'Notes on Being a Man': Protect, Provide, Procreate

My female students at the University of Virginia are worried about the state of the opposite sex. The women who take my “sociology of family” class tell of brothers living in their parents’ basements, boyfriends hooked on pornography and male peers who don’t pull their weight in group projects. Most troublingly, many of these women say they have never been asked on a date. Their voices are part of a rising chorus expressing concern about the falling fortunes of our boys and men.

There is good reason for concern. “The data around boys and men is overwhelming,” writes Scott Galloway, a popular podcaster, serial entrepreneur and professor of marketing at New York University. As Mr. Galloway points out, the share of young men who are “neither in school nor working has tripled since 1980”; meanwhile, 60% of young men between the ages of 18 and 24 still live with their parents and, according to Mr. Galloway, 45% of young men have never even approached a woman in person. This male malaise is driving “deaths of despair—suicide, drug overdoses, alcohol poisoning” to record highs among men, especially working-class men.

As Mr. Galloway observes in “Notes on Being a Man” (Simon & Schuster, 304 pages, $29)—his powerful, personal and prophetic meditation on manhood—this is bad for men (and women) but also bad for the country. A “large and growing cohort of bored, lonely, poorly educated men is a malevolent force in any society,” he writes, adding that these unmoored men are vulnerable to “conspiracy theories, radicalization, and nihilist politics.” The truth of this observation is all too visible both online and in politics today.

Why are so many boys and men floundering? Mr. Galloway’s life experience and professional perspective—he was raised by a single mom and struggled through California’s public-school system before eventually succeeding in Silicon Valley—point to three problems. First, family breakdown is a big factor, as too many “boys come apart” when dad leaves; if dad is not married to mom, we are told, “the son is more likely to be incarcerated than graduate from college.” Second, schools are failing to engage and inspire boys because there is a “dearth of male teachers”; meanwhile, too many books, rules and classes are not calibrated to the male spirit. Third, too many boys and young men are getting hooked on the gaming, gambling, social media and pornography produced by our “addiction economy,” thereby causing them to lose their drive and ability to socialize, learn, date, work and form a family.

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