The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway - Why Are More Men Dying From Unnatural Causes? — with Richard Reeves

Episode Date: September 26, 2024

Richard Reeves, the president of the American Institute for Boys and Men and non-resident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, joins Scott to discuss his new research on unnatural male deaths including injury, suicide, and drug overdose, along with solutions and his take on what the script for masculinity should look like. Follow Richard, @RichardvReeves. Scott opens with his thoughts on Nike CEO John Donahoe stepping down, and then he gets into the Biden Administration’s plan to ban Chinese tech from connected vehicles. Subscribe to No Mercy / No Malice Buy "The Algebra of Wealth," out now. Follow the podcast across socials @profgpod: Instagram Threads X Reddit Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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In 1918, World War I ended. So a little bone to pick. I saved 100 orphans from a burning building. Do they call me Orphan Saver? No. I saved 100 orphans from a burning building. Do they call me Orphan Saver? No. I butchered 20 men with my bare hands in World War I. Do they call me the butcher? No. But you fuck one goat. Just one goat. Go, go, go! Welcome to the 318th episode of the Prop G Pod. In today's episode, we speak with someone I refer to as my Yoda on the topic of young men, specifically struggling young men. And that is Richard Reeves, who is the president of the American Institute for Boys and Men and a non-resident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. We discuss with Richard his new research on unnatural male deaths, including injury, suicide, and drug overdose, along with solutions and his

take on what the script for masculinity should look like. Okay, what's happening? That's right. I'm back in London. I'm back in the UK, but I'm on, I was in Madrid. By the way, Madrid, let's talk a little bit about Madrid. Hola, Senor Galloway. Who's the old dude living upstairs? Who is that guy? He's funny. That's right. Who's the guy with the big dog and the little dog? Oh, that's the dog. Anyway, absolutely love Madrid. I'm into this idea. Richard Florida. I couldn't remember his name the other day. He's like this. He is not like, he's the city guy. By the way, lives in Toronto and Miami. What does it say when the city guy lives in Toronto and Miami? That means those two cities have it kind of going on for different

reasons. But Richard looks at the future of cities, and I am fascinated by looking at cities in a similar way you look at stocks. What is an undervalued city? Where would you want to move if you're wrong? Because a young person, I would argue, needs to be constantly thinking about what I would refer to as a lifestyle arbitrage. Now, unfortunately, the arbitrage gets harder as you put down roots, dogs, kids, shit like that. But you always want to be thinking about a lifestyle arbitrage when you're kind of very young or very old, for example. And one of the best things or most accretive things I did in my life, I did a lifestyle arbitrage moving from San Francisco to New York. But it wasn't a lifestyle arbitrage. It was more a philosophical arbitrage.

I wanted to get away from the tech community. I didn't like San Francisco. Most beautiful city in the union. I get it. Great, great professional environment. I can't stand the fog. I can't stand political extremism on either side. And I found it politically extreme. But anyways, love New York. But then the lifestyle arbitrage is I moved to Florida in 2010. And basically, not 80% of New York because it's so different, but water, beaches, Miami. Hello, Latina, sexy vibe. And I could do it on 40% of the price.

And I got to start saving money, invested a bunch of money, and the markets took off and champagne and cocaine, or as I call it, I moved to London. So that was the kind of ultimate lifestyle arbitrage. And I think a lot of people recognize that arbitrage, the same period moving from California to Texas or to other places. Ultimately, the term arbitrage is the correct one because people figure it out and more and more human and financial capital moves into these underpriced lifestyle areas and things go up in price and the arbitrage gets starched out. two years ago, our house had tripled in value. The school we sent our kids to had gone from, I think, 12,000 in tuition to 22,000. So it almost doubled and they're out of seats. They didn't have the capacity for new people. So that arb is gone, if you will. But anyways, I'm back from Madrid. Oh, and I'm heading to Munich tomorrow. I love Munich. It's a beautiful city. If I spoke German, I would probably move to Munich, but I don't. So I won't. I actually prefer Munich over Berlin. I love Berlin for the history, but Munich, phew, that's a nice wealthy city.

