Boys and Men in Greater Boston: Recap
March 6, 2025
On March 6 at the Boston Foundation, President and CEO Lee Pelton welcomed an in-person and online audience to the release of a report called Boys and Men in Massachusetts: Challenges in Education, Employment and Health. He did so acknowledging that it may strike some as strange to take this on at a time when powerful people at the national level seem intent on clawing back gains made by women over the last century. But, he noted, “Equity is not a zero-sum game. Work to help boys and men to thrive will not detract from efforts tackling disparities for women. We really have to investigate all variables in the data to see the full picture and work toward equity.”
Boston Indicators Executive Director Luc Schuster introduced the program to present and discuss the report produced jointly by Boston Indicators and the American Institute for Boys and Men (AIBM). To Pelton’s remarks on the relevance of this topic today, he added, “Not speaking up about where boys or men are struggling—in school, say, or the labor force—leaves a void for more reactionary voices urging a regressive return to old-style sex roles and ‘toxic masculinity.’” He also pointed out that “public datasets have mostly only gathered binary data, which is why our report reflects that. Boston Indicators wants to resist changes setting back advances in nonbinary data collection.” (See the article, A Crisis of Trust in Federal Data.)
Report authors Kelly Harrington and DJ Windsor presented research highlights on life expectancy, mental health, education, and jobs, including:
- On average, Massachusetts men live five years less than women, but averages for Black and Latino populations have a bigger gap.
- Among young people, girls report depression and suicidal ideation more than boys, but boys die by suicide at higher rates.
- As income decreases, boys fall farther behind in high school achievement and completion.
- Men lag women by 9% overall in earning a BA, but the lag is 20% for Black men.
- As manufacturing (traditionally male) has declined and education, health care (traditionally female), and professional services (requiring a BA) have grown, more males have fallen out of the workforce.
Agenda
Welcome
M. Lee Pelton, President and CEO, The Boston Foundation
Research Presentation
Luc Schuster, Executive Director, Boston Indicators
Kelly Harrington, Senior Research Manager, Boston Indicators
DJ Windsor, Research and Program Analyst, American Institute for Boys and Men
Conversation and Audience Q&A
Darryl C. Murphy, Host, “The Common”, WBUR (moderator)
Richard Reeves, President, American Institute for Boys and Men
With this background, AIBM President Richard Reeves and journalist and The Common podcast host Darryl C. Murphy discussed the themes presented, starting with the value of digging in to local data for revealing the unique challenges and assets in a given region. For instance, even though Massachusetts boys trail girls in grade 4 and 8 language arts, and lose their lead in math by grade 8, Massachusetts has among the best performing students in the country. A study like Boys and Men would look very different in Baltimore or rural Michigan. And what’s at stake if we shy away from the issue, Murphy asked?
Reeves said, “There’s a view that if you point out these findings, they’ll be used by the zero-sum thinkers to blame the ‘woke feminists killing masculinity.’ So people don’t want to provide that bait. But if there are real problems it’s bigger fuel for reactionaries when you don’t address them at all. We have to take away the fuel for the Andrew Tates of the world, who say no one is doing anything about struggling males. In other words, don’t cede the ground on the issue.”
The pair discussed Michigan and Maryland governors both talking about it in their state of the state addresses. But what can officials do to get through to boys and men to help them? “The antidote to unserious online men is serious men in flesh and blood in communities,” said Reeves. “It’s not as exciting and click-baity. But we say, ‘Keep it boring.’ That’s our mantra; that is, keep it serious. Then you can counter the toxic online opportunists saying you’re not doing anything; you can say here’s what Boston, Baltimore, and Michigan are doing. But the absence of men in role models leads boys to turn to these online figures.”
Given their challenges in a shifting world, there is a “contest” in the call to men—especially young men. Reeves said, “There needs to be a call for men that’s more appealing than what they’re hearing.” We need to help make schools work better for boys, help mental health work for them, help dads stay in touch through difficult times. At the risk of sounding conservative, he explained, we should take advantage of an important point of youth to age—a point where men grow and thrive when they find they are needed, adding valuing, giving more than getting—to appeal to and advance "a service-based masculinity over a grievance-based masculinity.”
Murphy and Reeves discussed how that could look in day to day practice: For one, put it in the policy conversation, making it OK to talk about this; making it mainstream. Also break down social isolation for men; increase their representation in mental health and education. There’s a fear such efforts will be misinterpreted, Reeves allowed, which means we need to reemphasize zero-sum game aspect and keep working for girls’ and women’s advancement. “Don’t talk about the Barbie movie,” Reeves advised. “Don’t talk about whether encountering a man or a bear on a trail is scarier for a woman. But can we talk about how in Michigan only 60% of males graduate from high school on time? That losses from opioid deaths are equal to losses from World War II? That’s where the work is. Real, actual, honest-to-god problems. We want to talk about those.”