Richard Reeves
Appearances
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
And by the way, you'll have that for 10 years, at least.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
so many steps if you think about what it takes to get your homework in right you have to be in class when it's set you have to be paying attention you have to make some kind of note like your friend write it down you then have to remember later to look at your notes and then be able to read your notes and then you have to having seen your notes decide to do the homework rather than what you'd rather do and then this is the one that gets me lastly if you've actually gone through all those steps and managed to do your homework yeah small miracle
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
You have to turn it in. That's right. Oh, yeah. You have to remember to turn it in. That's right. With my boys, even if they made it through all those, they'd come home and I'd say, did you turn in your chemistry homework? Oh, no, I forgot.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
But it doesn't go away completely. Actually, one of the things I find really interesting is that on GPA, I mentioned a minute ago, there's this massive gender gap on GPA. Girls just have much better grades than boys in high school. But there isn't on SAT scores. Boys are a bit more clustered at the bottom and at the top.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
But basically, there's a huge gender gap on grades, but not really a big gender gap on tests. So I think what that tells you is exactly what you just said. It's not that girls are smarter than boys. all the other way around in case we still have to say that. Hopefully people trust us enough by now. But what girls are really good at is turning their homework in.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
And that's what gets you a higher grade. Like getting a good grade in your class is only very slightly about smarts. It's about organization. It's about discipline. It's about paying attention. It's about all that stuff. And you know, like girls just get that stuff much earlier. And the biggest gap actually, I think is early adolescence.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
It is those early high school years where the girls hit puberty earlier and They grow. Their brains grow. They just grow up. They become like young adults a year or two earlier than boys do. It's just a fact. Anyone that's seen kids growing up knows that. But our education system doesn't really reflect that.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
It's one of the reasons I'm quite keen on this idea of starting boys in school a year later. So it just gives them a year to catch up.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
Just as a default, a lot of private schools kind of do it. Say to the parents that they've got boys, especially if they're summer-born boys, they're like, yeah, I think we should probably wait with him. A lot of richer parents are doing it, but I think it should be a choice for parents wherever their kids are at school.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
Different kind of trade.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
Yeah, so I think on the one hand, I don't want to in any way discourage people from going to college, especially people who maybe they don't have parents like yours who say you have to go to college. They might have parents who are like, oh, college isn't worth it. And actually, these kids are really smart and could do very well at college, especially boys right now.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
But on the other hand, I think you're right that the US just doesn't do very well on that trade school stuff, the vocational stuff. And actually, there's one good reason for that, although I think it's out there, which is a fear of tracking.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
There's a history in the US where we would have more vocational stuff in high school, but it would only be like the poor kids and very often the black kids who'd be put on that track. So it's like the biases about class and race really kicked in. And so people have felt very concerned that if you introduce vocational tracks like they have in
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
Germany and Scandinavia, that it'll be the poorer kids and probably the kids of color who end up on those tracks. So I get that fear. But on the other hand, it's not like our high schools are serving those kids amazingly well now. And I think that the fear of that is now getting in the way of progress and investing much more.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
Like one of the things I looked at was technical high schools, which are like just much more vocational high school. And boys do really well at those schools. My dad went to one of those in Detroit. They're very male friendly. And some of them go to college and some of them don't. But the point is they just get a better high school education.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
And right now, a lot of boys just aren't getting good high school education. So let's start there. And there's a bit of a, I mean, from the UK, as you know, but there's a sort of snobbery in the US about trade school and apprenticeships. And people just really think it's lesser. And that's just not true in Europe in the same way.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
Yeah. The good news is I don't know anything about AI. Yeah, there you go. Yeah, you're right. I couldn't get a publisher to start with. It was a struggle precisely for that reason, because people think, wait, is this like a men's rights thing? And you're like, angry white man rages against the modern world, feminism, women, etc.,
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
One of the jobs that we have a real shortage for now is linemen. The people are going to go and fix the power lines. I live in East Tennessee when I'm at home. And when Helene came through, it just wiped out. And then you just saw these guys. And it was mostly guys. There were some women, of course, but mostly guys who were just... It's one of the most dangerous occupations.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
I think it's in the top 10 who are getting up there, taking the old ones down, putting the new ones up. They're up there with electricity. They're up there with wires so that I could get my power back. And I just, anybody who looks down their nose at someone doing that kind of work, I'm sorry, that person is just an asshole. Yeah, I agree. A hundred percent.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
It's easy to say, but then, okay, let's pass the apprenticeship bill. Let's have some technical high schools.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
The problem in the US, like the turning away from apprenticeships, vocational, all the stuff we just talked about, it's bad for everyone, but it's particularly bad for boys and men because that is a way of learning that just seems to be a bit more male friendly as opposed to the normal classroom. So it's great. Let's do more of that.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
Yeah. So it stands for health, education, administration, and literacy. So the kinds of jobs that are in those fields or need those skills. And it's something that I came up with as a way to think about this alternative. And whilst it is obviously true that doing the jobs we just talked about, linemen, plumbing, HVAC, driving, amazing jobs, and we still need a lot of people in those jobs.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
They're making good money. You have to get trained to do that stuff, and they're really good. But there's also a lot of job growth now in the health sector. In education, we have this shortage now of people, healthcare. And I'm really worried about the fact that a lot of people just don't see those as jobs that men should do. And I just completely disagree.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
My son just became a fifth grade teacher in Baltimore City. Oh, wow. Whoa, in Baltimore? Yeah. Had he been to Baltimore before? Yeah. My wife's from Baltimore and my godson lives there. And so we have a family. Can be a tough neighborhood, man. Yeah, actually, I'm just rewatching The Wire. And now I'm like, oh, wait, that's where he teaches. Yikes. I was sort of recognizing some of it.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
But he's one of almost no male teachers. And I just think that's a huge problem. Like the share of male teachers, it was 33% in the 80s. It's now 23% and falling. So we're just cratering the share of men in the classroom. And That's bad for three reasons. One, we need more teachers. Two, they're pretty good jobs. Then the pay's going up.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
And so it was a bit difficult in some ways, but that's the problem, isn't it? Because you think, ah, this is going to be difficult. So you don't have the conversation. You don't write the book. You don't do this podcast because you know that merely raising the fact that there are real problems facing some boys and men somehow marks you out as a misogynist, right? You've gone over to the dark.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
They're much better jobs than people, I think, probably realize. And three, most importantly, I want the boys in the classroom to see men. Showing that education is a thing that men do. And one of the things I believe as a parent, and now as a policy one, more than anything else probably is, people believe their eyes, not their ears. Yeah.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
And if they see it, they see a guy like my English teacher. I struggled a bit in school and I was in remedial English and language. And then Mr. Wyatt, the English teacher, God, he was a miserable old sod, as we say, where I come from. He was a Korean War veteran, which might explain why he was miserable. But he taught us poetry. And it was the first time I thought, huh, really?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
This is the thing guys do? That guys can get into this? This writing poetry thing changed my life. And I'm just going to say it would not have been the same if it wasn't a guy. And I think that's okay. Just as a woman teaching science can be a huge role model for girls, etc. Just guys in the classroom, just we need men in these classrooms and in these boys' lives.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
But it happens, though. It does. It's so weird because I actually think things get coded quite quickly, right? I think especially among kids, they code that as that's not for someone like me. So they're like, oh, well, girls do that or boys do that or whatever. They're very sensitive to that, especially as adolescents, I think. They're very sensitive to going against the grain and all that.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
And so it's a huge problem. If they don't see male teachers, of course, they won't think that teaching is a job for men. That's like blindingly obvious.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
You've red-pilled. You've gone to the dark side. you've turned against women, et cetera. And it's just such bullshit, honestly, that we can't think two thoughts at once, that we're not allowed to simultaneously care about what's happening with women, promote women, do the best for our daughters, et cetera. And also think, wait, why are we losing 40,000 men a year to suicide? Wow, is it that many?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
Yeah, it's interesting. You get the data we were talking about earlier around education tests, scores, GPA. That's all interesting. But in some ways, these other measures are more revealing. More like twice as likely to study abroad, women than men. Twice as likely to do student government. Twice as likely to join AmeriCorps. Twice as likely to join the Peace Corps.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
All of those things, there are twice as many women as do men. It's not obvious why, right? You could explain GPA with the school and stuff, but actually it's really tough. When I looked at this study abroad thing, because I found the same thing as you, that it's just much more female now, you think, that's kind of weird. And they say, oh, well, maybe it's because the subjects, right?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
Because maybe women are doing languages or...
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
history or something but actually that's not true it's like even within subjects you get that gap right so when people have done research on it it's just like the girls young women at that point of course they just seem to have a bit more ambition a bit more aspiration a bit more adventure about them and so there's this weird counterintuitive thing where it's supposed to be the guys who are like out there adventuring and going west it's flipped now the other way around
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
Why are male wages flat for those without a college degree? What's going on here? And basically, if we pay ourselves the compliment and each other the compliment. That firstly, two things can be true at once. There's a bunch of stuff to do for women and girls and boys and men. And secondly, if we also assume goodwill in the person speaker.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
They have gyms in Europe, although not as many. But it's interesting. Your experience is exactly what the research shows, which is that the effects of peers on men were to make them less likely to go. Peers were discouraging of studying abroad, whereas female, exactly your experience. Although I have to wonder, I have to ask this question.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
When your girlfriend suggests that you go abroad for a year, could she be saying something else? Was that just a
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
you know a little appeal i mean as you say like it is it's great for the resume it's great experience it's also interesting like girls young women are more likely to move away from home right so we're about to produce some research showing that half the counties in the u.s now have got more men than women in them because the women have moved away to the cities to get jobs and have more opportunities and obviously they go away to college and so women are now more mobile geographically than women as well so you've got this situation where you're also more likely to leave home
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
buy their own home, move to a different place, go to college, study abroad, volunteer. And so there's all of these things that are just like skewing much more female now. And that's great, of course, that women are doing all those things, but it's not great that men aren't doing those things. And so I think we've really got to ask ourselves the question, what's happening with our guys now?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
So many of our young men, where they're just not feeling that same level of motivation and aspiration as young women, right? We don't want to go back to a world where women were discouraged from doing it. Of course not. But we should worry when we see gender gaps like that, two to one. We should at least be asking the question, like, why is that happening? Is that good?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
But the trouble is back to where we started. Like so many people just don't even want to confront the fact that this could be an area where we should be more worried about men than women. They just can't do that because they think politically that's not acceptable. And that's just got us into a horrible position.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
No, the main reason why you saw this impact on men's jobs was exactly that. It was automation, big one, but also free trade. So as we saw the competition, and so I can't remember the exact numbers, but there's the Bureau of Labor Statistics in the federal government. They have this measure of like jobs that require you to lift a certain amount of weight.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
If you don't assume immediately that just by raising the issue of one group, it means you automatically don't care about or even hate the other group. That's not true. It's like saying to someone who's got a son and a daughter, right? You're only allowed to care about one of them. Which one are you going to care about? And if you care about him, you must hate her.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
I don't know what it is, like where you have to lift 50 pounds more than 10 times a day or something like that.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
Yeah. God, that's really interesting. I never thought that the stewardess is doing that. But the number of jobs that require that sort of physical strength has gone from something like 30% to 10% and falling. It's single figures now. And so those sort of physical strength jobs have either been... replaced by automation or they've gone somewhere where the labor is cheaper.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
And so that's been a big cause of this decline in male employment and male wages. I think actually AI is going to be very different. I actually think that AI might hit some women's jobs a bit more.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
That's right. If there's one profession that should get wiped out by AI, it is law.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
Yeah, I mean, I have to confess that I looked at some other studies since and that hasn't replicated.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
it is true that younger men are actually like less strong than men used to be at their age and that women have gotten stronger especially some women kind of in their 30s and 40s and so you can easily imagine a situation where 30 40 years ago like your mom didn't have amazing grip strengths and your friends did and now you can imagine a situation where your mom is going to like
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
Pilates and CrossFit or your wife. And actually the boy has just got tendonitis from gaming or whatever. That is true. The gap has narrowed, but the gap hasn't closed completely in the way of one study. I'll confess to you, it's one of those studies I just thought that was so weird that I put it in.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
But it's interesting, like, it is capturing something important. Jonathan Haidt's work. Yeah, yeah, he's been on the show a few times. Yeah, so John's got this great stat where he shows now that the average 15-year-old boy is less likely to break his arm than the average 50-year-old man.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
And if you care about her, you must hate him. And this is just not how people actually lead their lives. And in the end, I just think... The data's clear. A lot of boys and men struggling, especially those from poorer backgrounds. And if we don't talk about it, those problems can turn into grievances. If they're neglected, they turn into grievance. And then we're in real trouble.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
Yeah. So it used to be that 15-year-old boys would fall out of a tree or they'd be out skateboarding or biking. So they'd fall over and break their arm like most of us did. And the 50-year-old men were not doing that. Whereas now, the dads are all bro-ing out on their mountain bikes. It's true.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
Exactly.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
I worry generally that when men are struggling economically, and it could be lack of employment, could be lower wages. could be some of these health issues. One of the things we showed was that for men who are out of work, this is men without a college degree, half of them said that they had some sort of health problem, usually a mental health problem or an addiction problem, whatever.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
So health and family life and work, they all go together. So you might measure one thing, employment, but actually it's probably capturing a bunch of other things too, like health and motivation and all kinds of stuff. But yeah, there's pretty good evidence that
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
Once men become economically vulnerable, they're really struggling, they are much more open to an argument that is a more reactionary argument. That basically is a, we need to go back. It's an argument based on, let's go back to the world that your dad had, right? Let's go back to the world where men were the breadwinners, etc.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
And you can see how if you're a guy who's just really struggling, right? to find a footing, right? You're not doing well on lots of fronts. You can see how your struggles could actually put you in a position where you are quite open to that sort of politics.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
And so I do think that without making a partisan point, I think that actually, because it could be a reaction left or right or whatever, I just think that when men aren't doing well, they're just much more politically available in a way. I just saw that in the last election in the US. I think one of the reasons for that is because they just feel like their concerns are
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
are just not being taken seriously on the political left. And they're not wrong about that. And so I think that to some extent, we've all got to take some responsibility for what's happening.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
That's exactly what happens. I think it's basically true that if there is a real problem, right? So you can imagine something's like a made-up problem, right?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
But if it's a real problem, you don't see governments and think tanks and podcasters and media taking that stuff seriously, reporting on it, tackling it, then someone's going to come along and say, hang on, one of the things I've noticed is that
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
Some of the more reactionary online figures in the sort of men's sphere, what they do is they come along and they say, a lot of men and boys are really struggling. The powers that be are not paying attention to those problems. They, in parentheses. They, the elite, the whatever. That's because they've been overrun by woke feminists and they hate men.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
That's why you should click on my website and load my brochure for how to be a better buffer man or whatever, or vote for me or whatever it is. The problem with that is the first statement is true. Men are struggling. Boys and men are struggling. The second statement that we're not paying enough attention to those issues is also true.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
The third statement, that's because the woke feminists have taken over and hate men, is not true. But you can find a few soundbites. You can make it sound true. The way to address the problem of reactionary figures pointing accurately to the actual problems of boys and men and pointing to the neglect of them is to not neglect them. It's to make them sound crazy. So that if they say...