Anyways, what else is going on? Nike's CEO, John Donahoe, is stepping down next month, a move welcomed by pretty much everyone involved with the firm. Critics, investors, and employees alike say that Donahoe, who took over as CEO in 2020, essentially oversaw Nike's fall, becoming a loser, ruining retail partnerships and diminishing the brand. As the former CEO of eBay and Bain Company, he was hired to upgrade Nike's digital sales. Don Ho focused on direct-to-consumer sales and cut ties with longtime retail partners, including Foot Locker, DSW, and Macy's. We actually talked about this in our most recent

episode of Office Hours. Don Ho's demise really started to come into full view when Nike stock fell 20% in June following disappointing sales growth and a bleak forecast. So essentially sales have really, really had a tough time. As a matter of fact, they're kind of Nike's in a sales recession

for the first time in a while, meaning their year-on-year sales have gone down. I think it's really easy to play Monday morning quarterback. I ran a firm called L2 that was a business intelligence firm, and Nike was one of our biggest clients. And I want to be clear, my advice was to double down on direct-to-consumer, that they needed to develop more, have more control over their channels, either through the web or their own stores. And it ends up that retail sales, in-store retail sales, came back much stronger than anyone had anticipated post-COVID, and they were caught flat-footed. I would argue

the decision they made at that time was the right decision. By the way, very interesting, I think it's very interesting, when the military reviews an operation, sure, they look at the outcome, but more than that, when they try to evaluate the officer's decisions, they look at the outcome, but more than that, when they try to evaluate the officer's decisions, they look at, given the information that person had at that time, was that the right decision? Okay, maybe it worked, maybe it didn't work, but given what he or she knew at that moment, was it the right idea. Where they have fucked up or fallen short, they have not been nearly as innovative around product and merchandising as Adidas, and they've lost a ton of share to some long-tailed brands, Hoka and On Running, which are the shoes I wear. Hello, douchebag venture capitalist. Anyways, I would also say there's some bigger macro factors that are outside of their control, specifically China sneezes and a bunch of these companies get a cold, whether it's Starbucks, whether it's Estee Lauder. These companies have become so overinvested in China. China was a gift that kept on giving. And when China

and domestic demand fell, these companies really got whacked hard. In addition, on a more meta level, TikTok. And that is the sword that has been the weapon of choice for Nike has been building an okay shoe that they infuse with unbelievable brand codes. And the primary weapon for building those brand codes has been broadcast television. Nike is the best broadcast advertiser in history, but that sword, that weapon of war, if you will, has been getting duller and duller for the last 20 years. And so it is harder for them to reach their core customer with their core confidence in that as advertising. They're fantastic with endorsement. They're pretty good at direct to consumer. I would argue the stores have gotten a little bit stale. I remember everyone wanted

to go to Nike town in 2000. I'm not sure they've been closing some of their stores. It feels like they need a freshen up, a refresh, something that makes them a little bit stand out a little bit more. Anyways, do not count these guys out. The new CEO, the new CEO is, oh shit, who is he? Oh, Elliot Hill. I know Elliot. I don't know him well, but I did work with him a little bit at L2. I think this is a great hire. I think the board did a really good job here. And that is they brought in someone that would provide some stability, some credibility. And this guy is kind of, you know, if you were to stab him with a fork, he kind of bleeds the swoosh. He's very much Nike. And I think it was a great hire for them. So well done. Look for Nike. Nike had its best trading day, I think,

of 2024, the day they announced Dono was stepping down and they brought in brought in Elliott. But look for Nike. I think Nike is absolutely you do not want to bet against Nike. Moving on, the Biden administration plans to ban Chinese developed software and Internet connected vehicles in the U.S. You don't say. Why? National security concerns. Wow. Huh. Why national security concerns? The ban aims to prevent Chinese intelligence from tracking Americans and using car electronics to get into important systems, including the electric grid. Jesus Christ. That sounds very much spy versus spy. National security advisor Nate Silver said on a call with reporters, with potentially millions of vehicles on the road, each with 10 to 15 year lifespans, the risk of disruption and sabotage increases dramatically. Wow. I don't know how much of that is true. Is the real national security concern or it's Mary Barra from General Motors saying, we need more jobs. Detroit needs your help, Joe. I would argue we tend to err on the side of being too permissive, too promiscuous with our data and our infrastructure, and there's no fucking way they would let us into their country, or have they with Tesla and Autodrive? I don't

know. That's an interesting question. It's an interesting question. But typically what I see playing out in China, and I'm paranoid, but it doesn't mean I'm wrong, is that China will let companies in just long enough to figure out what they're doing to establish a market in that sector, create some demand, create some economic liquidity, and then they boot out that company or make it hard for them to prop up a local Chinese entrepreneur and capture the value internally, as they did with Facebook and Google. Ever heard of Baidu? It looks a lot like Google, and my guess is the majority of the IP was stolen. By the way, the greatest economic boom in the history of China is probably the migration from rural areas into city areas and some of their central planning, which has actually worked in autocracy. The second biggest has been just out-of-fucking-control IP

