The future of boys?

Last updated on: September 14, 2013 at 11:13 pm by Jane the Actuary

The future of boys? 2013-09-14T23:13:00-06:00 Jane the Actuary

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

So everybody’s talking (well,instapundit.com for one, and other blogs, too) about and linking to Christina Hoff Sommer’s article in The Atlantic, “How to Make School Better for Boys; Start by acknowledging that boys are languishing while girls are succeeding.” She summarizes many of the arguments in her book (girls are outperforming boys at all levels of schooling, and going to and completing college at rates far higher than boys), and highlights programs within and outside the United States that have addressed this problem, either incidentally or intentionally.

The solution that’s being adopted is a return to vocational education (or, in the new terminology, CTE, Career and Technical Education) — partly as an alternative to and partly as a supplement to sitting in the classroom, boys are given opportunities to work with their hands, not just in a traditional automotive repair class, but learning computer repair and networking, refrigeration, and other skills. And this engages them and improves their performance not only in these fields but in their overall schoolwork as well.

She also claims (I hadn’t heard this before) that one of the causes of the demise of vocational education is not just our national fixation on attending college, but the aggressive push for “gender equity” — the heavy hitters among feminist and other such groups focusing their energy on getting girls into shop class and ultimately effectively taking the approach that “no CTE is better than sex-segregated CTE” in terms of the consequences of their actions.

What are, exactly, the consequences? If we’ve been talking about alternatives to college and whether marginal kids are wrongly being steered to college when they have no idea what they’d do, maybe it’s not such a bad outcome for fewer boys than girls to attend college. The bigger question is how this impacts their earnings — and here Hoff Sommers links to a Brookings study on men’s earnings over time. Here’s the key chart:

Full-time male workers’ earnings have bounced around erratically, and all men’s earnings have dropped substantially over the past generation, with a few rebounds.

I tried to find the equivalent table for women’s earnings; irritatingly enough, all I could find at the BLS was women’s relative earnings, here:

which is interesting in its own right: the 16-19 year olds’ earnings and the 20-24 year olds’ earnings have been bouncing around at between 90 – 95% of men’s for a fair while, and the 25-34 year olds’ have been steadily and dramatically rising for the duration of this chart. To a certain degree, these results seem almost too good, given all the reasons women’s wages can be lower than men’s, including working fewer hours (e.g., at the bottom of the 35+ hours per week rather than the top end), residual effects of extended time out of the labor force, and choice of lower-wage careers (social worker rather than chemical engineer).

In any case, looking at the source data, I came upon this table, in a PDF (which I couldn’t get to copy over well):

Table 5. Median usual weekly earnings of wage and salary workers, by hours usually worked and sex, 2011 annual averages

Total, 16 years and older:76.2%
1 to 34 hours:105.2%
1 to 4 hours:96.8%
5 to 9 hours:107.0%
10 to 14 hours:101.8%
15 to 19 hours:102.6%
20 to 24 hours:109.4%
25 to 29 hours.105.1%
30 to 34 hours:108.3%
35 or more hours: 82.5%
35 to 39 hours:109.9%
40 hours 88.4%
41 or more hours:86.8%
41 to 44 hours: 86.1%
45 to 48 hours: 91.1%
49 to 59 hours: 90.5%
60 or more hours:85.9%

Unfortunately, the table doesn’t provide data on the number of men and women in each group, of the sort that you’d need to calculate, via a regression analysis, the amount of the male/female wage differential that’s explained by hours worked. (Or maybe “fortunately” is more appropriate, as I’d have to then admit that I don’t remember how to do this any longer.) But, still, this is pretty remarkable.

Anyway, where was I?

Here’s a story from my own extended family: girl gets pregnant at 17. She has twins, but the local daycare, whose owner is a friend of the family, cuts her a break on tuition while she works there, and defines “work” very loosely to enable her to get her high school degree. She’s praised as having her head on straight and doing a great job, given her situation. Dad, age 18 when he got his girlfriend pregnant, dropped out of high school to support the young family, but wasn’t able to get much of a job. He wasn’t doing too well in school in the first place, and even flunked the aptitude test when he tried to join the Marines. He broke up with the girlfriend after a while, and now works cleaning/emptying out foreclosed houses. Future unknown.

(I’d tell you about my own boys, but they have issues of their own and are not “typical boys” by any means. I will tell you that, at the parochial school they attend, enrollment has dropped considerably, and my 1st grader’s class is the smallest yet, and disproportionately boy — which could be chance, or could be a disproportionate number of parents of boys fearing that they’d struggle at the public school.)

Another memory: when my children were babies, and I was home on maternity leave or on my days off on my part-time schedule, the TV was on fairly often, as a bit of company, while nursing the baby, for instance. And the number of commercials for various “colleges” — Westwood College of Business, or a culinary school or fashion design school, or for video game designing or general IT professionals — was astounding. I came to the conclusion that the target audience was a large pool of high school graduates who were watching daytime TV without the foggiest idea of what to do with their lives, except for maybe some part-time job.

It shouldn’t be a zero-sum game. We, as a society, can’t afford to ignore our boys any more than our girls.

Uncategorized

Previous Post

September 13, 2013

Patriarchy?

Next Post

September 15, 2013 "Drink more water"?

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Actuarial/Retirement Issues Politics Uncategorized

Select a Month September 2026 August 2026 July 2026 June 2026 April 2026 March 2026 February 2026 January 2026 December 2025 November 2025 October 2025 July 2025 June 2025 May 2025 April 2025 March 2025 February 2025 January 2025 December 2024 November 2024 October 2024 September 2024 August 2024 July 2024 June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 December 2023 November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 December 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 August 2021 June 2021 April 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

Which Orthodox celebration marks the resurrection of Christ?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Pentecost Transfiguration Pascha Epiphany