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
They are not paying attention to the male suicide crisis. They are not doing anything about the fact that boys are struggling in school. You can say, what are you talking about? We have whole policies around that. What are you talking about? You sound crazy. The trouble is right now, they don't sound crazy. They sound plausible because we're not doing enough to help boys and men.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
And that just seeds the political ground to the people who can weaponize it.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
He's far enough out there that- He's off the reservation politically, I think. That's right.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
The real reason, I think, is a genuine fear that if you start to raise the issues of men, you will somehow be diluting or retreating from the necessary work for women. If you've only got so much time, you've only got so much money, you've only got so much energy, you have to choose. Like it's a zero-sum game, basically. So it's not that they think you're even wrong in what you're saying.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
They don't. What it usually means is that they don't like what you're doing right now.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
Good luck with that. That's right. Actually, oddly, it used to mean something, right? So before 2016, it was a very academic term mentioned a few times in footnotes, journals. It was really about how men and some had actually just their own mental health issues. Sociopaths, honestly, for whom their ideas of masculinity had to come entwined with violence and domination.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
So it was a really very specific term used in a very precise way in academia. In 2016, it just burst into the mainstream and was suddenly being used for everything. And so suddenly, everything was toxic masculinity. And so it became, I think at this point, it's a slur. It also turns men off. I don't think it's very exciting to say to men, you know what, we have a vision for modern masculinity.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
We could make you not toxic. People will say, well, not all masculinity is toxic. Like, okay, well, tell me some good things about masculinity though. And they can't do that because then they fall into the trap of saying that there are some things that are masculine that are good. They don't want to say that. And so it just ends up being this sort of turn that's thrown around.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
It's become very counterproductive. And the trouble is you put the word toxic next to the word masculinity, and then you wonder why so many boys have been turned off by that debate. I think it's a problem in itself, but it's also just, I think, a symptom of a broader problem. particularly on the centre-left in politics, where just an inability to have a positive story to tell about masculinity.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
I've really come to believe that too many people, even now, struggle to admit that men are having problems because they think men are the problem. And until we get past that, we're just going to keep losing these men.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
I think they say MGTOWs.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
If you get into the sort of manosphere, men's rights stuff, there's a whole bunch of different issues. So MGTOWs, yes, men going their own way. That's one group. They're basically male separatists. What they're basically saying is, look, the whole system is stacked against you. If you do get a job, you're going to be screwed over.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
And then if you do get a woman to have a baby with her, she's going to boot you out the moment another guy comes along who's better than you. Then you're going to be on the hook for child support. So basically they're like, screw all this. They're just rejecting the idea of family, of fatherhood, of marriage, even of work in some cases.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
So it's a very strong reaction against the sense that society is rigged against men now. There's a red pill movement, which is just a broader term for just like men who've basically somehow woken up and realized that the world has turned against them and that there's a kind of progressive feminist worldview now that's taken over, etc. There's incel, involuntary celibates.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
Men who can't get a girlfriend, etc. And so there's a whole bunch of different groups that are online now. And what I think about that is actually some of those groups can be quite supportive, actually, in many cases of those men. But it's also where reaction goes. It's like they feed off each other. They victimize themselves. They find someone else to blame.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
It's just that now is not the time to focus on those issues of men when there are still so many issues facing women. To be fair to the people who are concerned about it, and look, you started the conversation, Jordan, by saying you've got a little bit of an ick, a little bit of a funny feeling about this issue. I think you should.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
I think the big problem with those men's rights groups... It's not that they're usually misstating that there are actual problems. It's that they want someone to blame. And they find someone to blame in women or in the women's rights movements or in whatever. And the truth is that it is true that boys and men are struggling, but no one's to blame. No one's deliberately doing it to you.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
So they end up being the least masculine thing of all in many ways, which is victims. Yeah, that's true. So the whole men's rights movement pretends to be this kind of super masculine movement, but actually they spend all their time complaining. Yeah, whining online. Exactly. Whining on Reddit. Which is not very masculine.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
You roll your eyes a little bit at male behavior and judge girls and women against that, or the other way around, and say, what's wrong with you? I have three boys. They're grown now. And I used to think, I wish you were more like your sister. They didn't have a sister. I made one up.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
I think anybody talking about this issue should be feeling some discomfort. I think it is a difficult conversation to have, but that's not a reason to not have it because otherwise the only people having it are the ones who have no discomfort with it at all because they can say, of course men are struggling.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
Yeah, I think it's important that we do, actually. I think there's a tendency to dismiss the underlying causes. Because you can think, look, guys, this is not a very healthy response to the challenges you're facing. That's the right answer, right? It is not to say you don't face any challenges. What are you talking about? We live in a patriarchy.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
So it's difficult because you don't want to in any way be seen to be justifying some of these movements. But I'll also say one more thing, which having raised boys myself, they're all in their 20s now, is that actually if boys are largely exposed to very liberal environments, liberal schools, liberal households, there's a good chance they're going to go through a phase.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
It's because the bloody woke feminist agenda's taken over and we need to go back to the 50s. And so, unfortunately, the debate is dominated too often by people who don't think it's an uncomfortable conversation. It is uncomfortable, but we have to have it anyway.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
They're going to go through a phase. It might not be Andrew Tate phase, it could be Jordan Peterson phase or Ben Shapiro, but they're going to go through a phase because if all they're hearing is a very progressive orthodoxy, Then they're going to go online and they're going to find it. It's almost like an act of rebellion as well. Teenage boys especially love being transgressive.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
And so if all they hear is progressive, orthodox views, they're going to transgress against them. And if you're a 15-year-old boy and you've got a feminist mom, the way to really get under her skin is start telling her, like, I think Andrew Tate's got a lot of really good points. Yeah.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
Thank you. I'm not sure I am, honestly. I'm very proud of my three sons, all in their 20s now. So I guess that's probably my best claim to expertise. Look, your kids are functional members of society. Congratulations. Yeah, they're amazing. I think the first thing is to just acknowledge that if you're struggling, maybe at school, or if you're struggling to figure this stuff out, you're not alone.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
This is a perplexing time to be figuring out how to be a man.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
it is right for all the good reasons we've explained etc and the school system may not be working very well for you so the first thing is like just give yourself a break it's not that there's something wrong with you right it's not that you're not masculine enough or too masculine or don't believe those people online telling you there's something wrong with you that's not true so first have some empathy right for yourself second thing is figure out a little bit for yourself
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
who you want don't let someone else give you a script whether it's me or somebody else that's why I'm a bit reluctant to talk about this but the third thing I'd say is like if you feel good about being a guy being a boy being a man
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
good feel okay about that feel okay in your skin feel okay with your male friends if there are certain aspects of your behavior that just skew a little bit more male it's good it's fine hang out and have male friends right make sure you've got kind of male friends have your crew have your buddies have your gang whatever you want like go look out for each other and there's nothing wrong with any of that and so those are things like be very thoughtful about you making your friends
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
Be very thoughtful about having your own script, but let someone else do it. And don't beat yourself up. And also, it's a direct message to them, which is, we see you. We care about you. You're precious to us. You're precious in our sight. We need you. The tribe needs you. And I do think that we're not good enough at saying that to young men anymore. We need you. The tribe needs you.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
I think that the contest for the allegiance of young men is always being fought. Young men, I think, especially need to feel like
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
part of something bigger themselves to be allied to something whether it's a team or a tribe or whatever and so let's find something to ally yourself to and be unashamed about that i just saw this i haven't written this up yet but i just saw this kind of slightly worrying disturbing survey which finds that people women especially much more suspicious of all male social groups than all female social groups right so girls nights out girls trips girls groups are like good but suspicious of male ones that's a real step backwards
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
I get why, but I understand it, but I don't agree with it. And I think if we undermine male solidarity and we make men feel bad about wanting to hang out with men sometimes, you see the friendship recession I mentioned earlier, and actually we're signaling that maybe there's something bad about being male. Yeah. And that's something, nothing intrinsically bad about being male.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
It's awesome being male, right?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
The expert, you could say doctor, professor, PhD, Richard Reeve.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
Yeah. So I've mentioned, I think one of the things that troubles me most is the rise in suicide. I mentioned it's 40,000 men a year. It's four times as many men as women. And since 2010, the suicide rate among men under 30 has risen by 30%. So it's rising fastest now among young men. And I'm really worried about that. I'm worried relatedly about drug poisoning.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
Yeah, it's true that if men are floundering, It's hard for women to flourish. And so it's in everyone's interest to help your partner to flourish. And if it's a man, then he's going to be flourishing more as a man, again, as a woman. And I think that it's hard for me to advise women. You can advise men if you want, just to avoid this landmine that I've set for you.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
Maybe I will end up talking about women. But I think the secret probably is each of you putting equal effort in and appreciating and respecting the other for the effort that they're putting in, whatever that is. And if there's a bit of a division of labor, either the traditional way or the other way, cool. I was a stay-at-home dad for a while. My wife knew I had the kids. I was on it. I was on it.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
I did that. That was my job. So she could worry about her job. Split every task 50-50. That's insane. It's incredibly inefficient. But we really respected and were appreciative for... Like when she was doing that earning and I was doing that, or the other way around.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
I think in the end, that's all we can ask of each other is that we can kind of look each other in the eye, trust each other that we're working hard. And never roll your eyes. Have you seen that data from the Love Lab about rolling your eyes at each other?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
That's what it is. Yeah, I think that's right. So if you ever find yourself rolling your eyes at each other, then you're in real trouble. Because what that indicates is contempt. So lack of respect. And There's an old traditional saying, which is women need to hear that they're loved and men need to hear that they're respected. I'm going to say there's a grain of truth to that.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
I do not want to stereotype. I do not want to say it's true of everybody. Don't fill up my inbox with how dare you make assumptions about everybody. I'm sure men need to hear their love too. But yeah, it does feel true to me. I just think there's some level which if men don't feel they're respected by their partners for their efforts, whatever they are, that's really corrosive to them.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
I think that men to some extent for good or ill, do see themselves somewhat reflected in their partner's eyes. And so I do think that as the partner, as a kind of woman or a man, just recognize that he, to some extent, is seeing himself through your eyes. And so be very careful about how you look at him and what you say to him. And of course, the same is true the other way around.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
Of course, all the caveats. But I do worry, it's partly back to this conversation about toxic masculinity, rolling your eyes, boys trips, etc., which is that... There's sometimes in our culture a bit of a tendency to fantasize men now or to dismiss them, roll our eyes at them, tell them they're mansplaining, put them down a little bit. And I think that's incredibly unfortunate.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
And we should make sure that we don't poison our own personal relationships with that kind of dynamic.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
Well, I think there's a serious point here, but it's interesting, isn't it? It's more discussion of AI girlfriends.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
Good. So that's your inbox filling up, not mine. Yes. I got you to say it. That one's on me. Yeah, I think it is. But it is interesting because there is a difference.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
And actually, John Haidt, who we talked about before, he's actually written a piece for us, for my institute, on kind of really worrying that already, I think, young men, if they're lost, are particularly susceptible to becoming hooked by something online. Think about porn, like even before AI. I think if the world outside is difficult to navigate, hard dating, et cetera, it's confusing.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
And the world inside is getting better and better by comparison to what was in the past. I think that's it. It's a huge problem. And for me, it's less of a problem in itself, maybe, if the guy's got an AI girlfriend. I don't know if that's bad in itself. It might be. But I do know that it's bad if it's stopping him going out and meeting actual girls. Trust me, it will. It's displacing it.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
The rise in drug poisoning deaths among men this century has been huge. Is that overdosing? No. Unintentionally? What is drug poisoning? It's unintentional. So when someone's dying of a, quote, accidental cause... So it could be like car crash, could be drowning, but drug poisoning is the biggest one now for men. And so there's no evidence that it was deliberate.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
And then he gets less skilled at it, which makes it harder for him. And so you have a really downward spiral. I think on the other hand, the challenge for men is like much more like the AI husband than the AI boyfriend. So this friend, he just wasn't very good at listening to his wife talking about the same thing.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
She'd come home, she has a problem at work and she'd come in and had this problem at work today. It's basically the same problem. This person she doesn't like working with. And he was like classically males. What do you want me to do? Do you want me to fix it? What's the problem here? Let's break this down and you call this. And she's like, no, I just need to listen.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
So anyways, he persuades her eventually to listen to an AI. So they get, I don't know which AI it was, Claude or something. And he programmed it. Be an empathetic husband to my wife. Call her Eleanor. So Eleanor. So she talks to it and says, I'm having a difficult time at work. It was probably my boss. And the AI says, Eleanor, I'm really sorry to hear that. That must really hurt.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
Do you want to talk about that? And she's pointing at the phone saying, this is what I need you to be like. And he's like, no, perfect. I'll go watch the baseball. And I'll leave you with the AI.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
Sorry, he's just going to the basement. But behind the sort of humor of that is that actually there may well be slightly different things that men and women are on average looking for from relationships. And part of the challenge and the beauty of every human culture has been to find ways to bring us into this really kind of wonderful relationship with each other.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
We do meet different needs, et cetera, over the course of a relationship. And then you start to worry, well, how much of that can be contracted out to AIs? And I think that's a big problem potentially.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