theft from Europe and the U.S. Anyways, I think that this follows or this initiative follows previous actions against Chinese technology, including bans on Huawei products and investigations into Chinese cranes at U.S. ports. Officials have emphasized the ban is driven by security, not political mottos. Okay, that makes sense. The ban will also target Russian software and hardware. Is there a lot of Russian hardware and software in the U.S.? What is it? Vodka? That's my software. That's my Russian software. By the way, Stolichnaya is brewed in like Denmark or something, or it's still in Denmark. It's a mean vodka though. True story. I used to just drink beer in college with a little bit of marijuana. And then I started

drinking vodka because I thought it was more elegant. It's kind of the alcoholic's alcohol. I didn't think the hangover was bad. And I literally became immune to vodka. Like I literally became immune. Could drink eight vodka drinks and I'd be like, oh, I don't like me, which means this isn't working. And just a reminder, just a reminder, I don't know how I got there with Russia. Oh, yeah, there's not a lot of Russian software, I think, in the U.S. And just a reminder, in May, the Biden administration increased tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles to 100% and limited tax credits for Chinese-made EVs. We also covered this issue in an Office Hours episode back in July. This ban would hinder the

entry of Chinese car manufacturers, including BYD, into the U.S. market, which poses a potential risk to U.S. automakers if they lack access to advanced technologies. I'm not sure that's accurate. I think it's probably a boon for U.S. car manufacturers, specifically Tesla, if they don't allow BYD. And I fucking hate tariffs. I hate them. The second biggest tax cut in the world would be if we broke up big tech, it would oxygenate the economy. Companies, parents, consumers wouldn't have this extraordinary tax placed on them called the monopolization of social search and our kids' well-being by a small number, a handful of small companies. So breaking these companies up would require them to compete and lower the rents on suppliers, retailers, third-party marketers, digital firms,

companies trying to acquire people online, retailers, little brands trying to sell their shit online when they have to pay these onerous, usurious prices and terms to Amazon. So you want to oxygenate the economy, break a big tech. But the biggest tax cut in the history of mankind would be if China and the U.S. kissed and made up. We have money, consumer demand, incredible intellectual property. They have a supply chain like no other and also a decent consumer demand, although it's fallen off a little bit.

It seems like we should kiss and make up and make cheap shit for everyone around the world. More for less is the ultimate gangster business strategy. And we kind of got the more part in the U.S. and they got it for less, if you will. Anyways, let's hope we can all get along. We'll be right back for our conversation with Richard Reeves.

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conversations around equities, fixed income, the economy, and more. Join Kathy, Lizanne, and their guests as they share insights on what might be moving the markets and more. Join Kathy, Lizanne and their guests as they share insights on what might be moving the markets and why, as well as what indicators they are watching for signs of change. They'll also answer investor questions on everything from how sectors are evolving, to what the bond markets are telling us, to where to look for opportunities and considerations for your portfolio. You can download the latest episode of On Investing and subscribe so you never miss an episode at schwab.com slash on investing, or wherever you get your podcasts. welcome back here's our conversation with richard reeves the president of the american institute for boys and men and non-resident senior fellow at the brookings institution in washington dc

richard where does this podcast find you i'm home in east tennessee southern appalachia but i've been on the road of being in hong kong and then being in Oregon. I had this amazing trip out to this community college in Oregon where they're just cratering male share of employment. They're dealing with it. They're acting on it. And this guy told me he's been visiting all these rural high schools in Oregon to find out why the boys are not applying to college anymore and there's a bunch of reasons he said the most common thing he heard was i'm afraid that i'll be lonely that i kind of won't belong i won't have friends really really struck me yeah that's wild i mean i know that generally speaking young men have a tendency to stay on the farm and women have a tendency to take off for the city but that's i had never heard that about that being a reason for why young men weren't applying to college same i mean we know they are more lonely like we've talked about this before like the loneliness

epidemic has hit young men a bit more and i've a number of college campuses have told me that when they do their kind of belonging surveys they very often find it's kind of it is men especially those from kind of more rural areas who will say that they just don't really feel like they belong on the campus, right? They don't have the right habits, the right language, the right sensibilities or whatever. And I really worry about that because you start to feel like college is not for, you know, working class guys, especially from rural areas, then you're losing a heck of a lot of potential talent. Yeah, I've always been a big advocate and it's not as toxic to people now as it was, but I've always been a huge advocate for joining a fraternity or a sorority when you get to school.

