Entry 3: Young Men in the Workforce

Professional and societal expectations can be among of the harshest things to deal with, especially as a young man who may not have found their calling in life just yet. I am ready to bet that your parents have been pressuring you to get a job, no matter which one, since around the end of high school. Although this is not an intrinsically bad thing, since getting a steady income that is not from your parents’ pockets is a huge step towards achieving independence early on, it is very likely that this pushed you into a position that you don’t particularly care for or even downright hate. One of the first things one learns in the job market is that working a job that one has aversion to is an incredibly draining experience that should and must be addressed as early as possible before the situation devolves. Another phenomenon that could have played into your hypothetical dislike of your job could be that managers and supervisors, especially those of the older generation, have very little regard for the pay-to-workload ratio, and may expect you to go above and beyond for what is most probably just above 100$ CAD a week because you likely decided to work part-time because of your class schedule. The answer to this is simply to look for jobs that have managers and bosses closer to your age range that understand your position as a young adult who has just entered the job market and manage their expectations accordingly.

In the past year, it’s been difficult for the unemployed to find jobs due to the pandemic, but that’s not the only reason why young men specifically have been struggling in the workforce recently. In fact, more and more adult men are living in a parent’s home without a job as years go by. Because of this, men will have a lower and lower involvement in the labor force if this trend does not change. We hear you, finding a job can be difficult and stressful, especially when it comes to entry-level jobs which do not provide the best working conditions nor do they provide any low-speed jobs. If you’re trying to find a job with no experience, chances are you’ll end up working at a restaurant where you are expected to always work fast which can take a toll on your mental health. Getting good work is also becoming harder and harder for young men due to the increasing amount of male dropouts in school due to the reasons we touched on in the first entry of this blog. It’s also harder for men to easily accept being ordered around by a boss when society idealizes men that are strong leaders. People can have a hard time fitting into that image when they feel like just another asset being used by a company for their own gain. Because of the expectations thrown at men from a very young age, the pressure to become a leader can be devastating to one’s mental health when said person is always doing their best to overperform, especially when not every man is cut out to be a leader.

As always, if you need anyone to talk to, that’s what we’re here for. You can leave a comment on our blog or contact us on Instagram or Facebook if you are seeking help. Feel free to share this blog post so that we can further spread the word about men’s mental health.

Sources:

Coy, Peter. “Fewer Young Men Are in the Labor Force. More Are Living at Home.” Bloomberg.com, Bloomberg, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-06-11/fewer-young-men-are-in-the-labor-force-more-are-living-at-home. 

Boettcher, Nick, et al. “Men's Work-Related Stress and Mental Health: Illustrating the Workings of Masculine Role Norms.” American Journal of Men's Health, SAGE Publications, 2019, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6438430/.

Entry 2: Men and Family Relations

 What it means to grow up as a boy

If you are reading this, chances are that you are a young man between ages 16 to 21 that grew up in the early 2000s. If you live in North America, the chance that you grew up with divorced parents has surpassed the odds of a coinflip. Since this sounds bad, you may start to think that you were lucky to have parents that remained together or at least kept contact with each other, either because they did not have any hard feelings held against the other or because they both want to support and raise you as you should be. It is necessary to point this out because nearly a third of North American households lack a father figure to take responsibility and care for the children. This post is mostly addressed to this boy that fits into this last category, that of fatherless boys that did not grow up with a positive masculine figure in their life. Although on paper, it does not sound so bad to grow up with only a mom. Hell, you regrettably have not known anything else until this point in your life. On the other hand, I am willing to bet that at some point in your teenage years you felt you could not share something with your mom, boy things because you feared that she would not understand. Do not get me wrong, single mothers can be great at explaining mathematics, help with homework, etc. but there is one thing they cannot do: they cannot teach their boys how to be boys, and this hurts young men like yourself who find themselves stuck without a way of expressing the concerns that are proper to their gender. It may be that you have found another way of trying to fill the void left by your father, such as drowning yourself in YouTube videos, online browsing, and video games to name a few, but there is one thing you can know for sure: you cannot let your sons suffer through what you have been subject to. You need to be there for him, support him, and understand him so that the cycle of horror finally ends.

From a father’s perspective

When you think about it, how often do you think kids stay with their mothers after a divorce, and what effects do you think the lack of a father has on the children, more specifically the boys? Girls have an easier time relating to their mothers as they are the same gender, but in the case of divorce where the sons end up living with their moms, who do they have to relate to? Back when the women’s movement came around, the purpose of women was transformed from having one option being raising children to either doing that, raising money or somehow managing to do both at the same time. The same type of movement was never done for men, so the idea of purpose given to men remains the same: make money, or you’re a failure. By putting it this way, it really seems silly and it obviously isn’t true. Fathers can provide for a family in other ways than making money. They can raise children just as well as mothers, but society hasn’t given them the chance. Society has brainwashed men into thinking about themselves and their careers only so that they can maintain their reputation as strong and reliable. As a consequence, they’re blinded by another very important aspect of life: their family. Our point is that both of these examples cause fathers to not be present in their sons’ lives, which is one of the leading causes of suicide for young men. If by any chance you are a father reading this, or someone who wishes to become a father, you need to be there for your children, especially your sons who need you the most, and you need to raise them with as much love as mothers provide.