Atrophying. Basically, he's atrophying.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
Yeah. I think it's also part of a deeper challenge, which is that we have to get good at rejection and we have to get good at failure. And that's how you build resilience. And if you retreat into this AI or online world, you just, you don't get rejected. Your AI girlfriend does not reject you. Whereas in real life, the real women and real girls are going to reject you.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
You're going to ask them out and they're going to say no. And that's just part of life. And you're going to apply for jobs and you're not going to get them. And you're going to work hard and you're not going to get a good grade. And you're going to take an exam and you're going to fail it. And I just think it's quite a broader issue, which is that rejection breeds resilience.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
This is not a suicide, at least not marked as an accidental overdose. Very often it's because something's laced now, a lot of fentanyl. Also, frankly, it's quite often because they're on their own. So there's no one to resuscitate if something goes wrong or there's something in the drug that you weren't expecting.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
And that's just as true in romantic life as it is in the other. And then so you lose the skill. I think in the end, you end up being de-skilled. And then it's a vicious cycle because you don't have good skills around other people and kind of women especially. It's worse. And you're very sensitive to rejection. And so you get rejected and you think, I'm done. One girl says no.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
You ask a girl out and then it's in cell, AI, basement, and if you're not careful, because it's risky, right? I remember first time asking a girl out in school. Oh my God, your heart's in your mouth. Right. And then, of course, she said no. In fact, a mate of mine and I did it together. We asked two girls out. They were both called Debbie. And so we asked both of them out. It was just coincidence.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
They were best friends, but they were called Debbie. So we were going to ask them out together because we were so terrified. So we thought we'd ask them out on a double date. So we got doubly rejected because they both said no to both of us. Brutal. Brutal. And you never recovered.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
Yeah, I mean, there's lots of more sort of straightforward problems, which are like, we're just leaving too much skill on the table. We're not making good use of our men. If they're not in the workforce, that's bad for the economy. All the usual arguments you'd expect a kind of policy type scholar to make. Also, family life is harder.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
I mean, if men's wages aren't going up, then what we're seeing is that kind of women are having to pick up more of that. And that's good in some ways, but also like we should be sharing more. But you're pointing towards a potential longer term cultural problem.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
And it's too early to say yet whether we're going to become South Korea, where there's such a huge divide now between young men and young women that the fertility rate is cratered. You're seeing a dating market is in shambles, also very reactionary politics taking over where it's just, it's almost like a simmering gender war basically.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
And you're seeing us trending in that direction where you're seeing political polarization, the dating market's not working well. There's a lot of blame being flung around between young men and young women. So in the long run, it has consequences, of course, just for the men themselves.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
So we just did a report showing that the rise in drug poisoning deaths among men since 2001 means that we've lost about an extra 400,000 men in that time period. So the increase is the equivalent of 400,000 men. And for those who like their stats, that's the same as the number of men we lost in World War II. Yeah, that's striking. That's a big number.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
If a man ends up despairing or taking his life or just not having a purposeful, flourishing life, that's just bad, period. bad for women because they want generally men. If they're going to create families, they want strong, flourishing, good, interesting men. But I also think that there's a danger that we start to see family formation really being affected. I've been saying for quite a
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
We're fine. We're fine. To be fair, a lot more conservatives have been ringing the alarm bell on this for quite a long time. I'm now pretty worried about it. We're about to publish some data showing that 15 to 24 year olds are much less likely to say they want to have kids than any previous generation. I believe that much less like, but I mean, it's only happening now.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
It might change their mind, et cetera. And I mentioned the loneliness stuff before the dating problems. And so I actually think that if we don't find ways to lift up men, young men, uh, help them educationally, help them economically, just help them in their personal life just to be as awesome as they can be. I think we're going to have fewer kids, that we're going to have fewer families.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
I think that's bad for everybody, bad for the economy, bad for women, bad for men. And so I would not have said this even probably two years ago, Jordan, but as I see the data coming in politically, culturally, economically, I didn't used to say there was a crisis. I don't use the word crisis.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
I think I might start to now because I just, I'm looking at these numbers and I'm looking at what's happening to a lot of our young men. I'm saying, we have got to get ahead of this. We've got to get ahead of this. We're reaching some tipping points if we don't get ahead of this.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
Partly because it's changed quickly, right? It's an uncomfortable conversation to have. It's honestly one of the reasons I ended up having it. A lot of people just said, look, you can't do this. I'm like, look, I'm very boring. I have charts. At the time, I'm a Brookings scholar. For the love of God, if I can't talk about this, who can talk about it?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
The more people said I shouldn't talk about it, the more I thought, really? Wow, I must talk about it. Because if we're not having this conversation in good faith about real problems, I hope by now we've persuaded enough people, there's real stuff happening. This is not made up. The men's rights movement is not making up problems. They're a real problem.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
And if we don't talk about them and address them, it's not like somebody else won't be talking about them. That's what happens, as you said a while ago, if you neglect problems, they turn into grievances and problems. So I get it, the sort of tiny violin, are you kidding me, eye roll thing. I understand that instinct, but we've got to get past it. I honor that instinct. We've got to get past it.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
we don't talk about it someone else is going to be talking about it yes do we need more women in politics yes we need more women ceos yes we need to close the gender pay gap yes we need to reduce violence against women yes we need more capital only about three percent of venture capital money goes to female founders is that a problem it's a huge problem should we be doing stuff about that we are by the way we are doing quite a lot about those problems and we still need to do more and
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
So we've lost a World War's worth of men since 2001 from the increase. And drug poisoning. That's incredible. So you've got this whole mental health issue. Now, that's not to say, back to what we were in a minute ago, there are huge issues around mental health, especially for teen girls, which a lot of people are talking about.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
We can tackle these problems of boys and men. Anybody who says that we have to choose between them. People on the left saying, we have to focus on women. Can't focus on men. That's not sensible. People on the right who say, yeah, we should focus on men. Time to ignore all this feminism stuff for women. It's all, quote, gone too far.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
The people I admire, people like the now former Surgeon General, Vivek Murthy, who said, I have a son and a daughter. I'm worried about both of them. I care about both of them. And as a society, that's how we have to think about this. It's and, not or. And right now, too much of our politics, especially around gender, is being framed as or. Pick a side, pink or blue, left or right. Insane.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
And it's got us to a very difficult place in our culture. And so we've just all got to give ourselves permission to care about boys and men, to advocate for boys and men, to help boys and men without living in fear of the fact that in doing that, we've somehow gone over to the dark side and become a misogynist. That is not true. And it's more of us that say that, the less true it will become.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
Fantastic. Crushed it. I said a lot of new stuff for you because you're just a great conversationalist and interviewer, as I knew, of course, from your work. Thank you. I appreciate that. You're really good at this. Really good.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
Thank you.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
It's simultaneously true that we've got this crisis in male suicide, especially among young men, including kind of teen boys. And it's true that we're seeing really spiking rates of anxiety among girls and young women, I should say. and issues around self-harm and also attempted suicide and suicidal thoughts among young women, right?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
So there's the mental health crisis is playing out equally, but differently for young men and young women. And then in the labor market, like men without a four-year college degree, one's doing worse. Their wages are the same today as they were in 1979. So it's nearly half a century of no wage growth. That's an extraordinary fact.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
And actually people from low-income backgrounds, they're doing worse than their fathers. which is really hard. That's hard to swallow, being economically actually poorer than your father is. And then in education system, a lot of this is because of education.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
And so if you look at high school, huge gender gaps in high school now, the top 10% of students in high school, if you just look at that top 10%, there are two girls for every boy. So there are twice as many girls as boys graduating top of their class from high school. And the gap in
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
Higher education now on college campuses is about 60-40 female-male, which is for a really good reason, more women going to college, and for a really bad reason, fewer men going to college. But that gap, just to put a point on it, that gender gap in college is bigger than the gender gap we had in the 1970s. but the other way around. I see. Wow.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
It was just a bit less than 60-40 in favor of men, if you like, in the early 70s. And it's now 60-40 in favor of women. So we've reversed the gender gap in colleges now. And it wouldn't matter if the men who weren't going to college were doing great. But as I've just suggested, they're not doing great.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
There's a lot of reasons to be worried about what's happened to our men and our boys.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
It might have been probably true for their dads, actually. It might well have been true that their dad could get a good trade job or a factory job or a job in the mine or whatever without having to go to college, but that's just much less true now. And then I'll say one more thing which is related, I should have said this before, but about the mental health isolation thing.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
There's a lot of work right now about growing social isolation and loneliness, and that's true across the board, but it's particularly true for young men. So Dan Cox is a researcher at the American Enterprise Institute, and he shows that 15% of men under the age of 30 now say that they don't have a single friend.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
It doesn't distinguish between a row. It's just like, do you have a friend? Oh my God. And so the isolation of a lot of men now. So what's happening is that the men who are struggling in school struggle at work. They struggle around friendship. They might struggle to form a family. Most men in the age of 30 are not dating. Most women under the age of 30 are dating.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
Yeah, that's right. That's what the 40-year-old guys are hoping anyway. But yeah, there's lots of overlapping problems. But I think underneath it all, it's just this sense among a lot of young men, which is just figuring out how to navigate this new world, a world which has seen a significant increase in gender equality. Women are no longer economically dependent on men in the way that they were.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
It's a good thing now that 40% of breadwinners in the US are women. That's just quadrupling in the last few decades. So we've just seen this huge change in the way that men and women relate to each other economically. The idea that the breadwinner, you're going to be the breadwinner. And women needed to marry somebody or be with somebody because they needed bread, right?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
But that's not true anymore. And that's a wonderful, amazing, liberating thing. But if we allow ourselves to say that even good things can sometimes... have some difficult byproducts. That's left a lot of men trying to figure out who they are. And I think a lot of men are ending up in our current culture feeling more than a bit lost.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
Nothing like the same scale. I think I really like that word, expansive. So what's happened is that we have wonderfully and incompletely still, but expanded the role of women, right? You can be a mom, you can be a wife, you can also be a CEO, you can be an entrepreneur, you can be a fighter pilot. Amazing.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
But with men, what we've taken is that old script, breadwinner, provider, and that's gone away. But we haven't really replaced it. We haven't expanded the role of men. And so there's this horrible lag now, I think, between this idea of what a man is supposed to be and what the reality is now of the economy. And so it's happened pretty fast.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
And I think a lot of people are still reeling from it, especially a lot of men. And that makes them very vulnerable to someone coming along saying, yeah, remember the old days when men were men and women were women and everyone knew their place and things worked? That's a very appealing message to men who are currently like, I don't know what to do.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
And worse, sometimes they know what not to do, right? They know that they're not, the long list of things not to do, mostly good things, right? Don't mansplain, don't be toxic, et cetera. Good, that's good, but not really a very clear list of things they should do.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
Exactly. Good luck. Just improvise. Everyone's improvising.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
Yeah, I think it's particularly true probably in classrooms, right, in schools. But then we can broaden it out, which is if you have this kind of default idea of this is how to behave, right? Sit still and study harder and remember your shoes, etc. Which, because girls are more mature than boys on average, that's a bit better at that.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
And then you sort of say, well, that's how you're supposed to be. And then you say, well, the boys aren't like that. So they're basically a malfunctioning girl. And I think a good definition of a society that's a patriarchy is one where you take male ways of acting and being in the world and then judge women against that and just say, why aren't women more like men?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
I'm old enough to remember when it was a big thing that women had to wear shoulder pads and learn to deepen their voice and stand in a funny way. Assertiveness training. Really? That sounds so ridiculous. Margaret Thatcher had to have voice training to kind of lower her voice. Because the idea was basically if women wanted to succeed, they had to become like men. They had to look.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
But think about shoulder pads. What's that doing? It's taking a female physique and it's saying you have to look a male. That's obviously terrible. And quite rightly, mostly said that's absolute BS. Like we should change our workplace cultures. We shouldn't ask women to stop being women so that they can be CEO. We should just say women can be CEO as women, not as pretend men.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
But also the other way around. You don't want to have classrooms or societies where it's unless you're behaving in a stereotypically female way, sitting still, expressing your emotions in a more stereotypically female way or whatever it is. If you're just a little bit acting, then there's something wrong with you that way around as well.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
We just have to create a system where we're not judging one against the behaviors of the other.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
What is wrong with you? What is wrong with you? And actually, I'll ask you this question. Have you ever had the thought, I wish you were a bit more like your sister?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
That's right. There's a simpler diagnosis. Yeah, it's a boy. I have three boys. They're grown now. And I used to think, I wish you were more like your sister. They didn't have a sister. I made one up. I had an imaginary sister that I could compare them to because I had these friends who had girls.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
And I do think as parents sometimes and teachers and society is that we can fall into the trap of either elevating like this is a male behavior and judging girls and women against that or the other way around. Just saying, and you roll your eyes a little bit at the boy and say, as you just said, what's wrong with you? And I did that with mine and I really regret it.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1126: Richard Reeves | Rethinking the Purpose of Modern Masculinity
I really lacked a lot of empathy around that.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
That's not how it works anymore. And so the whole question of how do you influence law, how do you influence policy, I think is a really big question now. And so there's a big question mark against this whole idea of a quotes think tank. I certainly didn't plan to start a new one, but...