And there's some credible stats. You become twice as likely to complete your four-year education when you join a fraternity or a similar organization that kind of distills it down to a smaller, I don't know, a smaller community, if you will. But anyways, the reason we wanted to bring you on is you just put out a paper on unnatural male deaths, including injury, suicide, and drug overdose. Why is this happening? Yeah, so we're really motivated by our previous work on suicide, where the well-known big gap, especially now among young men, all like to take their lives from suicide. But CDC actually captures this really good data on unnatural deaths, so kind of injuries is the language they sometimes use. And we really hadn't seen anyone break that down by gender. And so we did break it down by gender.

And a number of things jumped out to me. The thing I wasn't prepared for was just the scale of the increase in injury deaths. So it's up by 57% since 2001. It's 200,000 men a year who are dying from one of these quotes, non-natural causes. The biggest one is drug poisonings, followed by suicide, followed by motor vehicle crashes, followed by homicide, and then the other ones. And it's just, it's two and a half times higher among men than among women.

And that increase is so big and largely driven by this drug epidemic that we're seeing. The thing that really blew me away is like, if you look at the deaths, you're always going to see deaths from non-natural causes, the ones we've seen above, right? The question is, are they going down or up? And they're going up in a way that's extraordinary.

So just to kind of put a sharp data point on this, if the death rate from these unnatural causes had remained the same since 2001, right? So it'd been a flat line since then, then we would have lost 400,000 fewer men in those couple of decades. And that's about the number of men we lost in World War II. That's a fascinating stat. The question I would have is that, okay, the leading cause here appears to be drug poisonings is that is that fentanyl and also is this rooted in loneliness and depression and why people are men are turning to drugs or because drugs are more available because they're more accepted in culture

like what give us give us some of the the nuance here yeah the the way this has been framed a lot you and you talked about this yourself but this idea of deaths of despair. And as I said, the rates are highest among middle-aged men, men between 30 and mid-50s. And it's been associated for a long time with declining economic prospects, community breakdown, loss of affiliation to family, religion, etc. And so if you like, that's the kind of demand side. But there's also clearly a supply side issue here too, which is the way in which these drugs, fentanyl and others, have just been flooded into some of these communities on the supply side is clearly part of the story too. And so there's actually a big debate now among social scientists whether this term deaths of despair is actually helpful or not because what that does is it kind of points to the individuals themselves to the communities and says it's all demand driven right but actually it's supply side as well and we have to take both into account i

think but but you're right there's clearly a despair element to it one of the things i find interesting about this is that the drugs that people generally die from are things like fentanyl opioids etc they're not party drugs they're not drugs you take to go out and have a good time is that the drugs that people generally die from are things like fentanyl, opioids, etc. They're not party drugs. They're not drugs you take to go out and have a good time, right? They're drugs that you take to retreat and withdraw. And interestingly, one of the main reasons why those drugs do end up very often killing people is because if there is a bad reaction, then there's no one with you.

And so a big predictor of dying from drugs is being alone. Johan Haria, I hope I'm saying that name correctly, said that the opposite of addiction is connection. I absolutely love that. That basically kind of confirms everything you've been saying. And so I want to use that as a bridge to a jumping off point, other than telling kids, you know, not the Nancy Reagan, don't do drugs, don't do drugs alone. But also, what are some potential solutions? Should we be legalizing drugs or is it more just programs to help young men feel more connected? being enough of an expert on drug policy to talk seriously about that side of it but what i would say i'm much more interested in the the demand side and the conditions with which what would lead people to kind of take drugs and then with whom and to what end right to what this is back to the like are you i'm not here to endorse drug use period but but i just think like if you're taking a relatively safe pill to try and

stay up late at night or you think you're taking some cocaine you do that very occasionally etc that's very different to this drug of retreat drug of despair drug of loneliness stuff that we're seeing playing out so to the extent that johan's line is correct about and i've heard him say that too and i like it too it's connection then i think what we should be doing is pushing hard on where are the places that men the boys and men can connect what are the social institutions what are the places and spaces and institutions that promote encourage and support fraternity right it's it's really weird that's interesting to me you're reflecting on fraternities,

is that the thing that I think that's probably most lacking in the lives of many young men, and middle-aged men, is fraternity. It's friendships, it's male friendships in particular, it's a sense of community and attachment and connection. So why we've allowed like Boy Scouts to drop the boy, for for example so that it's no longer boy scouts it's now scouting for america and has gone kind of co-ed but also scott like the decline in participation in sport in high school among boys it's good it's going up among girls it's going down among boys the lack of coaches the uh disengagement from extracurricular activities all that stuff it's like it actually takes quite

