Last night, I went to see Richard Reeves talk about his new book, Of Boys and Men, at Montgomery Bell Academy over on Harding Pike. A few months back, a friend had suggested I read Reeves’ book, and I did. It’s a straightforward, establishment-friendly assessment of why and how boys have been falling behind. At the end of the book’s preface, Reeves declares: “We need a prosocial masculinity for a postfeminist world.” If that sounds a bit like word salad to you, don’t worry, it gave me pause too. What I think Reeves means is that we need to adjust our standards of masculinity in order to give men space to enter occupations they wouldn’t normally find appealing. He notes throughout the book how the modern workplace favors soft skills, which women have an easier time with than men.