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
But one of the things my dad also did, he was a coach. He coached rugby and stuff. And I think particularly in the US, I've become really interested in the role of coaches. So my basic view is that coaches, especially for boys, we're actually seeing like sports is going down for boys in the US now. Boys are less likely to play sports than in the past.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
Yeah, the Aspen Institute has a really good project called Project Play, where they actually track the data. It's going up for girls and down for boys. Now, it's always been higher for boys, but sports participation is going down for boys. One reason for that is coaches. You need coaches to do that. And we can maybe get into male teachers, because actually one of the things that male teachers do
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
And my son has just become a teacher. Oh, wonderful. Yeah, he's teaching fifth grade in Baltimore. And within a day of starting, someone heard his accent, because he's still got a British accent, heard his accent. He's a soccer coach now. And he actually is a good soccer player. But the point is, he's immediately a coach, right? And I think that coaches...
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
are basically mental health professionals in disguise, right? I think they're doing a lot of the work that you'd otherwise do in terms of mental health. And you can kind of see, like, there'll be a line from the Aspen.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
It could be, which is not necessarily a good thing. I mean, ideally, you'd want to do a bit of both. But then the question is like, why are boys playing less sport than in the past? And what is this coaching thing? And you can't get coaches. I'd love to see something like a Coach for America program. You know, there's this Teach for America program, which gets people into teaching.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
Because I think there's a lot of men who are struggling to know how to kind of connect with their community or what they can do.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
Some of the older institutions, maybe they used to do that through church or the scouts or whatever.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
maybe declined uh they have declined and so if there was a way to kind of plug those men into a coaching role i think that's important because when i huge when you when you i mean maybe this is maybe your experience but like i think if you look at the the image of a coach sitting on a bench like with a student you know a boy or young man sitting next to him and he's like How you doing?
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
How are things at home? How are things with your mom? That's counseling. That's therapy. But you're just not calling it that. And the other thing is, critically, you're doing it shoulder to shoulder. Do you know this thing about the difference in communication style between men and women and boys and girls? Like men go shoulder to shoulder, women go face to face.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
It's interesting how we're set up here. Once you've seen this, you can't unsee it.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
No, because actually that's a little bit of a threatening stance for men. Like if men go face to face, that might indicate some aggression or some like, it's a bit like you're intimidating each other a little bit, right? There's a role for that probably.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
Not if you're male. So we learned this the hard way. Even before I had any of the data, and God, I wish I'd had this data when we were raising our kids, right? But my wife would like... Our kids would come home from school, all boys, and the two that were in high school and middle school at the time, they'd come home and they'd sit across the breakfast bar from her.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
And she'd be feeding them stuff, feeding them protein, have some protein. And then she'd stare at them like this and be like, how was your day? How was your day? And they'd be like, fine. They'd look down, fine. Did you learn anything? I don't know. Nothing, just nothing.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
And then later on, we'd be driving with them somewhere or watching a game or video game or just something like that, shoulder to shoulder. And they would say, you know, this weird thing happened today, dad or mom. This girl said this thing at school today. Interesting. And what we now know is that that's very, very common.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
That actually the communication style that men are most comfortable with is less face-to-face and it's more shoulder-to-shoulder. Now, think about this. Fishing. road trips, watching sports, sitting on the bench, shoulder to shoulder. It is the only explanation I have for the existence of golf. What is golf about?
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
But it's like, again, men have to be doing something else. And they have to be doing it like just... So if you go to a party now, you will not be able to unsee this. Watch how the men stand in relation to each other. And there are people who've done whole PhDs on measuring the angle.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
We always stand a little bit catty-corner, like a little bit of an angle, because to go face-to-face is threatening. Now, women, on the other hand, very comfortable face-to-face. Walk into a coffee shop and count up how many people are sitting opposite each other, staring each other in the face, and then see what the gender is of them. Much more likely to be women. Now...
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
But what you don't want is a mental health profession, like psychology or whatever it is, based on the presumption that we're all supposed to sit like this. And so a lot of male therapists now, they're taking their male patients out for a walk.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
Walk with them. Don't sit and stare at them. I've been saying that for years. As a man, it's like we don't want that.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
But they've now got this physiological element to it too, which is that just how you're relating to each other physically, especially for men, it's just very important that we are… I'm going to try that next time I'm with my therapist in a room.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
I think you should just have a rule, right? Everyone who's born on the 4th of July gets automatic US citizenship, but then gets deported from the UK, right? But it's kind of weird because I've always had that. And then I actually came to the U.S. in the 90s for the Guardian newspaper. I was a journalist for quite a few years. I just always loved America. Ended up marrying an American.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
That idea of being with somebody, not necessarily for them. I think sometimes we think we've got to be for them. We've got to be telling them what to do. We've got to be advising them. We've got to be advocating. Somehow we've got to be doing something. And sometimes it's just being with. And for them to know that I'm with you That's an incredibly powerful statement.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
And one of the things that has really motivated my work around boys and men, which I didn't ever expect really to be doing, was just this sense that I had that so many Boys and men now don't have that feeling that we're with you, that we have your back. We've noticed that you're struggling and we're with you.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
And instead, there's sometimes been a sense a lot of men have felt, which is being neglected or sometimes even blamed for their own problems.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
It would sound weird to say yes, wouldn't it? But... If you think there's no such thing as a coincidence, I've always loved the fact that I was born on the 4th of July, and now I'm here. It's great. Everyone has a big party for my birthday.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
So I think there are these real problems, right? So I know you talked to Scott Galloway about some of these issues. Scott's been amazing on this, but the suicide rate among men under the age of 30 has risen by 40% since 2010. Just since 2010, by 40%. Is that true? Bring that up. Yeah, look, the American Institute for Boys and Men did a suicide trends analysis.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
And if you go down, you can then see the shift in... So up until 2010, it was much more older men who were... There you go, you got it. So if you go down, there's a...
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
For 25 to 34, but we've updated that since. And for under 20s, it's 40%. Wow. So it was really interesting about the suicide... And where do you get this information from? From CDC, from the Centers of Disease Control. This is official. So... We lose 40,000 men a year to suicide. And since 2010, it's all shifted to being younger men.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
And actually, one of the things that I've really thought about as an immigrant, and when you say immigrant, you probably don't think of someone like me, but I'm a proud immigrant, is that people who are born here don't actually appreciate what it means sometimes to be a citizen.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
So the rise, up until 2010, the rise was middle-aged men, really. And that was about deaths of despair. You can see it was partly about the economy. But since 2010, the rise has been among younger men. And so that's a very different thing. That's not about the recession. That's something different going on. I think that's more cultural.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
I think it's more just a lot of these young men feeling lost, feeling unseen. Yeah, what am I a part of?
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
oh i just like sometimes that's that just all that stuff kind of haunts you it's like but you don't you don't know it's coming and one of the things i that stopped me in my tracks you know how sometimes so i for a living like i'm reading research reports and looking at data and stuff but i've also been racing you know three boys but even in the research sometimes you get a finding that just
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
it stops you and affects you emotionally. And there's one study that looked at men who'd taken their own lives and then looked at the words they'd used to describe themselves before they'd taken their lives. And the two most commonly used words that men were using about themselves before they took their own lives was, I'm useless and I'm worthless. And
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
And I think that sense of worthlessness, of genuinely feeling like maybe my family, my community will be better off without me than with me is what leads to that tragic outcome. And of course, that's just the tip of the iceberg. If you then look at drugs, you look at substance abuse, you look at what's happening in the employment market. I think that sense that...
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
And my citizenship ceremony, which I did in a hurry, actually, because I wanted to be able to vote and wanted to get into the whole civic life, I was surrounded by people in tears. Really?
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
a lot of men have, is that there isn't really a script anymore to follow to manhood, to mature masculinity. And I think that in one way that's for a good reason, but the way I think about this is if you think about the script that my dad had, about being a breadwinner and a provider. Let's look at some previous scripts so we can examine those. My parents are a good example.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
Born in the 40s, had the kids in the 1960s. And then it was like my mom knew that she was mostly going to be the homemaker and the mom. She worked as well. She was a nurse. But my dad knew that he was going to be the breadwinner, the provider. There was not a discussion about that. There was no question about that. So they had pretty clear roles.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
Now, the problem with that, of course, was that the roles depended on the woman, in this case my mom, being economically dependent on my dad.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
That's the problem. And that's the problem that the women's movement successfully, to a large extent, set out to solve. Right. But... My dad was also quite emotionally dependent on my mom, right? And vice versa. But I do think it's a two-way street. That was missing from the analysis. Anyway, we tore up these old scripts, right?
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
And we said to women, you don't have to be a housewife and mother anymore, or at least that's not your only option. You can be whatever you want to be. You go, girl. Right? Be president. Be an astronaut. Which is amazing. Totally amazing. That message of empowerment we sent to women. So we tore up the old female script, provided a new one about empowerment and independence and you go, go.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
We tore up the old male script, which is you're going to be the provider and the protector.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
We didn't replace it. And so we're all improvising now. So basically we've gone from having some kind of script to improvisation. And that's incredibly difficult to do. And so it's hard because the good news here is what's happened to women, right? Nobody wants to roll back. the economic gains of women.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
Yeah, there's people from Iran, there's people from Afghanistan, Iraq, whatever, refugees, a whole bunch of different people, some people from Mexico, and they're waving their flags, saying the Pledge of Allegiance, you're welcomed by the president, and there wasn't really a dry eye left by the end of it. And so I actually now think that every high schooler in the U.S.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
But I think it's incredibly irresponsible and naive of us to think that that doesn't have consequences for how we think about the role of men. We've got to be able to think both of those thoughts at once. It's good that women are gaining ground. It is bad that men feel lost and purposeless. And we have got to solve that problem as well.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
Right, and the money is the power. And the women's movement had a huge fight about that because there were some people in the women's movement saying, no, no, no, it's called the wages for housework movement, which was basically what we need to do is pay women to do the traditional women's role.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
The Wages for Housework movement? Yeah. There's a big split in the women's movement between the ones who are saying we need to value care and value care work, like Wages for Housework. And then there's another movement which is like actually you've got to be, yeah, in the 1970s. I never knew about this.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
That's another way we could have gone, in theory at least, right?