a lot to build community to build connection and we have not done a good enough job of creating places and spaces and institutions where like boys feel comfortable creating those relationships which are back to where i started like i was blown away by the fact that these 18 17 18 year old boys are afraid of being lonely on college campuses and it's less true for other groups because those colleges are actually making a real point of saying there'll be affinity groups there'll be a girl a women's support group there'll be a you know girls who code group there'll be a whatever very intentional explicit attempts to create a sense of community among other groups and i think we've made the mistake of thinking that men don't need that i I saw some really interesting, or I talked to

someone who's a family attorney, which is a way of saying helps people get divorced. And he said, he sent me some data saying that amongst gay men, marriages with gay men, 28% divorce rate, straight couples, 48% divorce rate. Gay women, lesbian marriages, 72%. And I thought, wow, does this mean women bring more, quote unquote, divorce energy to the relationship? And that just sort of blew me away because I'd never heard that before. And he said that the path, he said he's had a lot of his clients commit suicide and um or die by suicide i'm told it's the right way to say it now and he said something really rattling he said that we all want to believe they're mentally ill and it's something outside of our control and outside of their

control we have empathy for them they had no control over it or that it's not our fault to struggle with depression. And he said, I get it. He said, these guys basically do the math. They don't want to get divorced. Essentially, their divorce is usually presaged by some sort of financial stress, a bankruptcy, lose the business, some sort of emotional breakdown on the part of the man. His spouse decides she doesn't want to stay in the marriage. Family court is biased towards men. And you actually may have even talked about this. I apologize if I keep parroting back what I've learned from you. But in one fell swoop, within a matter of months or a small number of years, a guy loses his primary relationship, his children, his economic well-being,

and he makes a very rational decision to kill himself. I wonder if at some point you come back on one of our pods and say drug poisonings, suicide, and divorce. What are your thoughts? Yeah, so the suicide risk among men generally is four times higher than among women. If you narrow that scope to just divorced men and women, it is eight times higher among divorced men than among divorced women. And so I think there's a general point here. I didn't know that data about divorce. It's also true that women initiate twice as many

divorces. Women account for two-thirds of divorce initiations in the US now. So women are, just as an empirical matter, they're more likely to initiate divorce. And there's this interesting study recently, I think it was out Sweden, which looked at what happens to men and women who win the lottery. The men who won the lottery became a bit more likely to get married and not to have children. The women who won the lottery were more likely to divorce their husband. in a sort of gallows humor way because and of course like a good feminist critique of that would be well you know the women have got more exit power and they're using it right and if it's economic dependency tying them to the guy then hallelujah she's free of that and that's actually it's a great sort of microcosm of the the whole push for more economic independence for women and you know you and i are both strong advocates of that being a wonderful thing the issue then is what happens to men who get detached from institutions like family and marriage and

therefore end up as you say feeling like they're not valued and i probably said this to you before but the two words that men use to describe themselves before they take their lives from suicide in notes and so on the two most commonly used words are useless and worthless and just in other paper this will be interesting to you i think where we looked at the differences between men with a college degree and those without the paper on working class men and one of the stats in there that really blew me away and i you know i think i know this stuff and then i dig deeper and really get surprised which is that men without a college degree between the ages of 30 and 50 are only about 50 of those men have a child in their household it's basically 50 50 whether they've got kids in their household for women without a college degree it's still 80

and for those men it was 80 north of 80 and so we've got to a situation now where like particularly for kind of working class men, if I can use that definition of them, 50-50, whether they have kids in their household, they might have kids but not be in their household anymore. And I think one of the things we're learning is there was some truth to the conservative concern that if men became less economically important, if women became less economically reliant on men, that was going to leave a lot of men feeling beached and surplus to requirements.

And their fear was those men would start acting out. We'd see massive rises in crime, all kinds of antisocial behavior. It'd be like Mad Max, right? As these men are kind of roaming around. And of course, the opposite's happened by and large. We've actually seen men retreating. They're checking out more than acting out.

And I see suicide as, in some ways, the most tragic version of men just checking out, looking around, and deciding that society, their family, their community, their church, their workplace, really would be fine without them. Maybe even better off without them and if there is a greater human tragedy then leading people to feel unneeded to that extent then i don't know what it is yeah i was i was fascinated by that study on divorce so i looked into it and some additional data was that they believe that a lot of women, quote unquote, if you're going to say women have more divorce energy, which is disparaging towards women, you also have to acknowledge that as women have made more money, men shouldering domestic responsibilities has not kept pace with women's economic ascent. And that marriage has become a worse deal. And that is a lot of women feel like, okay, I'm now making as much or more money, but I'm also taking care of the house. This is just a raw deal for me.

