How to Help Society's 'Lost Boys'

A conference hosted by the University of Virginia’s National Marriage Project brought together academic researchers, educators, writers and college-age men to share their observations on the ways in which young men growing up today are struggling.

Titled “Lost Boys: The Digital Revolution, the Retreat from Marriage, and the Decline of Men,” the March 17 conference examined the impacts of social media and online entertainment, cultural and educational trends, and the growing number of children growing up without fathers in the home. For the invited researchers and panel discussion participants, these factors have combined to undercut the capacity of boys and young men to flourish in school, work, even love.

The National Marriage Project’s director, UVA’s Melville Foundation Jefferson Scholars Foundation Distinguished Professor of Sociology Brad Wilcox, defined the dilemma at the opening of the keynote panel discussion he hosted in Old Cabell Hall.

“We're here this evening to talk about our culture's lost boys, the boys who are checked out and disengaged in middle schools across the land, the high school guys who excel at Fortnite even as they're failing physics, the young men lining the back of college classrooms who are silent and seemingly uninterested in offering their own perspective. And the 20-something boys in the basements who can be found in neighborhoods across the nation,” Wilcox said, citing a recent report suggesting that a “stunning 42%” of young men in American think of themselves as failures.

The inspiration for the conference’s title came from the fictional “Lost Boys” who inhabit Neverland with Peter Pan.

“We all know that young men who remain in Neverland miss out on the best that adult life has to offer: real work, real community and real love,” Wilcox said. “So, when I speak of ‘Lost Boys,’ I'm thinking of young men today who are afflicted by a kind of male malaise that inhibits their capacity to move successfully into adulthood.”

The keynote discussion aimed to make sense of the growing number of these ‘lost boys’ in today’s culture and featured three recognized public voices on the topic. Wilcox shared Old Cabell Hall’s stage with Richard Reeves, a president of the American Institute for Boys and Men and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution; Aaron Renn, a senior fellow at American Reformer and a frequent writer on men’s issues; and Alvaro de Vincente, headmaster of The Heights, a private all-boys school in Potomac, Md.

Reeves opened his remarks by emphasizing the importance of framing the issue correctly.

“I think too often the framing is that young men are the problem, not that they have problems,” Reeves said. “But a big part of my story is we need our young men.”

“We have radically transformed the economy and our society and our culture: in particular, the economic rise of women,” Reeves continued after citing increasing suicide rate among young men, flat wage rates for men without college degrees, and surveys indicating that a growing number of young men are worried that no one will fall in love with them. “But we have not answered the urgent question of what that means for our men?”

De Vicente said many K-12 schools are betraying boys and young men because of their inability to provide enough male role models and through the messages they are imparting through their instruction.

“The boys are misunderstood, unmotivated and misguided because there is no male figure in the classroom that understands that this boy is not a problem,” di Vicente said. “I’m afraid that most of our schools are telling the boys, ‘We just want you to be nice. We want you to be silent. We want you to be quiet. We don't want you to break anything. We want you to be compliant. We want you to be moldable.’ And one, that is not interesting to boys. That's insulting to boys. And two, if we succeed, we have a problem in our society, because we have a lot of compliant, submissive, silent, quiet, unproductive men.”

According to Renn, positive traits like courage that were once previously associated with masculinity have been “reclassified as a sort of generic human trait,” which, he said, has left manhood to be defined now under two categories: a collection of negative attributes attributed with toxic masculinity that men are told to avoid and the unique obligation for a man to sacrifice himself, his interests and desires for the purpose of serving other people, typically his wife and kids.

“Sacrifice and service are a good part and very integral to what masculinity is, but I don't think you can reduce it to that, which is sort of what we’ve done today,” Renn said. “And so, no wonder men have turned away from that and towards some of the more online influencer scripts, or ‘Red Pill’ manosphere scripts, which are, frankly, much more appealing to two young men in a lot of ways, even if they’re pretty unhealthy.”

Student voices offer personal perspectives

The conference also featured a earlier panel discussion featuring presentations on new research on the consequences of social media, fatherlessness and delayed marriage by researchers from UVA, Brigham Young University and the Wheatley Institute, a BYU think tank that supports research-supported work fortifying “the core institutions of family, religion and constitutional government.”

A student panel moderated by UVA politics professor Gerard Alexander featured two current college students sharing their perspectives on what it’s like being a male student at UVA today and Nic Sanker, a recent Princeton University graduate and Charlottesville native.

Brayson Holmes, a first-generation college student from Las Vegas who was raised primarily by his grandparents, said that he has found a welcoming community of brothers in his fraternity. The spirit of competition that infuses everything from intramural sports to UVA’s debate societies and a Capella groups makes UVA a great fit for him, Holmes added.

“UVA, I think, has the great benefit of being both a fantastic academic institution and a fantastic place to be a 20-year-old. And part of that is fostered in that competition,” said Holmes a second year pursuing a double major in politics and philosophy. “That’s just rooted in UVA culture, to compete with people, and I think that's great.”

Caldwell Morris, a third-year student from the Washington, D.C., area majoring in political philosophy, policy and law, said he appreciates UVA’s history and traditions like the signing of the honor pledge by incoming first years at Opening Convocation and the Lighting of the Lawn.

“I think some of the moments that are the most fun are when you’re reminded that you’re a part of the community, not just as a student but as a person continuing the tradition of whatever it means to be a Wahoo,” he said. “Those moments to me are always reminders that it's not just a college. I think that’s very helpful for orienting young men, to think that the organization of the institution they're a part of has some sort of particular character that they can adopt or internalize. I've always found that to be helpful.”