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
No, well, this is a really interesting question because I now think we're at a point where a lot of men and women are feeling like, This isn't quite working. We're trying to raise kids. We're trying to form families. We want to raise our own kids.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
Right. We want to stay together and be married. We want to raise our own kids by and large. Right. And we don't want to die of stress. So one of the ways to think about this is you had this old family system, which was breadwinner father, homemaker mother. And it was unfair in many ways, but it was also pretty stable and very clear what everyone's role is.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
And it was pretty good for kids because of that stability when it worked. We've replaced that with a different model now where we don't want that economic inequality. So both men and women are going to work. that can create all kinds of stress. And maybe that relationship is hard to sustain, which means it might end up separating, which is not good for kids.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
should go to a citizenship ceremony. That's a great idea. Just experience it, because I don't think if you're born here... You can take it a bit for granted what it means to be a citizen, but to go and experience what it's like for people to become a citizen, I expected it to be more... I had a green card, and I thought, yeah, but I want to be a citizen as well.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
The division of labor is not clear anymore. And a division of labor, in other words, like being clear, like you do this, I do this. Like an organized business, really.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
I mean, it's like everybody knows that it makes more sense. Like you're in charge of X, I'm in charge of Y. So you get really good at X and I get really good at Y. And The interesting path we took instead was like, okay, women need to get into the labor market and have labor market power.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
I think that was almost certainly the... I mean, that's the right... I don't imagine a world where the wages for housework movement, like huge government subsidies to people who are staying at home, was ever likely. And there's all kinds of problems with that idea.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
But it's an interesting idea, but thought behind it, which is, are we doing enough to support the people who want to raise their own kids? The whole point of the women's movement wasn't to turn women into... their fathers, it was to give everybody more choice.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
And we haven't achieved that yet because we haven't done the rest of it, which is to change the way the workplace works, to give more support to families. I know you had JD Vance on, right? And JD Vance has supported a child tax credit, which is seen as a left-wing idea, to give more money to people who've got kids in the house.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
And so that's not wages for housework, but it's in the direction of actually valuing care through government subsidy, but that has not been an idea that's been popular for a pretty long time.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
Yeah, and it wouldn't be framed as wages for housework anymore, and it certainly wouldn't be aimed just at women anymore. It would be for families, etc. But the idea that another way to go is to actually provide financial support, like most European countries do, to parents who are at home and not just to parents who are in the workplace. That's an interesting discussion right now.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
And I think as long as it doesn't become a call to go back, right, we're going to help women stay in the home. Instead, it should be to help parents figure out for themselves. And I'm a huge believer that actually fathers... fathers are doing so much more than they were in the past. Fathers are doing so much more in the home, so much more childcare. And dads are saying they want to do more.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
Interestingly now, men are more likely to say that having children is important to them than women are. Men are more likely to say that getting married is important to them than women are. And so that's a really interesting moment in history where if you've got this stereotype that it's women who are obsessed with getting married and having kids, not anymore.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
It's now men who are saying that's a higher priority for them.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
How am I going to get that purpose that you're talking about? I think I've heard you say that you want to have kids at some point.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
I actually was incredibly moved by the whole experience.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
So that is- I thought you meant you were going to get 25 wives. Oh, no. Now look- I'd be willing to have more than one wife, but... We would need a change in the law for that, Theo.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
You'd have to be a dual citizen with, I think, Afghanistan. Okay. Maybe Iran.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
I could do it, man. You'd also have to convert to Islam. Oh, really? Well, Christianity doesn't look kindly on multiple wives.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
We could just tell someone, right? Yeah, no one can know. Yeah.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
I think a better route for you, if I can offer some advice, is to just have one wife. I think that stood the test of time as a way of doing things. No, actually, look, I should be very recent time. I think most human societies have been polygamous, have actually had.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
Yeah, it's like 95% of known human societies have been polygamous. And almost always, I'll get the word wrong. It's polygynous, I think, which means men are allowed to have multiple wives but not the other way around. Wow. Right? Very rare to find it the other way around, which is one of the reasons why this is a fact that blew my mind. I'm going to try it on you. Okay. See what you think.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
We have twice as many female ancestors as male ancestors.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
There are twice as many women in human history as there are men.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
I love the fact that you're checking everything I say. This makes me feel much more confident. About saying it because then you're going to check it.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
Okay. I actually, the idea. Do you know why they have more though? Yeah. Oh, sorry, Jesus. No, I like, I don't, I mean, I don't hate your idea as a certain, like the idea that mother earth, like once more mothers around, I think it's kind of beautiful idea. Yeah. I think it checks out to me.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
Every time I say something, you have this guy Googling it, right? Whereas you say stuff, Google his stuff.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
Are there more women because Mother Earth likes women better?
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
Could be the other way around, yeah. Could be like, wouldn't Mother Earth want lots of men?
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
Can I give you an alternative theory as to why? Which is that because societies have been polygamous, you don't need that many men in order to have a lot of children.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
Are NBA players well-known for having lots of children?
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
You see on these apps, it's kind of like a winner-takes-all type thing. In other words, like the guys at the top.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
But what's interesting about that is that's basically human history. I actually showed that Tinder data to an evolutionary psychologist, someone who studies the whole history of humanity. And he's like, yeah, that just looks like human history to me, which is high-status men mating with multiple women. And therefore, we are kind of reproduced. But 50% of men
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
across human history didn't have kids at all. They didn't reproduce. Now, what that meant was, there's all kinds of implications for that. One is, first of all, I'm reading this book by Neal Stephenson now. It's called Seven Eves. And we basically have to kind of send out a few people to survive. And there's this passing comment, because the Earth's going to be destroyed. Seven Eves?
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
Seven Eves, yeah. There's this passing comment there, which is like, most of the colonists will have to be female. And the reason for that is the ones we're talking about, which is you need a lot of wombs to keep the human race going, but you don't need as many men. There's this guy actually, I can quote him directly, this guy Roy Baumeister, who says we have a penile surplus.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
which is a kind of brutal way of putting it. But it's like, we just don't need that many men, right? Now, one consequence of that is, and this is going to get me back to your skydiving. I'm going to loop this. If I'm successful here, if I'm successful, I'm going to loop this back to skydiving.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
Yeah, so 50% of men have not reproduced in human history. So half the men have kids, half of them don't have kids. And it's the lower status men who are not going to have kids, right? Because the higher status men have multiple wives. They're actually, if you like, they're over-consuming. And they can afford to do it. Correct. And so if you're a low status man,
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
of a ritual it's not just like you can overthink what the words mean you can overthink exactly what it means but there's something about just the ritual of it so my son is at the University of Tennessee and he he explains yeah but actually when his friends come down to a Tennessee game And they're, say, at a Northeastern college or a small liberal arts college.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
There's a good chance that you're just not going to reproduce at all, right? You're going to be an evolutionary dead end. Your DNA is not going to go anywhere. And under those circumstances, you will risk almost anything to raise your status. Go to war. Go exploring. Turn to crime. Do anything to try and get yourself up that hierarchy so you have a chance of reproducing.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
If you stay down there, you ain't going to have kids. You're cooked. Right? And so you've got to get up there. So you take risks.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
You risk your life because actually if you die… Who cares? Who cares? You only got a 50-50 chance of having a kid anyway, right?
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
And if you're down there, it's not 50-50. It's maybe like, you're almost certainly not going to have a kid. So you take crazy risks to raise up the hierarchy. And one consequence of that is men, on average, are more risk-taking than women, even today, which is why they go skydiving. Like, what do you... Think about skydiving. Men are also twice as likely to drown.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
There's all kinds of ways. Like, risky behavior, both good and bad, is higher among men, right? Good could be like being entrepreneurial, whatever.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
And so... Skydiving. You know what? I'm going to say something and I don't know if this is true, so you're going to have to get your fact checker in the sky to check, but I bet you more men skydive. But I know for sure that smokejumpers are almost entirely men. Do you know what a smokejumper is?
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
No, you're from the South, right? Where are you from?
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
Yeah, yeah, okay. So you'd know if you were from out kind of west, right? What does it say about men and women?
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
I just think, like, if you... So just from an evolutionary perspective, if you're a woman, you are highly incentivized to protect your own body, right? Because you're probably, this is just an evolutionary term.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
Yes, and you're going to have a kid, probably. Most women have reproduced, right? Yeah. quite like to have a kid. Whereas if you're a guy, actually, if you've only historically had like a 50-50 chance, right, and you've got to get more status, and your body is kind of less, quotes, valuable.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
Smokejumpers are really interesting because these are people who have chosen for a job that they will go up in an airplane... jump out of the airplane, even when there's nothing wrong with the airplane, which is what you do, apparently, jump out of the airplane.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
But the difference is they jump out of the airplane into a blazing inferno in the middle of nowhere and stay there for days on end fighting that fire. That's an interesting job choice. And it's almost all men. Now, there are some women, and of course, women should be encouraged to do that job. And that's great if they want to do that job.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
But I'm just going to go, I said this to a female friend of mine, I said, you know, this profession, I explained to her what it was. And she said, you can keep that one. There is no big feminist movement to get more women into smoke jumping.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
What really strikes them is less the game, and it's more the fact that there's the Pledge of Allegiance, that there's a prayer, that the jets go over, that there's fireworks, that they come out through the tea. There's a whole bunch of ritual around it, which is actually really beautiful.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
I guess the point here is there are ways in which, on average, men and women are different. And one of them is that men have this different appetite for risk. And if that... Do we think that that's good or bad is the wrong question. It's both good and bad. It depends how it's expressed, right?
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
Because there are times when you want people to be willing to take risks, to put themselves on the line, or to kind of try a new venture or something like that. And there are times when it's a really bad idea, right? To try a new drug when it's not a good idea, or to jump too high off a bridge or whatever it is.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
And so there's ways in which those differences between men and women can either become good or bad. But we don't get anywhere by denying that they exist. What we do is we say there are these differences. How do we channel them in productive ways?
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
And so if young men, for example, are a bit more risk-taking, and they're a lot more risk-taking when they're young, if they're a bit more potential for physical aggression, which is absolutely clear, etc., if they're a bit more driven by sex, for example, which is also absolutely true, and we see that playing out in all kinds of ways around pornography, etc.,
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
It doesn't do any good to just say that's not true, right? That those things aren't, they're all socialized. Actually, instead, what we're going to say is they are true. So what do we do about that as a culture and as a society? How do we kind of take those differences responsibly and not fall into the trap of saying one is good or one is bad?
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
We used to think that somehow the male attributes, to call them that, were better, right? That's a patriarchy. And the female ones, maybe more caring, more nurturing, et cetera. As you said a minute ago, right? We just, we valued them less. We don't want a society like that. But we also don't want a society where the more male-leaning attributes are seen as intrinsically bad.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
It's one of the reasons why I hate the term toxic masculinity, by the way.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
And I think sometimes we overthink the content of the ritual and don't actually just recognize it's the fact of the ritual that really, really matters.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
No, it's not. And I think that's a really important thing to say because that sometimes is what feels like might be the case and what some people are saying, including kind of online, which is – what they do is they take two facts, which is women have risen significantly economically. In terms of education now, massively overtaken men, et cetera. Men are struggling and suffering.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
Yeah, so maybe that's because of that, right? Maybe the struggles of men are the result of the rise of women. That's completely untrue. They're for different reasons. So the economy has changed, right? So a lot of the jobs that men used to be able to do, especially without maybe that much education in manufacturing and steelworks and mining and stuff, they've largely gone, right?
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
Yeah. And there's no serious prospect of those male jobs that required like strong physical labor. Like Bruce Springsteen type stuff. It's not coming back. I mean, we can be nostalgic for them. By and large. I mean, I'm not saying there's none of that. Right. But that's a huge shock, right? It's a massive change in the workplace.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
It's just those jobs that men used to be able to do that their dad maybe did.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
Yeah. And there was a real structure to it. I mean, just think about my own family. I took my three sons to North Wales to a town called Blina Fistiniog in North Wales. That old, that old.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
Okay. That's, This will fool your fact checker. They will not be able to even spell Blinder for Stenyog. But you was the biggest producer of slate for a long time. And generations of my family have worked in that slate mine.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
And we went there, and we found their great, great, great, great, great grandfather's grave. No way. And went down into the mine and spent some time there. It had a big effect on them. And it's like, what did you do? You did what your dad did. Go down the mine. What your granddad did. Go down the mine. Go down the mine. Go down the mine.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
And even when I was growing up and I grew up in Peterborough, an industrial town, my mom was a part-time industrial nurse for a while. And the hooter for the ends of the shifts, we could hear it across the town. And so we knew when she was coming home because we would hear the factory hooter.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
It was such a weird experience. Like, we went down to the bottom of the slate mine, and there are these little huts in the bottom of the mine. And they would go in there for like 30 minutes at lunchtime, and they would sing. This is in Welsh, right? So they'd sing. They'd sing, and they'd eat, and they'd talk, maybe do a bit of politics, right?
