Praise poured in for this book
Introduction

Part 1: Anxious Men

Chapter 1: Girls Rule: Boys Are Falling Behind in School
Chapter 2: Working Man's Depression: Men's Jobs Are Disappearing
Chapter 3: Fathers Feeling Left Out: The Era of Fathers Providing for Their Children Is Over

Part 2: Double Shackles

Chapter 4: Why Does Dwight Wear Glasses?: Racism and Sexism Add to the Mix
Chapter 5: Class Ceilings, Not Glass Ceilings: Poor Men Are Lonelier and Unhappier
Chapter 6: The Unresponsive: Boys and Men Don't Take Chance

Part 3: The Myth of Masculinity

Chapter 7: What Kind of Man Will He Be?: Nature Matters, Nurturing Matters

Part 4: No Politics for Men

Chapter 8: The Left's Disregard for Progress: The Left's Rejection of Debate
Chapter 9: Angry Conservatives: The Right Wants to Turn Back the Clock

Part 5: What Should We Do?

Chapter 10: Boys Who Defer School: Boys Need an Extra Year
Chapter 11: A Promising Career of the Future: Men Can Become Nurses, Too
Chapter 12: The New Role of Fathers: Children Need Fathers Too

Epilogue
Acknowledgements
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Men crying out in despair
Boys and men are staggering

On July 30, 2025, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed an executive order to support boys and men.
“Too many young men and boys suffer in silence, cut off from community, opportunity, and even family,” he said.
The governor's office noted in a news release that about 80 percent of suicide deaths are among men, adding that in California, the suicide rate among men ages 15 to 44 is three to four times that of women.
Men's issues today are not just an American story.
This problem is spreading globally, along with the chaos caused by structural changes in the economy, isolation, and deepening social and economic inequality.
In developed countries in particular, men are about three times more likely to commit suicide than women.
In fact, suicide is the leading cause of death for British men under 45.
Studies of deaths from despair show that nearly 70 percent of opioid overdose deaths in the United States are male.
A man's crisis is also a relationship crisis.
Fifteen percent of American men say they have no close friends, a sharp increase from 3 percent in 1990.
Men who are lonely and depressed become vulnerable to extreme voices and retreat into online worlds like the manosphere.
But instead of analyzing this phenomenon and offering a helping hand, the world condemns it by labeling it as “toxic masculinity.”


There is no politics for men.
Polarized gender politics

In March 2022, conservative presidential candidate Yoon Seok-yeol won in South Korea.
Candidate Yoon won overwhelming support from young men by promising to abolish the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family.
In July 2025, President Lee Jae-myung stated, “If you look at the overall structure, it is clear that women are a group that is unfairly discriminated against,” but added, “There are areas where men feel discriminated against, but there is no official discussion about it anywhere.” He instructed the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family to “review ways to study discrimination against men and create countermeasures.”
Reeves cites one of the left's failures as "a failure to recognize that gender inequality can, and increasingly does, go both ways."
In 2021, President Joe Biden created the White House Council on Gender Policy (which was abolished with Donald Trump's inauguration in 2025). Despite its neutral title, the council's official mission was to "guide and coordinate government policies affecting women and girls."


Progressives fear that acknowledging the struggles faced by men will weaken efforts to support girls and women.
But Reeves warns that gender equality should not be viewed as a zero-sum game.
The right wing appears to be listening to men's voices.
Senator Josh Hawley argued at a conservative conference in November 2021 that the left hates and attacks boys and men, saying, “They want to define traditional masculinity as harmful.”
Holly, born in 1979, got a lot of attention for this speech, but she didn't offer any solutions.
Conservatives refuse to acknowledge that the world has changed and only want to go back to the past.
A few weeks after the conference, Holly led a movement to repeal the draft provision for women in the National Defense Authorization Act.
"It's wrong to force our daughters, mothers, wives, and sisters to fight our wars." Would young men agree with this? Reeves points out that the right's most serious mistake is the assumption that "the only way to help boys and men is to restore traditional male roles."


Boys falling behind in their studies
Let's give boys the gift of time.

In late May 2024, a periodical published by a government-funded research institute in South Korea sparked controversy.
This was because “enrolling girls a year earlier will help increase the birth rate by making boys and girls of suitable age more attracted to each other.”
The contributor cited the fact that men develop more slowly than women.
Reeves believes that the modern education system fails to properly bring out the potential of boys.
From a neuroscience perspective, this is because “boys’ brains develop more slowly (especially during the all-important secondary school years)” and “the cerebellum reaches full size in girls by age 11, but in boys it does not reach that size until age 15.”

