God’s word. The Proverbs give us hope:

Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.

Proverbs 22:6

Why are our boys failing? Why are they killing? We are not training them up.

We are failing them. They are left to their own devices, their own ways, their own griefs and sorrows. Our boys are living in a world that let them down. They turn to sin and sin, when full grown, leads to death.

It may take a village to raise kids well, but healthy villages are built around healthy families that support one another. Our village is broken because our families are broken, and our kids are paying the price.

In the 90s (when music was still good) The Offspring sang into the angst of Gen X:

When we were young, the future was so bright
Woah-oh
The old neighborhood was so alive
Woah-oh
And every kid on the whole damn street
Woah-oh
Was gonna make it big and not be beat

Now the neighborhood’s cracked and torn
Woah-oh
The kids are grown up, but their lives are worn
Woah-oh
How can one little street swallow so many lives?

Chances thrown
Nothing’s free
Longing for used to be
Still it’s hard, hard to see
Fragile lives
Shattered dreams (Go!)

Jamie had a chance, well she really did
Woah-oh
Instead she dropped out and had a couple of kids
Woah-oh
Mark still lives at home ’cause he’s got no job
Woah-oh
He just plays guitar and smokes a lot of pot

Jay commited suicide
Woah-oh
Brandon OD’d and died
Woah-oh
What the hell is going on?
The cruelest dream, reality

Chances thrown
Nothing’s free
Longing for used to be
Still it’s hard, hard to see
Fragile lives
Shattered dreams (Go!)

Chances thrown
Nothing’s free
Longing for (what) used to be
Still it’s hard, hard to see
Fragile lives
Shattered dreams

I heard that song recently while working out and thought, “Man, that would never make radio play today.” Why? Because it suggests that kids coming from broken places become broken kids and broken adults. It suggests that sitting around smoking pot all day may not create success.

I doubt we could hold The Offspring up as some band of moral character, but give them credit for a degree of honesty with which our culture is unwilling to wrestle today.

What if we were honest enough to speak about generational brokenness and we were honest enough with families to show them why the cycle continues? What if we told the truth about poverty and crime and broken homes and tried to help people climb out of their destructive cycles?

Broken homes lead to broken neighborhoods which lead to broken societies, and those broken societies create broken kids who don’t know what to do other than break others.

God help us. The Kids Aren’t Alright, and it is all our fault.

Photo by saeed karimi on Unsplash