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
And then they'd go back up and start coming out of the mine. Very dangerous. Incredibly well paid for the time, but very dangerous work. And there was something about, I went to those huts and I sat in there like with my boys and we're kind of sitting there and thinking about like seven generations of our family being down there. And actually.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
This is going to sound a bit weird, but almost being a little bit envious of what it was like for those men to go down there and be in that little hut. And then, of course, you catch yourself and you think, you're an idiot. It was dangerous work. It was hard. What are you talking about? And if you put me in there now, I probably wouldn't do great.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
But I think what it was catching for me, and with my boys especially, was this sense of male solidarity. Just a sense, that visceral sense of like, it did structure lives, male lives in particular. And in that town, when the men went down into the mines, all the wives would come out, and the children, and stand silently. It was bad luck for there to be any noise.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
I have one friend, actually, who's from Israel, and when he came, he gave up his Israeli citizenship because he believes that you cannot have more than one citizenship. You cannot have dual citizenship as a contradiction because you can only be pledging your allegiance to one sovereign nation. I love that. I love that, too, and I will confess that I have kept my British passport.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
So they stood silently while the men went down into the mine. And hoped that they would come back. And so there's something very beautiful and nostalgic about that. And I get that nostalgia. Yeah, it was a tradition. It was a ritual. Ritual, tradition, purpose, space, clear script. What are you going to do?
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
How about you do what your great-great-great-great-grandfather did, and your great-grandfather, and your grandfather? How about just doing that? And I don't think we couldn't, even if we wanted to, reconstruct that kind of world.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
But I do think we should be honest about the fact that the collapse of that structure and those scripts has really left a lot of men incredibly uncertain about, am I going to be needed by my family? What am I going to do? What's my job going to be? So we've had this massive economic change. And then alongside it, We've had this huge social change, which has been the economic rise of women, right?
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
And so it's no longer the case that women are now, like, looking for a man. Gloria Steinem is a very famous feminist, still alive, from the 1970s. I actually had a really cool meeting with her. Really cool lady or not? Yes, totally cool. I've got to meet that lady. She's amazing.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
And she said, famously, she said, the point of the women's movement is to make marriage a choice for women, not a necessity. Right? Because women needed to get married before to, you know.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
And so the whole point is to make it a choice so that women have enough economic power.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
to choose marriage rather than being forced into it she actually this is a weird coda but she actually just got married herself I think she's in her 90s now she's so cool but she got married partly because same-sex marriage is legal now and because she said we've made enough progress that marriage she used to describe marriage as this patriarchal citadel etc here's the weird thing she got married to Christian Bale's father wow which I just find a bit random and he's British isn't he interesting no is he
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
Yeah. So even in the end, even Gloria Steinem felt like it was okay to get married, right? We'd made enough progress. Right. So that actually the women, marriage was no longer this kind of trap for women economically.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
It was a choice. And so, but of course, what that means is when it's a choice, there's a lot of women that might be like, I choose not to marry you. I might or might not have kids, your kids, but we're now in this world where there's a lot more freedom of choice. And of course that is a great and wonderful thing. But it's also created a huge amount of uncertainty, especially among men.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
I think a lot of men feel now that they've been told a bunch of things that they know they shouldn't be. shouldn't be predator shouldn't you know don't do this you can't peep in time you can't quite and quite right too right but there's no like I sometimes think that we had a long list of don'ts for men right right but not very many do's
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
Exactly. And what I fear now is that, there are some more reactionary forces, voices saying the way to actually for men to find purpose is to go back. Because it's very recently that there was a world where men felt purpose, which was the world we just escaped from, where women were economically dependent on men.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
And so I could totally understand why this is happening, where people are saying, well, we used to know what our role was when women were economically reliant on us. Well, first of all, we ain't going back. There's no switch you could turn now, even if you wanted to. And we don't want to. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't be doing more to help men move forward.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
Oh, U.S., no question. Wow. Yeah, I get it. I mean, there's a reason why everyone really wants to come here. Yeah, dude, The Rock lives here. Right.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
And actually having a bit of empathy for the fact that this is a difficult moment, a difficult transition for men. And so rather than kind of pointing fingers at them, we should maybe offering them the occasional helping hand. And I think that lack of empathy and understanding and awareness of the genuine suffering of many of our men has created a huge vacuum in our culture and in our society.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
And we need to fill it fast. Otherwise, we're going to lose more and more of our men.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
Are there men and women in those groups or is it just men?
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
Which would seem bad given the nature of the problems that many of the men have.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
It'll be like holding an AA meeting in a bar or something.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
I understand that. Yeah. But you're getting male solidarity from both of those places.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
They always need volunteers of them as well to help out with the paperwork and stuff like that. And so you could just have some going every time. Like, I just think it'd be really nice before you graduate high school, like, and I would just say to anyone who's listening, right?
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
Yeah, it's interesting. Well, thank you for sharing that.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
But yeah, what spaces are there for men? There's something beautiful about that, I think. And I go back to my story about the hut, like in the bottom of the slate mine. It's like there's something. Oh, yeah, there's something nice about it. It's beautiful. It's quite fragile. I think that male friendships take work. I think we sometimes don't pay enough attention to them.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
It's actually something like I go on road trips with my best friend. Every year I get together with my male buddies. and we go hiking so that we're shoulder to shoulder and just talk and catch up and that's I think one of the damaging trends in recent years has been a suspicion of male spaces, right? Of like the boys weekend or even some of the institutions.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
So if you actually go through the institutions now, like the Boy Scouts is not the Boy Scouts anymore. I'm actually a scout leader. I'm not doing as much now, but I used to run a scout group over in the UK and I was a scout, but it's co-ed now.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
Girl Scouts does not allow boys in. Wow. But Boy Scouts has become Scouting for America. Ladies, that's not even cool. But there's a pattern here. You've got the YMCA is now co-ed, right? No one really thinks about the M in YMCA anymore.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
Right. Whereas the YWCA is still very kind of focused on women. Boys and girls clubs used to be boys clubs. There's one other one I'm thinking of. And it's not that it's always bad for things to be co-ed. It's not that you also don't want institutions for girls and women.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
By birth, I'm American now. Okay, you're American now. Yeah, I became a U.S. citizen in 2016, so I'm very, very proud of this country.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
If you're thinking about a good, cool thing to do, like volunteer at your local citizenship center and watch the people go through the process of becoming a US citizen. And that might make you appreciate it a bit more.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
But what we've got now is a situation where we're actually really very often applauding having these spaces for girls and kind of women to have female solidarity, work together, grow together. but we're really suspicious if it's men doing it. And I get why, right, because of our history.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
But I think that as a result, we've actually deconstructed a lot of these institutions where actually boys could learn from other boys and from men and so on too. And so I think that turning the Boy Scouts into Scouting for America and taking not for a being, I think we'll look back on that and just say that was a bad decision. Kind of emasculating in a way. It's just like...
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
Why can't, I mean, I just think about my own experience. Why can't we meet? And it's not, I went to a co-ed high school, but actually the fact that I was able to go to Scouts and it would be guys there and we could learn from each other.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
And I, weirdly, I actually think that male spaces are where you can help men to learn some of the not traditionally male attributes like caring and nurturing and love and expressing that stuff. It's just easier. Or the male sports team, right? Like you're learning love, you're learning comradeship, you're learning solidarity, you're learning, exactly.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
And I just think that's a bit, and it probably is true for girls too, that kind of learning some of those skills that maybe go against the stereotype around girls, like learning to be more assertive maybe or competitive, etc. Like you generally don't have to encourage a bunch of boys to compete with each other. Right. That just tends to be a bit more baked in.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
Well, I proposed it, but let's see if it will change. But we can do it ourselves as well.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
It feels so. As a new American, I've learned a lot about the history of racism in this country, and particularly for black Americans. I feel very strongly about that.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
Again, I think the way I see this is that it's part of a more general problem, which is to be able to hold two thoughts in your head at the same time, which is it is true that America has this history of racism and that there are still some racial issues that we need to deal with.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
The US has a uniquely terrible history when it comes to slavery. Yeah. In modern history. Right. That is true. Yeah. That is absolutely true. And has an issue around race. Absolutely true. Still issues around race. Yes. Still issues around gender equality. Yes. And if you're a white guy, particularly from a low-income background right now, you're actually at the highest risk of suicide.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
And your economic prospects compared to your father have seen the biggest drop. So two things can be true at once. It can be simultaneously true that we've still got to deal with these issues and that we have this history, and not throw anybody under the bus. No one has to be left behind. We have to rise together. We have to think about a way in which class is a big part of this, I think.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
What's very often missing, it's weird for me as a Brit, Coming to the US, one of the things I've really noticed is that the US has a class system, which I think is every bit as brutal as the British one. The difference is Americans, we pretend that we don't have a class system. The Brits don't hide it. We have a king now. I always forget. King. We have an aristocracy. We have knights.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
So it's a research and advocacy organization. So what we're trying to do is – the basic premise here is – There are a lot of ways in which boys and men are struggling in our country right now. And there are no institutions, there's no organizations whose job it is to basically wake up every day and draw attention to that with data, with facts, in a way that will hopefully raise awareness of it.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
We have all kinds of... We're obsessed with class in the UK, where I come from. It's one of the reasons I ran here. One of the reasons I loved America was there was less of it. The US is a class system too, and if you look at trends for men, it's really working class men. It's men who maybe didn't do so well in school, maybe haven't got a college degree, from poorer parts of the country, etc.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
Those men are the ones who are suffering the most, from suicide, from substance problems, mental health problems, family problems, employment problems. Those men Like, they're really struggling. And that includes white men as well as black and Hispanic men. That's a class issue, not a race issue.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
And I think that quite often in the US, people are more comfortable talking about racial inequalities than they are about the overlapping class inequalities. Because most of the people talking about this are at the top of the class hierarchy.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
Like that point you just made, if that's the only sound you hear. I think that's the point. What I've discovered in my family, my extended family, through my wife, et cetera, we have a lot of political diversity, right? And a huge amount of class diversity. My wife is from a much more working class background than I am. In the US, on the Maryland-Pennsylvania borders where she grew up.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
A lot of diversity. And actually, what I've kind of found in talking to a lot of them is that, like, they actually are significantly more tolerant about a lot of these issues than probably the mainstream media would think. But if that's all they hear, they need to hear the other bit as well. And I think this is kind of, if we can move from or to and, right?
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
So on gender, like all this stuff we have to do is still stuff to do for us. I don't think there are enough women in politics in the US. I would love us to have a female president. I think we need to do more around kind of women in certain occupations. Sure, yes.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
and we've got to tackle the male suicide crisis, and we've got to figure out why boys are doing so badly in school, and we've got to figure out why male wages have been flatlining for decades, right? It's an and, not an or. But there are too many people out there who have a vested interest in making an or. So men are struggling, why? Because of women, right?
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
We're going to blame women and blame feminism, blame the progressive. No, that's not it. Or... Women are struggling. You know why? Because of the men. Because of patriarchy and toxic masculinity, etc. It has to be all. And that's where the clicks are. That's where the money is. That's where the speaking gigs come from. That's where your ratings come from. It's if you can position it.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
Find a villain. Find someone to blame. That's where you get drawn. But it's almost never true.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
It's this huge asymmetry. I really noticed it in the pandemic. So when the pandemic hit, there were a lot of reports about how it was going to affect women and girls. there was a lot of concern about employment, domestic violence, a whole bunch of real concerns. And a lot of press coverage for that.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
But I've been thinking a bit about this, the role of podcasts like this one and others, and I'd be interested – to actually just ask you about this, because one of the things I've been thinking about is the way in which these are very freewheeling conversations, right? They're very, like, we're talking.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
So there's a thought, we have a theme we're going to talk about, but what you've got is usually two people thinking out loud. and trying to learn from each other and trying to say stuff. And sometimes you try and fact check what you're saying, but like, this is a very different kind of environment to like a classical media interview, right? You've got your points, you've got your bullet points.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
It's much more, and I think a lot of people are really attracted to it, maybe especially young men. I think maybe they kind of like that sense of like, we're just trying to figure this out, right? We're having a conversation.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
It feels more like his, and almost like they're overhearing, like we're overhearing a conversation, right? So I know this is a little bit weird to be talking about our conversation, but I don't know what you do. It's not just like a different media outlet, right? It's like a different way of doing it.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
You know, it's more like the fullness of, You know, I've thought about this quite a bit in terms of truth. I mentioned earlier the difference between telling the truth and being truthful. Like someone who's just trying to call it as they see it, trying to be truthful. When you swear to do jury service or actually to kind of do testimony, what do you swear? You swear to tell the whole truth?
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
And those were perfectly legitimate, coming from women's think tanks, from the UN, from the White House, etc. But I noticed that actually the college enrollment for men had dropped seven times more than for women in the first year of the pandemic. Seven times difference in the drop. Is that true? Yeah. It is true.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
It's the truth, nothing but the truth, the whole truth.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
They make you triple down on it. Right, but think about that. Why don't they just say, I promise to tell the truth, right? The truth, yes, the whole truth. and nothing but the truth, right? And actually, the middle one is really interesting to me because, of course, what you could do is you could go to the stand and say things that are kind of true, right?