Differences in the timing of brain development result in girls outperforming boys across all educational levels.
This is a global trend.
Girls outperform boys on most measures, including Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), ELA and GPA scores, and the likelihood of graduating from high school.
In every country in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), there are more women with bachelor's degrees than men.
In 2020, all of the editors-in-chief of the law reviews at the top sixteen law schools in the United States were women.
Reeves criticizes the current education system, which diagnoses 23 percent of male students with developmental disabilities, and argues for acknowledging innate biological differences to ensure boys are on a level playing field.
The typical solution he proposes for boys is to send them to school a year later, a practice he calls redshirting.
Reeves explains the effects of redshirting, saying, “Boys who waited a year showed dramatic reductions in hyperactivity and inattention throughout elementary school, increased life satisfaction, were less likely to repeat a grade, and had higher test scores.”


Men who lost their jobs and their positions as breadwinners
Let's throw away the outdated father model.

Unlike the education system, the labor market favors men.
While this premise is true given that most Fortune 500 CEOs are men, the situation is different when you look below the glass ceiling.
In 1979, women in the United States earned 63 percent of men's earnings.
In 2019, it increased to 82 percent.
The reason the gender wage gap has narrowed is that men's average real hourly wages peaked in the 1970s and have been declining ever since.
As automation progressed and free trade shifted American manufacturing overseas, the number of jobs requiring physical strength decreased.
The axis of the American economy has shifted from male-dominated manufacturing to service industries that offer opportunities for women.
In 2019, women made up 47 percent of all workers in the United States.
Forty percent of working women earn more than the median male income.
In the United States, women are the primary breadwinner in approximately 41 percent of households.
We are witnessing, as Claudia Goldin puts it, “a remarkable convergence of male and female wages.”


Until the 1970s, it was common for a woman to become a wife within a year of graduating from college.
But today, a husband is not a necessary presence for women.
Even if you want children, marriage is not a prerequisite.
In the traditional family, the man's role was to be the 'breadwinner'.
However, as women gained economic independence, they lost this role.
The problem is that many men are stuck in an outdated and outdated father model.
Reeves points out that “the father’s role was limited to breadwinning and did not extend to caregiving.”
Therefore, it is now argued that fatherly love must be recreated by establishing a direct relationship with the child, rather than an indirect relationship through the mother.
It also proposes giving fathers equal child custody and six months of paid parental leave that expires if not used.


Boys and men need role models.
Men in caregiving professions

In a podcast released on July 16, 2025, former US President Barack Obama emphasized the need for multiple male mentors from diverse backgrounds.
The argument was that this would allow boys to learn about different perspectives on masculinity and find roles that fit them.
It takes a village to raise a child.
But there must also be male adults in that village.
The percentage of male K-12 (kindergarten through 12th grade) teachers in the United States has fallen from 33 percent in the early 1980s to 24 percent today.
The proportion of male social workers has halved since 1980, to just 18 percent.
Men make up a minority (22 percent) of all psychologists.
The American Psychological Association published a document in 2018 stating that “traditional masculinity is generally harmful,” but it made no mention of any positive aspects of masculinity.


Considering how important teachers are as role models for students, the shortage of male teachers is a serious problem.
Research also shows that male teachers have a more positive view of boys and their abilities.
The scarcity of male counselors makes it less likely that men will seek mental health counseling.
In 2019, Melinda Gates pledged $1 billion to advance opportunities for women in the United States.
One of the goals of this donation is to increase the proportion of women in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) careers.
Today, women hold 36 percent of bachelor's degrees awarded in STEM subjects.
On the other hand, it's still difficult to find men in HEAL (health, education, administration, and literacy) occupations, which are considered female domains. For every job created in STEM fields, three are created in HEAL fields.
Reeves argues that we need to intentionally recruit more men into caregiving professions and help them enter the HEAL field.


Towards true gender equality
Feminism needs to move forward.

Should we be alarmed that women, who have endured subjugation and discrimination for thousands of years, are finally surpassing men in some areas? "No one could have predicted that women would surpass men so quickly, so consistently, and so widely across the globe." Reeves quantifies the rapidly worsening problem, a problem everyone had vaguely felt but had not taken seriously.
“The problem with feminism as a liberation movement is not that it has ‘gone too far ahead.’
Rather, the problem is that we haven't gone far enough," Reeves argues, arguing that gender equality must now focus on where men fall short.
Those who most strongly advocate for gender equality must have a balanced perspective.
Otherwise, boys and men risk feeling abandoned and looking elsewhere.
Boys and men who have lost the motivation that traditional masculinity provided have lost their sense of existential security and become helpless.
Even if I have the chance, I don't take it.
This is not a personal problem.
Rather than viewing men as objects of reform, the government and civil society should devise structural solutions.
Men, too, must answer questions to find a new identity.
What is the role of men, and what is the ideal male image? Masculinity is more fragile than we think, but it can be flexible.