I don't know if you thought about solutions, but this goes to a question around solutions is if we know that the single or a single point of failure for when a boy becomes much more likely to engage in self-harm, be incarcerated, become addicted, is when he loses a male role model. That is, mom and dad get divorced, and I think 92% of the time mom ends up with the kids. Shouldn't there be massive programs and immediate triggers that when there's a household of divorce, it's just the next thing is we have got to figure out resources and programs to get men to ensure men are involved in this boy's life moving forward. And two, when a man is divorced or when a couple gets divorced, that there needs to be some sort of education or program availability for these men post-divorce.

Yeah. The work of Catherine Eden and Tim Nelson on this, particularly working with lower income families. Just basically, they conclude by saying that the current child support system, family court system, especially for unmarried men, needs to be radically reformed. It needs to be reformed into a pro-family system and into a pro-fatherhood system. And right now, the way that the system works is that it kind of treats, it basically splits men, fathers into two halves. It says on the one hand, where's the money? So it's the child support element to it. And then on the other hand, completely unrelated, do you want to see your kid? And the father in every US state, the father has

to prove paternity if the kid was born outside marriage. And it's a completely separate legal process to get access. And so I think moving to the presumption of equal access and equal custody is important. Of course, there are always going to be exceptions that people can point to. What's interesting about this is that in states that have tried to move to like an equal custody presumption, in other words, in law, you just presume, unless there's a good reason to the contrary, which they could be that, you know mums and dads have the same rights this weird alliance of lawyers and pretty strong feminist groups join forces to kill it and the reason that the women's groups do it is because they're protecting women's position in the family um and they know and child's and access to child support and the reason the lawyers do it is because

they're going to lose half their business, right? If it just becomes a straightforward 50-50 split, then they don't have couples arguing with each other, then they're going to lose like half their legal fees. And so I do agree that thinking about fatherhood, custody, access more in a more pro-dad way is just is huge i just think we have failed to update our views about fatherhood and by the way fathers need to step up more in the way you just said but and so the legal system is still just antiquated and especially it's antiquated given that like for except for college educated americans most kids aren't born inside marriage now and so you can't just rely on divorce laws to do it. You've got to deal with the fact that the preponderance of cases here, the parents weren't married. The last thing I'll say on this is, I actually had this guy in tears

at an event where I gave all my charts showing how good dads are for kids, right? Their high school graduation rates, actually their chances of using drugs, just how important dads are as role models. And this dad came up to me in tears afterwards and said yeah but also being a father is the most important thing in my life and what i came to realize is that fatherhood isn't just a means to an end fatherhood is actually a central part of the identity purpose and meaning that a lot of men have in their lives it's really i mean what you say always resonates so much i'm struggling with my 17 yearyear-old is now at boarding school and it was sold to me and I'm going to act like the victim here as,

oh, I'll be home Friday afternoons and go back to school on Monday morning. No, he has school Saturday morning. He's been home for 24 hours. And I not only miss him, but what I've come to realize is that I like myself as a dad. I really do feel good about, you know, I feel like on programs like this, I virtue signal and create this picture that I like myself as a dad. I really do feel good about, you know, I feel like on programs like this, I virtue signal and create this picture that I'm a better father than I actually am. But I know I'm a good dad and I get a lot of confidence from it.

And it gives me a certain level of, I don't know, my role. Like I check this box. I'm helping the species and not 50% of my ability to act in what I think is a nice role is gone because he's no longer here during the week. And it has really fucked with me. It has hurt my self-esteem. I feel anchorless. I just wonder if there's programs. I'm even thinking like, I am dreading Richard. I don't know if you feel about this, I know you have kids. I am so freaked out about the moment my second leaves for college.

They talk about women go through this. My partner, she's going to be fine. She's like, she's already kind of counting the days to let out of the house because I think she gets, you know, she gets more work and less fun than I do. But it just strikes me so much how that role of fatherhood, it's not only, you know, something I enjoy, it's just so central to my identity. And I can't imagine what it must be like to just, to, you know, I think in family court, you know, you lose your kids, you lose access. Mom, at least when my parents got divorced, did your parents stay together, Richard? Yeah, mine did, yeah. Still are together.

That's wonderful. What happens, or at least happened with me and I saw it happen with most of my friends, is that a kid can't process the agita or the dissent or the problem of these two people splitting up. It makes no sense. So immediately they go, oh, someone must be a bad person. And it's unlikely that the bad person is the person you're living with making you breakfast every morning. It's the bad person is the one who's left, whether he or she wanted custody.

