Growing numbers of working-age men have detached from the labor market—particularly those between the ages of 25 to 34. Men now receive about 74 bachelor’s degrees for every 100 awarded to women. Men account for more than 70% of the decline in college enrollment overall.
As women have become less dependent on marriage as a means to financial security or even motherhood, they are becoming increasingly selective. This has led to a rise in lonely, single young men. More men now live with their parents than they do a romantic partner.
Men also account for almost three out of every four deaths of despair, meaning deaths resulting from suicide or substance abuse.
All of this and more have left men reeling about what it means to be a man.
What are men for in our world?
What do they look like?
Where do they fit in?
And if you find an answer, how do you know it’s the right one?
Is it the hyper-masculine, hyper-misogynistic views of a social influencer like the former kickboxer and “Big Brother” contestant Andrew Tate, making it all about sports and women, cigars and sex?
Is it chivalry? Which is just as confusing to men when they sometimes find out that even holding open a door for a woman can be perceived as sexist to some.
Do you throw masculinity away entirely, as if it doesn’t exist?
Or do you just go with what have been called the three “Bs” which are what most men buy into when it comes to defining manhood. The first “B” is for your billfold, which is judging your manhood by how much money you make or how successful you are with your work or the title you have.
The second “B” stands for ballfield, which is measuring manhood on the basis of strength, athletic ability or physical toughness.
The third “B” stands for the bedroom, which measures manhood on how popular you are with women.
But every one of those is, in truth, meaningless when it comes to what it means to be a man. Because at the end of our lives, it won’t matter how financially successful we were, how many followers we had on Instagram, how famous we were, our sexual prowess…
None of that will matter.
What will matter is whether we fulfilled our purpose as men. But the three “Bs” are all most men have to judge themselves by, which is why it’s just so confusing for men these days.