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
So you meet the first and the third, but like, yeah, but you're missing something out. And I think right now people are hungry for the whole truth. They're actually hungry for people to just, look, I'm saying it all. I don't agree.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
You might disagree with three of the seven things I've said, but there's actually a kind of sense of which these conversations, I think, are trying to get at something more like the whole truth, which is more just a broader conception of it. And you have the opportunity and the space to maybe get stuff wrong, to just think out loud, to kind of come back.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
And that's completely at odds with the old media, which is more about, I'm going to take every word you say literally. I'm going to take a clip of it and I'm going to fact check you. That's not how conversations work. And this is a very different kind of environment for conversation. I agree with you that it means you have more authenticity.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
But the thing I've come to value more than almost anything else when I'm talking to someone is that this person is trying to be truthful. They're looking stuff up. They're trying to figure out, and if I say to them, that's not right, it's this. They go, oh, interesting. And the same with me. I'm just aspiring to try and be truthful in everything that I do.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
And if I get it wrong, I want to be told I'm getting it wrong. Yeah.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
And learn from each other. So one of one of my weird backstories is that I am a massive fan of John Stuart Mill, the 19th century British liberal philosopher, so much so that I end up writing his biography.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
This is just making my day, I got to tell you. Oh, wow. He also was the first person to introduce a bill to give women the right to vote in the UK.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
That, in his case, was almost certainly not true. Although I spent a lot of time... Really enjoyed men? I spent a lot of... No, no. He was just... Well, actually, the truth is that he had a woman he was in love with who was married to somebody else. And so it was an unrequited situation, and so I spent quite a bit of time around that.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
But he had this lovely idea, which is that we learn from each other. We said we share the truth between us. And he said that when you're arguing with someone, disagreeing with someone, Try to imagine that you're both trying to climb to the top of the same mountain just by different routes. And I love that idea.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
And when I'm trying to debate with someone now, if I'm disagreeing with someone, I'm like, you know, I think I'm trying to get to this. They probably have got some truth that I don't have, and that's great. But also, let's assume, let's start with the assumption that we're trying to get to the same place. And you've got a different view about it.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
So if I'm arguing with a conservative who says it's all about marriage, We've got to get everyone back to marriage. And I'm a bit skeptical about that. I don't think that's because that person's a crazy right-wing misogynist who wants to kind of entrap women again. I think they want a better life. I think they want better families. I think they want happier children, which is what I want.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
Then the numbers got a little bit revised, and it's partly because the men were more likely to be going to trade school and stuff, which you just couldn't do online. But it wasn't just that. It hit male education harder than female education, number one. Number two, men were dying a lot more from COVID. COVID was killing a lot more men.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
Because they want to disagree because at that point, that's become kind of a bad form of tribalism. This is really interesting. One of the things that really has disturbed me about political trends recently is the clustering of ideas now. And so actually – Now, if you're on one side or the other, you have to agree with. I agree.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
And so it used to be more possible to kind of like, well, I agree with that side on this and this side on this and whatever. And everyone was a kind of different mixture. The idea that anybody is going to subscribe to all the views on the left or all the views on the right is dystopian.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
And then if they're told, by the way, that that policy idea is being proposed by your guy, then they suddenly support it. And if it's being proposed by the other guy, you're suddenly against it. And so what's actually happening now is you're defining your position based as much on, well, what does he think? Because I don't like him. And I'll take the other view.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
So you saw this massive swing towards being much more pro-immigration, for example, among Democrats after Donald Trump came to office in 2016 because he was so anti-immigration. Before that, Democrats were pretty moderate on immigration, but they suddenly became really, really pro-immigration. Why? The only explanation why is because he was so anti it. And you see it in both directions, right?
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
Well, one thing I will say, I hope that if that idea is still out there, that the results of the last election kill it for good, because we saw a massive swing to the Republicans among Hispanic Americans. And given that most of the immigrants that people are worried about are from Mexico and Southern America...
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
Right, but they're not reliable Democrat voters, is my point. So any idea that the Democrats are trying to do this because they think, well, if we bring them all in and then legalize them, yay, well, that's not true. The idea that those groups are just going to reliably vote Democrat, that has gone out of the window.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
That's a better explanation than that there was this secret plan to create millions of voters.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
That's a better, no plan is better. And again, it's an example of like the extremes winning, right? It's like, actually, most people have probably got pretty moderate views on immigration or at least used to, which is we should control our borders, which is not a controversial idea in any other country in the world.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
Yeah. It's not like the idea in any European country that like people should only be there legally. Like every European country thinks that, right? So it's not, of course, we've now had so many people come in that we've got a different problem. But we should secure our borders. We should actually have pretty good legal immigration systems. I'm biased. I'm biased. I'm an immigrant.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
Men were much more vulnerable to COVID. Last time I checked, we'd lost at least 100,000 more men than women. And that's not to be expected because actually it affected older people. COVID killed older people a lot more, and there are more older women. So if anything, you think you go the other way, but it didn't. Because actually men were much, much more vulnerable to the disease.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
But like good legal immigration has been great for this country.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
Properly controlled legal immigration. Good, right? Agreed. The idea that you're either for or against immigration strikes me as completely dumb. You've got to be, what kind of immigration do we need and want?
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
But the trouble is, the way that our politics works right now is that you've basically either got to be like anti-immigration and anti-immigrants, or you've got to be open border. I'm exaggerating a bit, but that's how it feels.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
I really, the thing that I worry most about is that we lose our sense of optimism.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
And when that goes, it gets, it gets really bad for any country, but I think it's virtually existential for America because one of the things that people always say about Americans, they're like, Oh, they don't think about, they don't have no sense of history. You know, whereas like in Europe, like all we think about is history, right?
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
In the UK, one thing I ran away from is just like it's always Winston Churchill and World War II and World War I and the War of the Roads. I have relatives who fought in those wars. They're important, but we're always looking. Basically, Europe feels like it kind of has been looking in the rearview mirror for centuries, whereas Americans are like, yeah, that happened.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
That was interesting, but we're going there. We're going to the moon. We're going to wherever. We're going to build a better economy. There is this thing about looking forward, which I've always loved about America. It's one of the reasons I wanted to come here. It's one of the reasons I finished raising my kids here. It's like that future
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
New think tank. God knows we need more think tanks, right? That's what America's really clamoring for, is more scholars sitting in think tanks, producing charts. Honestly, I was in another think tank for 10 years before that, the Brookings Institution. Huge think tank in Washington, D.C. Great job. And I got to tell you, it was not in my life plan. To be in a think tank? To create another one.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
orientation and I really I worry about that on both sides now right I don't like you have American carnage you know from the right and you have climate catastrophe from the left take your pick but that catastrophizing that sense for the first time ever we're seeing people now say that they are not confident their kids will be better off than them
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
Yeah, that's a huge problem in a country like America. And I think it's based on this problem we're just talking about, which is this kind of zero sum idea that like somehow there's only so much of something to go around money or empathy or whatever. And so if group A is getting more of it, that means group B is getting less of it. It's the same with the male-female thing. Exactly.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
It's like, well, if women are doing better, maybe that's why men are doing worse. And for women to rise, men have got to afford crazy stuff. But people think that. Same on immigration, by the way. People think more immigrants, bad for America, etc. We're constantly thinking about zero-sum, whereas America at its best has always been positive-sum. In other words...
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
We can grow, grow the cake and argue less about how to divide it up. We can all be more, we can get better, we can get bigger and like all rise. And I think that's been lost, not least on gender.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
to move forward right and we want to do it together yeah what are ways that you recommend um well we've talked about male spaces and having like groups and spaces for men i think right so starting one of those is good yeah and if you're like and you're seeing that there's this thing called the men's sheds movement have you heard of that it's coming over from australia it's just guys who get into like a shed and start fixing stuff together really bring it all shoulder to shoulder the men's sheds movement oh i love it it's basically about like guys and they get in a shed and they fix stuff
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
And no one was really researching that. No one was producing reports. No one was writing articles about that. And it really occurred to me that that was because it was no one's job.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
right? And it's very male because it's about fixing stuff.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
Oh, there's some fellas right there building a little... What is that, a birdhouse or something? Men have to be doing something else while they're being together, right? It's just harder for us to just be together. When was the last time a friend of yours said, let's just meet for coffee and then sit down and stare at each other for two hours?
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
Be of service. Yes. Find service. I think that's usually important.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
Like you can be, you can be a big brother. Yeah, that was a good one. I'm just going through the process for that myself.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
I know you talked to Scott about this, but just being a presence I think is hugely important and raising other people's kids. There's this line, it takes a village to raise a child. That's true, but here's the thing. Some of the villages need to be men. And we're in that village and we're helping to raise those kids, our neighbor's kids. That statement that it takes a village is right.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
You realize how important, how many men there are out there who sometimes just kind of need to be asked. There was this example happened in a school. I think it was a predominantly black school. And they had this day where they were going to teach the boys how to tie a tie. And the dads were going to come in with their sons and kind of teach their sons how to tie a tie.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
There wasn't an American Institute for Boys and Men, but I can assure you that if we'd existed then, we'd have been pushing out lots of information about how COVID was affecting boys' education and men's education and also killing men in massively higher numbers.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
But then they realized that half the dads were not there. Half the boys didn't have dads, didn't have fathers. Or their fathers were in prison, or they'd gone away, or whatever. And so they then really realized this was going to be a huge problem because some of the boys were going to have their dad come in and do it and the others were going to feel left out.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
So they just did a call out to the community. I don't even know what it was, like a Facebook call. Like, could we get some volunteers? We just need some men to kind of come in and help these boys. They had something like five times as many men as they needed to. These guys just all came. It's amazing. Really beautiful. So men are looking for it. Yes, just need to be somehow asked and called.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
And the other thing I'll say, because we haven't had a chance to talk about this yet, is that the fact that male teachers have become so much less common I think is a real problem. Yeah. It's gone from 33% male in the 80s to 23% male now, and it continues to fall. And I think that's a problem for all kinds of reasons.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
I think that for boys to sort of see men in the classroom, to actually have them as role models, also to see that education is a thing that men care about as well.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
He was like. Same for me. I had this teacher, Mr. Wyatt, English teacher. And up until that point, we were like, you know, words and poems.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
A bunch of 15, 16-year-old boys. And then we had Mr. Wyatt. And Mr. Wyatt was a Korean War veteran. He was a bus driver in part-time. He was a total curmudgeon. And he had his reading. Korean bus driver sounds very risque.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
Sorry. So he'd fought in the Korean War. Yeah. And he was just like this curmudgeonly guy. Yeah. But he had us reading this poetry, and he loved it so much that we ended up loving it and getting into it. And I was like, huh, maybe this whole writing words thing. I used to be in remedial English way back before that. But maybe guys can do this too. And it was a huge change for me.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
And I mentioned before that my son is now teaching in Baltimore City. That's one. But we're like missing about a million men if we were to get close to gender equality. I'm not saying we'll get to that.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
But I think that the best answer to sort of some of the problems that a lot of boys have got is real living flesh and blood men in their lives, their dads, their neighbors, their uncles, but also their teachers. And the other thing. The other thing male teachers do, they coach.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
Between 30 and 40% of male teachers are also coaches, much higher than for women, for all kinds of reasons we could go into. But the point is simply that for every male teacher, you get like half a coach, right?
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
If we want more male coaches to be coaching our boys' sports teams, et cetera, we need more male teachers. And I can't believe that we're just letting the share of male teachers just go down and down and down and down and no one's doing anything about it.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
That's got a bunch of male teachers in it, too, which is, like, fun.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
Oh, yeah, yeah. But also there's this new one. Lean on me. There's this other one, The Holdovers, just like a couple of years ago with Paul Giametti. Is that how I'm saying his name right?
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
Yeah, and again, it's like really good. And what those things have in common is there's this kind of relationship between this kind of older guy, this kind of younger man, and they kind of learn from each other and they go through some stuff together. And it's like, it's really beautiful. Yes. It was. That's a cool point. That's a great movie.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
And it's kind of, I was really pleased to see that because it came up again with this thing. But one of the things that really frustrates me is that people will say, oh, boys need more, you know, we need more positive male role models. And I'm like, we do. It's actually, you can't create them out of thin air, right? You can't just like add water and create male role model.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
But one thing we could do is make sure we have a lot more men in our schools. That's something we could do. We could have scholarships. We could have outreach programs. We could be incentivizing men. We could also be making it much easier to become a teacher as like a second career because one of the things that we know is that men are much more likely to go into teaching later.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
They do something else first and then go. But it's really hard to do that. It shouldn't be that hard. No, I agree. That's a great point. Instead of lamenting the lack of male role models, how about having more male teachers? And I would love it if more politicians. I actually kept waiting for Tim Walz on the Democrat side.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
Tim Walz would have been a perfect person to lead that campaign, wouldn't he?