And so I just think there's a very easy tendency for kids of divorced parents to kind of demonize dad. And that's what I did. I'm like, mom's a saint, dad's awful. for kids of divorced parents to kind of demonize dad. And that's what I did. I'm like, mom's a saint, dad's awful. I'm fascinated by this notion of what you said was really striking that men are four times more likely to commit suicide, excuse me, die of suicide, but become eight times more likely to recently divorce.

Are there programs or any more data that you've talked about in terms of what happens with men after they lose their primary relationship and no longer live with their kids? Yeah, there's data. I mean, I've given you the suicide one, but just their life expectancy goes down. Their chances of earning, being employed goes down. Other health conditions worsen. And sometimes that's a bit of an eye roll moment. It's like, well, of course, if men don't have women to look after them and remind him to take his pills and go to the doctor, then he's hopeless, isn't he? There's a sort of sense of that bit of an eye roll around it. But I think a deeper understanding that's closer to what you

were talking about, which is that sense of connection and purpose and meaning and neededness right the the sense of being needed versus surplus to requirements i think is really the axis i try to think about this along now like it's very interesting to me that men now are more likely to say that having kids and getting married is important for a satisfying life than women are. So the old trope about it's women that want to get married and have kids and men who have to be dragged into it, the ball and chain. And men would rather be off like a cowboy just doing their own thing, but it gets ensnared into domestic life. But deep down, they want to be out on the range or doing their own thing and that is bullshit it is absolutely the opposite of the truth is that actually men what makes you a man is what you're doing for others we both talk about this the kind of connection to others but also generating a surplus being generative this idea of generative

masculinity and actually listening to you now is a spark of the thought that one of the things we know from the work of Anna Machen and other people, she's a great scholar on fatherhood, by the way, if you don't know her stuff, she has this wonderful book called The Life of Dad, which is basically about how we invented fatherhood in humanity. But actually, dads really come into their own in the adolescent years. Moms seem to have a bit of a competitive advantage in the early years, and dads have a competitive advantage in those adolescent years right moms seem to have a bit of a competitive advantage in the early years and dads have a competitive advantage in those adolescent years because you're helping your kids like go out into the world to grow to develop to take risks appropriately develop social skills in other words like the the simpler way to putting this is that moms are really good when the kids

are in the nest and dads are really good at helping prepare them to leave the nest. But actually when they then leave the nest, you've just lost the thing that you were doing over the previous few years. And so in a weird way, I think for dads, their kids leaving at 18 is much more of a loss than for moms because moms have sort of done more of their work, if you like, emotionally anyway, like when the kids were eight, right? Whereas dads come into their own in these later years, only to see them kind of fly away. And a lot of dads, I certainly feel this, is this mixture of pride and loss.

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little bit more civil. And for you small business owners out there, LinkedIn knows that there's a lot of pressure on the day-to-day, and you're already wearing so many hats, you might not have the time or resources to hire. That's why it's time to hire professionals like a professional on LinkedIn. Post your job for free at linkedin.com slash prof. That's linkedin.com slash prof to post your job for free. Terms and conditions apply. On the diary of a CEO, you said that we're in the relatively early stages of a cultural revolution, one where the economic relation between men and women has dramatically transformed. Say more? Yeah, so with 1979, 13% of women earned more than the median man, typical man, 13%.

Last time I looked, it was 40% of women earned more than the typical man, 40% of breadwinners are female in the US now. So in the space of my lifetime, I'm in my mid-50s, born in 69, in the space of my lifetime, we have utterly transformed the relative economic position of men and women in advanced economies, including in the US. Now, we haven't achieved full equality, and obviously there's still some work to be done, but the level of economic independence that women have achieved in the matter of decades has been just gigantic and hugely liberating, wonderful, etc. But I genuinely think that it takes time for cultures to adjust to such massive economic changes i mean that is a fundamental change in the economic relationship between kind of men and women and what it's done is it's unbundled the traditional ways in which men and women were

kind of tied to each other economically and i do think this comes back to our earlier conversation i really think that we were focused on the economic dependence of women on men in traditional marriage and try to reduce that. But I don't think we paid quite enough attention to the emotional dependence of men on those families, on those marriages, and on the kind of being the co-residents kind of with their kids. And what's happened is that as women have become more economically independent, the degree to which men were actually quite emotionally dependent on those traditional structures has become glaringly apparent and the gap has really opened up and i think that's the chasm that i see a lot of men really struggling to cross or fall into so culturally just i mean that's a gigantic shift and it's all

