Ignoring boys' emotional needs fuels public health risks
It is absolutely true that boys have been neglected. But the contempt of men is a recent phenomenon. Feminism has a great deal to do with it, demonizing masculinity by construing all men as brutes and promoting the false doctrine that men are unnecessary, that women are self-sufficient, that the patriarchy is some kind of evil oppressive thing. All of that is false. Men and women are <i>complementary</i>, which is to say they differ in ways that complete the other in some way. They need <i>each other</i> to help realize and become who they are. This doesn&#x27;t necessarily mean every man and woman will marry or can marry or must marry, only that in the great social scheme of things, men and women have their unique genius to offer and range of roles to play in service of the other and the common good, even if it is remote.<p>Boys have different needs than girls. Treating boys like girls will not do them any good. All children need fathers, but boys are perhaps especially sensitive in this regard as men help model for boys what masculinity means. We see how the absence of a father translates into higher rates of various pathologies and delinquency in single mother households. Father also have an authority no mother can have, an authority that helps boys, and children in general, achieve the kind of moral formation need for adulthood.<p>There&#x27;s a reason virtually every culture is patriarchal. Patriarchy exists in service of the common good, beginning with the family unit. It provides the structure and order that enables everyone to flourish. Can things go wrong? Sure. But that&#x27;s true of every social order or arrangement. You don&#x27;t abolish something because it can go wrong or goes wrong sometimes. This is like solving poverty by exterminating the poor, or cutting everyone&#x27;s hands off to &quot;solve&quot; theft. A healthy masculinity, the via media between effeminacy and brutishness, is sacrificial and it is good not only for men, but all of society, including women. The common good depends on it.