What Josh Hawley is missing about the ‘masculinity crisis’

Jake Stika is the executive director of Next Gen Men, a Canadian non-profit that seeks to change ideas about masculinity.

In 2023, the struggle is real – for men, that is. According to Republican Senator Josh Hawley, who argues in his new book Manhood: The Masculine Virtues America Needs, “All is not well with men in America. And that spells trouble for the American Republic.”

If Mr. Hawley’s name doesn’t ring a bell, images of him probably do: throwing up a fist of solidarity at the Jan. 6 rioters – and then proceeding to run in fear from the mob once it had breached the Capitol.

That less-than-inspiring anecdote is put aside in Manhood, which joins a long line of credos by aspiring male influencers that include Jordan Peterson and his 12 Rules for Life (2018), Rollo Tomassi’s The Rational Male (2013), Neil Strauss’s The Game (2005) and Robert Glover’s No More Mr. Nice Guy (2000). All start with a similar premise of a looming “masculinity crisis” and offer a prescription to solve it that inevitably involves some form of doubling down on traditional understandings of masculinity.

In the 33 years since the earliest effort, Robert Bly’s Iron John (1990), not only have we not solved how to “be a man,” but the brewing war among men about what masculinity looks like is heating up.

Interestingly, all parties to this “civil war” start from the same place: genuine concern.

As someone who works with men and boys to broaden the definition of being a man, I share Mr. Hawley’s concerns for the real social and economic problems we see today. Mr. Hawley cites statistics about the rising male suicide rate, the falling male college graduation rate, and the overwhelming number of men who have died in the opioid crisis. These same statistics keep me up at night.

Where we diverge is in what we see as virtues and our visions for the future.

Mr. Hawley tackles virtues and visions with a father-knows-best tone that puts the onus on the individual. You could call Mr. Hawley’s camp the moral hand-wringers. This group is concerned with the state of masculinity, namely an erosion of its form or an attack on its worth. These people often see the heyday of masculinity in the past, when men were celebrated as breadwinners, saluted as protectors and overrepresented in positions of power across the board. In looking back to the “good old days,” these stakeholders are looking to restrict masculinity to the few – heterosexual, mostly white, cisgender males.

But the drum they’re beating runs counter to the direction society is headed. Perhaps at no time is this more obvious than in June, the month that celebrates Father’s Day but has become also known for Pride month. And all this progress has led to a movement of masculinities (plural because there’s not just one way to be a man) that is expansive and inclusive. This year, Father’s Day advertisements from brands such as Hallmark are celebrating “all father figures,” opening the door to how different people in our lives can be mentors and guiding forces. Policy makers are waking up to how stale definitions of masculinity harm all genders and are taking steps to encourage paternity leave in workplaces and make daycare more affordable across Canada so women can join the work force in equal numbers to men.

There’s a beautiful story about anthropologist Margaret Mead, who studied the origins of civilization. She was asked what the earliest sign of a civilized society was, and the answer people expected was a shoe or a tool. What she said was that it was a skeleton with a broken femur that had healed; to her, that signified that other people gave care to another person long enough for them to heal, long before any sort of modern medicine.

To hear Mr. Hawley tell it, the problem with men today is a lack of strength and character. He describes a “male malaise” epidemic in which young men are underperforming in school, aren’t motivated to join the work force, and still live at home with their parents. He writes, “Not trying is becoming a theme,” pointing to stats, including that boys make up two-thirds of students in U.S. remedial-education classes.

But if we consider these same trends through Dr. Mead’s lens, perhaps we’d reach a different conclusion – that the way forward isn’t in finger-wagging, but in caregiving. Let’s not simply look at the outcomes, such as men’s lower college graduation rates, but consider the inputs that lead to them and address those instead.

The world Mr. Hawley describes didn’t happen overnight. For generations, white men graduated into good jobs and earned solid paycheques with little to no competition from women or people of colour. With more equity in the workplace, those expectations need to be adjusted, and we haven’t done a good job of explaining that to the current generation.

We need teachers to do more to engage boys at school. Mr. Hawley says 70 per cent of students receiving Ds and Fs are boys. In that case, we need to challenge educators to shift how they see boys in their classrooms by finding ways to connect with them to advance their outcomes the way we did for girls throughout the past half-century. We need schools to set boys up for success in a changing economy by not only building IQ, but EQ – emotional intelligence – which is something ChatGPT can’t replace.

Mr. Hawley is a father himself – Manhood is dedicated to his two young sons – and something he is particularly concerned about is absent fathers, which he calls “the starkest example of male weakness.” But the idea that simply having a father in the home would solve all our problems is simplistic at best and damaging at worst.

In Invisible Man, Got the Whole World Watching, Mychal Denzel Smith writes: “We have spent so much time valorizing the mere existence of fathers, we haven’t discussed what type of fathers they will be. We haven’t shown any concern for whether or not these fathers show up as full, healthy human beings.”

That’s a point substantiated in Terrence Real’s I Don’t Want to Talk About It: Overcoming the Secret Legacy of Male Depression. “Contrary to the overwrought concerns about ‘family values,’ research clearly indicates that boys raised in healthy, loving families without fathers do not reveal appreciable signs of psychological ill health,” he writes. “Boys with abusive or neglectful fathers, on the other hand, are another matter. Too often, what fathers bequeath to their children is their own unacknowledged pain, and, in instances of violence, an entitlement to inflict it on others.”

Here’s the kicker, though – the person who loses the most in fatherlessness may not be the child (if they have other loving supports), but probably the father. Mr. Real continues: “Studies indicate that while fathering may or may not be necessary for the psychological adjustment of boys, it is highly advantageous for the psychological adjustment of the father. Men who were judged as having warm, nurturant relationships with their children were shown to be healthier, less depressed, and, surprisingly, more successful in their careers.”

It’s good news for both parents and children, then, that research shows that millennial dads in the U.S. spend three times more time with their kids than previous generations did.

I speak to the power of lineage when it comes to fatherhood. My family immigrated to Canada in the early 1990s and, like many newcomer Canadians, my parents had to restart their careers from scratch. My pharmacist mother studied to redo her pharmacology degree, while my computer-programmer dad was the primary earner. In another family, this might have led to my dad working long hours and my mom sacrificing her career to support him. Instead, my dad shifted working hours and was the primary parent, driving me to basketball practices and cheering at my games after school.

I had early exposure to another way of being a man. My dad gave me far more than he ever took for himself – something we need to remember as we father the next generation of men, literally or figuratively. Caregiving is the input that changes the outcome.

In 2023, Mr. Hawley sees a world where “men are apparently incapable of coping with life on their own.” He sees that as a crisis. I see it as an admission – and an opportunity. We have a generation of young men questioning patriarchy and broadening the definition of masculinity.

So many men’s advocates and thought leaders don’t consider women, trans and non-binary people in their musings – the very people who are often men’s lovers, friends, colleagues, neighbours and family members. How are they doing? What are their outcomes?

We need more men to ask, “What are we willing to give?” Can we give more space for people to be themselves? Can we give more credit to others? Can we give more grace for mistakes and failure? Can we give more effort to our growth outside of wealth and status? Can we give more love than we hope to get?

These virtues and vision can change the status quo and help not just men, but all of us.