it's good it's good but the thing i find frustrating about this is people's inability to say you can have this really great change like the rise of women's economic independence and choice and to say but by the way there's going to be some bumps in the road here because you've just radically transformed the way in which kind of men feel their place in society and you don't have to end up being reactionary and saying oh that's why we should go back which is what some of the reactionary right-wingers are saying, which is like, that's why we need to go back, right? No, no, no, we need to go forward. But we have to go forward with some empathy and compassion for the fact that this is a very different world that men are navigating now. You've touched on the idea of a new script for masculinity and the new set

of roles and the new set of do's what do you mean and what does the script look like yeah so i'm always a bit reluctant around this because of course there are lots of different scripts but i mean it comes back a bit to fatherhood i i i've now placed a lot of weight increasingly actually as i'm doing the work on the importance of fatherhood as that anchoring. I'm using the way you described your own relationship with your son, like the anchor you feel anchored by as an anchor for men. And being a provider and a protector

in a way that is appropriate for the kind of modern world. So I've come to believe that we have to retain these ideals these ideas about the role of of men but just update them so rather than saying okay we don't need protectors we don't need providers we don't you know instead i think we need to say that you can provide and protect in different ways now so i think actually for example and your colleague jonathan height and our mutual friend is doing a lot of work right now and how do you protect kids from some of the online environments that they kind of might be like how now on how do you protect kids from some of the online environments that they kind of might be. Like, how do you step in between some of the forces out there in the world and your kids' well-being, right? That's being a protector.

You don't have to be throwing a punch every time. And I would say the same way being a provider doesn't necessarily mean that your dollar amount on your monthly paycheck has to be a certain level or has to be a certain level more than your wife's or your partner's but by god it means you need to be providing to your household time energy you know skills etc right you don't like you don't have to be doing providing in just this very narrow economic way but by god you have to provide right so i said this before but like as a as a stay-at-home dad i felt like a provider right because i was providing the space and energy for my wife to be able to work not knowing her kids were in safe hands i think actually for a lot of women knowing their kids are in their father's care while they're working that's hugely powerful i love this notion and we'll wrap up here because i just think it's such a great construct for young men or

a great framework framework talk about the notion of surplus value so when you look through the history of like what turns a boy into a man in most human societies it is some mark of them producing more of something than they need for themselves now in a kind of post-war economy with more money bread that's the breadwinner version of it but that wasn't true 5 000 years ago on the savannah that was meat that was protein for the tribe and for the mother of your child in other places it could be something else but i think that i love this idea of masculinity mature masculinity being defined in terms of giving more than you get it's a service-oriented form of masculinity it's definitely the one i got from my my father's uh knee i mean just

absolutely they're kind of giving more than you get and that's why there's this movement online of men going their own way like a men's separatist movement saying, we don't need women, we don't need marriage, we don't need kids, we don't need the labor market, screw you, we're off. That is literally the opposite of masculinity. you're a man when you're generating more energy time love money meat whatever the hell it is than you need for your own survival because that is historically what men have had to do is to contribute contribute to the family to the tribe to the community and if you're not a contributor in all these different ways then you ain't a man and so if you're wondering how to be a man start by doing something for're wondering how to be a man, start by doing something for somebody else, and that will lead you in the right direction. Richard Reeves is the president of the American Institute for Boys and Men,

which he founded in 2023 to raise awareness of the problems of boys and men and advocate for effective solutions. He's also a non-resident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., where he previously directed the Future of the Middle Class Initiative and the Center on Children and Families. His 2022 book, Of Boys and Men, Why the Modern Male is Struggling, Why it Matters and What to Do About It, was described as a landmark in the New York Times and named a book of the year by both The Economist and The New Yorker. And distinct of his accent, he joins us from eastern Tennessee. Did I get that right, Richard? Correct. Yeah. Southern Appalachia. Yeah. I would bet you're one of the

more interesting people in that area. And that's a disparaging statement about Eastern Tennessee, but I bet people are fascinated with you as we are. And Richard, I say this, but it bears repeating. You have literally inspired me to take this on as an issue. Thank you so much for your good work. Thank you for your work, Scott. Always a pleasure. This episode was produced by Caroline Shagrin. Jennifer Sanchez is our associate producer, and Drew Burrows is our technical director. Thank you for listening to the PropGee pod from the Vox Media Podcast Network. We will catch you on Saturday for No Mercy, No Malice, as read by George Hahn. And please follow our Prof G Markets pod wherever you get your pods for new episodes every Monday and Thursday.