As always, if you need anyone to talk to, that’s what we’re here for. You can leave a comment on our blog or contact us on Instagram or Facebook if you are seeking help. Feel free to share this blog post so that we can further spread the word about men’s mental health.

Sources:

TEDxTalks. “The Boy Crisis: A Sobering Look at the State of Our Boys | Warren Farrell Ph.D. | TEDxMarin.” YouTube, YouTube, 19 Oct. 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qi1oN1icAYc

Farrell, Warren, and John Gray. “Dad-Deprived Boys Versus Dad-Enriched Boys” The Boy Crisis: Why Our Boys Are Struggling and What We Can Do about It, BenBella Books, Dallas, TX, 2019.

Entry 1: Young Men and Education

    Becoming a young man is the entrance into a transitional period in who you are, and often markers that indicate how successful you will be as an adult tend to appear in the years between ages 16 to 21. This may put an ungodly amount of pressure on your shoulders, either because you are just coming out of high school and don’t know what to expect just yet, or are already in college and have had a rough start.

Stress is a concept you have probably become very familiar with over the last few months of your life: deadlines, college applications, lab reports, etc. Ironically enough, stress tends to make problems appear a lot worse than they actually are, but your stressed-out mind does not realize that just yet. There is an easy way to get rid of that stress, and that is to become organized, though some young guys like yourself may (wrongly) deem it to be too feminine. After all, who would want to appear girly to their friends? 

Of course, I am not saying that you should get a pink and flowery agenda either, I am simply saying that the act of writing something down on paper or in a calendar somewhere will keep your mind focused on the workload that you have to do for the week, and you will subconsciously start to think of your free time as a time where you could be completing these assignments instead of waiting until 4 hours before the deadline. Instead, since it is probably safe to assume you also have a problem with procrastination, start being impulsive about when you do your work. By this, I mean that it tends to help to not give yourself time to create excuses, instead simply jumping into doing the work a few days early and that as soon as you think about the work being due. This is guaranteed to give you more time to think, and more breathing room to relax in general. After all, being relaxed and having a good outlook on school is critical to keeping high morale going higher in your education.

While there are solutions and you should always try your best, you also need to understand that the education system isn’t that well fit for boys either and that your troubles aren’t exclusive to you. You are, in fact, not alone. Let’s look at some statistics.

According to research, boys are 21% less proficient in writing than girls are. This might not seem like that big of a deal, but when looking at it from a bigger picture we need to remember that being skilled in reading and writing are both really necessary when it comes to succeeding in life.  Speaking of success, boys are also expelled three times as often as girls are. Girls also seem to be favored over boys when it comes to grading their school tests. This prejudice does not apply to boys who behave the way girls would in a classroom by being attentive.

What causes the problem in terms of boys’ education is what Warren Farrell and John Gray call the Drop-Out, Left-Out Cycle. What happens is that due to absent father figures in the neighbourhood, a boy will drop out of high school. Due to his lack of education, this boy will be seen as undesired by his family and employers. Then, if the man somehow ends up having a baby with a woman, they will raise the child without him due to the man being undesirable, which resets the loop and brings us back to boys who don’t have a father.

Schools need to increase vocational education. Instead, they’ve been doing the opposite. They need to give more variety in terms of what people want to study instead of filling high schools with generic classes where everyone does the same thing. By doing this, it would help boys in their studies as they having concrete goals encourages them to use their mind more.

As always, if you need someone to talk to, we are here to help. You can message us on Facebook or Instagram, or you could also leave a comment on this post. Sharing our posts on all platforms also helps spread the word about our cause.

Sources:

Farrell, Warren, and John Gray. “The Crisis Of Our Sons' Education.” The Boy Crisis: Why Our Boys Are Struggling and What We Can Do about It, BenBella Books, Dallas, TX, 2019. 

OECD, “How Do Girls Compare to Boys in Mathematics Skills?” in PISA 2009 at a Glance (Paris, France: OECD, 2010) 22, doi:10.1787/9789264095298-en. 

D. Salahu-Din, H. Persky, and J. Miller, The Nation’s Report Card: Writing 2007, NCES 2008– 468, National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, (Washington, DC, and Chapel Hill, NC, 2008), table A-9. Average scores and achievement-level results in NAEP writing for eighth-grade public school students, by gender and state. 2007.

NCES, “Number and Percentage of Students Who Were Suspended and Expelled from Public Elementary and Secondary Schools, by Sex and Race/Ethnicity: 2002, 2004, and 2006,” in Condition of Education 2009, ed. Michael Planty, William J. Hussar, and Thomas D. Snyder (Washington, DC: NCES, June 2009), table A-28-1, p. 206. 

C. Cornwell et al., “Non-cognitive Skills and the Gender Disparities in Test Scores and Teacher Assessments: Evidence from Primary School,” Journal of Human Resources 48 (Winter 2013): 236–64.

#sos #mentalhealth #boys #boysmentalhealth #heretohelp #activism

Introduction

 Hi, we are a group of young college students that have a vision to inform people on boys mental health. We want to lead and informational campaign in order to raise awareness about this perhaps overlooked issue. By spreading the message, we're letting young men know that they are not alone in their emotional struggles. This idea that society forces onto boys about being tough and emotionless is nothing but a myth, which is why we are here to encoure young males to talk about their issue on a safe platform.

Follow this campaign so we can all make a change. #sos, #mentalhealth, #boysmentalhealth, #heretohelp