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
But he's like high school teacher. So he was the first actually career public school teacher to run for such high office. He was also a coach. Imagine if he'd done a campaign around, like, we want to recruit more men to teaching. We want more men teaching, coaching, helping, like a really positive pro-male campaign. I think he would have been an amazing spokesman for that.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
And I think it could have been bipartisan. I agree. I think he could have found some people on the right that would have agreed with that. Yeah.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
Well, it's back to this point about the different media environment now. which is this freewheeling, be authentic, just go with the flow kind of environment now. I think people watch the politicians in those environments so they can make a judgment about what kind of person they are. It's not scripted.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
You might edit that out, but anything else I do, like... But it's just crazy that, you know... No, you can't control it. But actually, this is what happened, I think. This is a great example, right? Before he was selected, like, Waltz, he was, like, famous for being, you know, he did the weird thing, and he was quite, you know, he just kind of like... Yeah, he was odd.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
He was like, but no, no, he described the Republicans as weird. That's what I mean. He just had a certain, like, I think that's what... But actually, what happened was that then he was, like, told to be super careful, right? And you get these politicians, they sometimes remind me, they're like a guy carrying an incredibly precious vase across a polished floor.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
They're so terrified they're going to slip and say the wrong thing. And everyone's like, be disciplined. Don't say anything wrong. We don't want to screw up the news cycle. Don't have a gaffe. Don't say something stupid. Exactly. Just stand still. Don't say anything.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
But I do think that was the old politics. I think it was all about message discipline. And I think that the waltz before the pick and the waltz after the pick, if you watch them- I bet they're totally different. They're totally different people.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
At least a year. In fact, the evidence is that if you do it for less than a year, it's actually harmful. Right. Better to not do it at all. Right. If you can't do it for a year.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
Yeah. Robert Putnam. All about what he calls social capital, which is basically just this connection and community and how important that is for people. And he talks about the decline of bowling leagues, which are basically just structures through which to have this solidarity, right?
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
Yeah. Yeah, my dad was amazing. Oh, wow. Just amazing. And is an amazing granddad. to my sons as well. And so I just... I was given the greatest gift that I think anybody can ever get, which is two parents who both loved me, still together, still loving us. And that sense of... Somebody wants...
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
But you can't say to your wife, I'm going out to just hang out with the guys and call each other fat. You have to say, I've got bowling tonight, right?
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
I've got darts tonight. I've got kind of whatever. It's a thing, right? It's not just, I'm not, we can't just say, I'm just getting, maybe a bit more now, but like you needed like a, and I think it's a deeper truth that men do need a reason sometimes to kind of be together. And that's just okay, right?
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
Yeah, just a bit of forward momentum, right? Do the next thing.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
I think we're at a really important moment for that. I, I, I see the movement of the last, let's say 50 years as largely being about women trying to get more economic independence. I don't, I don't really like the language of power around this because it tends to presume that it's like power of person A over power of person B. It's much more like opportunity, independence, chance to flourish.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
And I feel like we've been, so I think this sense of like, if you think about the more female virtues to use your framing as being more about like care and connection and so on, and the more male ones being around kind of material, money, et cetera, I do think that it was quite right for women to have more opportunities to acquire more of that economic opportunity, right?
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
Yeah, and it's not like they were perfect, to be clear. But it's like parenting is never going to be about perfection. It's always going to be about the arc. I think you almost get like a parental grade point average across the whole decades it takes to raise a kid. You're going to have bad days and good days, and you're going to get some days where you get a really bad grade. That's right. Yeah.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
Now, I think that we might see the next 50 years are about some of the movement in the other direction, which is that men also learning that it's not actually just getting to the top of the economic ladder. It's like, that's not what life is about. It's important to provide. It's important to... bring material resources to your family, to your tribe, to your community.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
But it's also important to have those relationships and that care. And if that's seen as more of a female virtue, then I agree that we might see a little bit more movement now of men towards women. But in the end, it's just about creating opportunities for all of us to be able to flourish and to rise and to do that together.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
And to have equal respect for what we each choose to do without one set being dependent on the other, without one group having power over the other, without one group being seen to be better than the other, or one set of virtues being better than the other. And instead to just say, look, we're all in the end. I hope that my work focusing on boys and men is partly in the end humanism.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
It's partly about the end. Like we want to get to a world where we're all able to kind of flourish together. And we're not going to get there if we pretend there are no differences between men and women. We're not going to get to equality through androgyny, right? Pretending there are no differences between men and women, right? But we can learn from each other. And isn't that amazing?
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
Isn't that an amazing opportunity? And so I think the opportunities for men now to kind of grow and expand our roles as fathers, as coaches, as mentors, as community leaders in the home, in the community, whilst also, I think, building staff and providing, in other words, reforming masculinity rather than ditching it.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
and saying we don't need masculinity anymore, or somehow trying to get the old kind of masculinity back. So I think when I'm feeling optimistic, and it's good to be optimistic sometimes, I actually think what we're experiencing now is like the birth pangs of like a different way, right?
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
And I think it's all been about women up until now, and I think that's understandable, but I think the next few decades have got to be about how do we help men as well, how do we help men rise, not instead of women, but with women, and women rise with men.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
the comfort we had you know and it's becoming a nightmare because you're having to drive so many places to see so many people like um but i i think the spirit of what you're saying throughout this whole conversation has been about equal empathy and respect for men and women and i feel like there was probably a time when like if women complained about stuff and wanted more power men would be like patronizing or maybe roll their eyes at them a little bit like oh god you know off she goes again right
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
But I now think the opposite is happening. I think when we talk about some of the problems that men are having and men saying, I'm struggling, I'm trying to figure this out, there's sometimes a tendency for people to roll their eyes and just say, well, get over it. And neither of those responses is good enough. We need to kind of look each other in the eye and just say, look, I'm here for you.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
Let's figure this out together. Yeah. And not pit us against each other. The thing I really worry about is, particularly politically right now, that we're somehow going to end up, young men and young women, seeing each other as somehow not on the same team. As against each other, you see this growing political divide, cultural divide, less dating.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
Dad got an F today, right? He like said some stuff he shouldn't have said, did some stuff he shouldn't have done to me. But then like you got a B the next day and an A. Like what's my overall? And they were genuinely like amazing. And I've come to realize that that is the most extraordinary gift.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
I think it will be really bad news if we don't see young men and women seeing that their interests as being more aligned than in antagonism with each other.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
But it can be – like the key thing is the relationships. Yeah. I found this very interesting study that said that kids whose father is not resident with the mother, doesn't live with the mom anymore, but has a good relationship with them, they do better than the kids whose dad is with them, but they have a terrible relationship with. And so in the end, it's the relationship that matters.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
Your point about care and nurturing. Sometimes I think we obsess about the structure, and we don't actually think actually what really matters here is the substance. What's the relationship? And so one of the reasons I feel so strongly about that is because so many kids now, like most kids to parents without college degrees are born outside marriage, most.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
Like that's the norm outside of the college educated class. And so I don't want to say to those fathers, oh, well, sorry, you've already failed, right? You don't bench the dads, right? And so it's incredibly important that fathers hear the message that they matter in their kids' lives, whether or not they are with the kid's mother.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
And in some ways, if they're not with the kid's mother romantically anymore, the father might be even more important because there's a good chance that kid's gonna be struggling in other ways. And so there is no hall pass for fatherhood. If you become a father, it doesn't matter how you ended up having that kid. You have a moral responsibility to be there for that kid. Period.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
That is not a negotiable. Now, you may or may not be married to the mom. And I'm not saying it isn't easier to be married to the mom. Right, but that doesn't really make it different always. No, and also don't point at these dads who, for whatever reason, they're not married to the mom and blame them somehow.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
I was going to say it sounds like a bit of a brag, but I remember someone came up to me once after I'd done a talk or something like that.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
doesn't end with being a father like one of the i mentioned my my own father my dad earlier um and watching him as a grandfather to my sons has also been an extraordinary experience and made me think about i'm already thinking about what kind of grandfather i'm going to be my sons are all in their 20s now uh from late 20s to early 20s and so that's the next stage for me
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
And I'll tell you, one of my sons really struggled in high school. He's the one who's now become a teacher. And when he went to college, he chose to go to college back to the UK. But not just back to the UK, he went back to Cardiff in Wales, where my parents live, because he wanted to be near my parents.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
And he told me once that on a day when he was really struggling, he'd get out, some mental health issues, whatever, Uh, he was really struggling. He would look, he could look when he was walking to his lectures at college, he could look to the North and a couple of miles North. There's this big tower of a hospital right next to the, where my parents live.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
And he said to me, even on a really bad day, I know that I can look up there and I know that grandpa's there. And if I need him, he'll come. I want my grandsons and granddaughters saying that about me one day too. And so the point is, as parents, you do the best you can. And then as grandparents, you help out. And then as uncles and nephews or neighbors or mentors, you kind of help out.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
But it never ends. And that's not a bad thing. It's a good thing. It's a beautiful thing. And as a father, to see my father... being such an amazing support for my son.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
They said, like, this guy's dad loved him. You can tell his dad loved him. So he loved you, right? That's so weird. And I was like, I don't know that you can just – there's something in people, men, who were loved by their dads. And you could never quantify that. There's no chart you could ever make about that. But I've never doubted my father's love for me. And he was a coach for us.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
I'm in the middle. And guess what? Sometimes maybe granddad is going to be the better person for your son in this moment than you are. And what an amazing blessing that is to have that. I feel so incredibly fortunate that my kids have had that opportunity to have that relationship with their grandparents. So I've gone from thinking, oh, God, really? Grandfather? I have to do it all over again?
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
Really? To being like... You know what? Yeah, this could be good.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
Yeah. Thank you. I've really, really enjoyed this.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
be great but yeah so it's aibm.org aibm.org uh there's there is a donate button there we'd love your support but also the main thing is just to be part of this conversation uh and let's have a positive conversation about boys and men without putting down women and girls and just love the men and boys in your life i just that's the mission i'm on i feel called to this work now and i'm i'm excited to be part of it
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
It's amazing that you want to get more into this space. Thank you.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
Yeah. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, no. And that life without purpose is not life.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
He taught us to swim. He taught us to drive. But he was also the breadwinner. And I had this moment with my dad that made a huge impression on me. Because of his generation, he had to be the breadwinner. I married very young. and he lost his job. He became unemployed a couple of times. He worked in manufacturing during the 80s, which was a tough time, you know, in the UK and the US.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
No, actually, being in a think tank is great. What that means is you basically just get paid good money to write stuff and say stuff that you're interested in.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
And there was a time he was unemployed for quite a long time. But every morning he got up and he shaved and he put on a shirt
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
and a tie his concession was he didn't put a jacket on right he didn't fully dress up right because he's trying to get a white collar job and he had breakfast with us and i asked him one day i said dad you're going into the spare room to type out like resumes to try and get why why are you shaving why are you still putting a shirt on you don't have a job and he looked at me and he said i do have a job my job is to get another job so that i can take care of you yeah
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
And he worked as hard at getting a job as he ever had at his job because he knew that we needed him. And although I think that fatherhood has really changed, it's been different for me because the economic relationship between men and women has changed so dramatically, which is a huge liberation, I think.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
I was able to be a stay-at-home dad for a few years in a way that he would never have been able to do. So it's a different world now, but that...
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
basic idea that like okay you have this purpose in life now which is I have to take care of you it just changes you and I had that directly from my dad yeah and just seeing that example like okay what does a man do every day he gets up he takes care of himself he clothes himself and he moves forward in the world in some process you know like yeah no I think that that's it took him months to find a job and I've I've never been prouder of him and I really realized that in retrospect
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
Oh, good. My parents are in their 80s now. They live in Wales. I'm half Welsh. Oh, you are?
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
Well, that depends who you ask. If you ask the critics, they say it just gathers dust on people's shelves. Maybe like two people in Congress read it. One New York Times journalist reads it. So there is this whole thing now that think tanks used to produce policy papers and then grateful – legislators, members of Congress, would say, thank you, we'll go and turn that into a law. And ta-da!
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
I mean, some people would say that the Welsh are bad.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
It's true of like almost everywhere. It's like everything. It's like college football. It's like States.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
So like in rugby or soccer or something, like everybody will. It's like if England's playing Germany, the Welsh will support the Germans. And we have a history with the Germans, but it's like even then, it's basically anybody but England.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
Oh, yes. I didn't know that. Not quite as much as the Scots, probably. Yeah, for sure. And also, of course, they have deep histories. I mean, it is the United Kingdom. It is four nations.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
And so there is always going to be that difference.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
Yeah. It always just seems so much fun over there. It's how passionate they are about it. That's great. I mean, it's a kind of tribalism can be good or bad, but the issue of, I know you're interested in fatherhood.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E562 Richard Reeves
You were literally having to be his eyes while he was driving.