American boys are falling behind in building families and careers, and too many lack direction, discipline, purpose, and confidence. But according to a new opinion essay, the national conversation about young men’s struggles—pornography, loneliness, video games, declining marriage rates, anger, and apathy—misses a more fundamental question: who should be forming boys into men?
For much of American history, the answer was other men. Before formal schooling became the norm, a boy learned first from his father, then from a career mentor, older male relatives, and other leading men in his community. Education included literacy and arithmetic, but also scripture, history, duty, courage, self-control, and how a man was expected to conduct himself. The essay argues that this model began to erode with the rise of standardized public education and industrialization.
The author points to Horace Mann, known as the father of American education, who sought standardized schooling across the country. That required enormous numbers of teachers, and women—typically homemakers at the time—became the answer. While some argued women were naturally nurturing and morally suited to shape children, others noticed a practical advantage: women could be paid considerably less than men. Mann asked in 1838 why communities should pay male teachers $25 or $30 monthly when women could do the job for roughly half the price. By 1870, nearly 90% of Massachusetts teachers were women.
Industrialization further transformed fatherhood. Boys who once watched their fathers work on farms, in workshops, and in family businesses increasingly saw less of them as fathers took jobs elsewhere. Fathers became primarily breadwinners while others assumed responsibility for children’s formation. The cultural division became: Dad earned the money, Mom handled education.
Today, nearly 80% of America’s public school teachers are women. Meanwhile, approximately one in five American children—more than 15 million—live with their mothers but not their fathers. Based on the proportion of female elementary teachers, a simplified statistical model cited in the essay suggests nearly half of American children could complete kindergarten through fifth grade without ever being in a classroom led by a male teacher.
The essay stresses that this is not to suggest female teachers provide inferior education. Women stepped into a space too many men vacated and continue to carry an enormous responsibility educating both girls and boys. But a system offering boys almost no male role models is missing something essential, the author argues.
When these two realities intersect—millions of boys growing up without a father in the home and classrooms overwhelmingly led by women—some boys may go through their most formative years without a consistent male role model in the places they spend most of their time. That period is when they develop confidence, courage, resilience, and the ability to handle frustration.
The essay raises a serious question: who is teaching America’s boys how to become good, responsible men? It argues that boys need meaningful exposure to good men who take intellectual and moral development seriously—men who teach boys to turn aggression into protection, competitiveness into excellence, physical strength into service, and eventually sexual desire into restraint, responsibility, and commitment.
Yet influential men spend hours discussing what has happened to 25-year-olds while devoting remarkably little attention to boys at 7, 10, or 13. They discuss declining masculinity without discussing curriculum, history, character formation, or what fathers should personally teach their sons. The author contends that society has become fascinated by repairing men while remaining strangely disengaged from making them.
The boy crisis, the essay concludes, is indeed an education crisis. Nothing will be solved by a new bureaucratic policy or a government spending scheme. The heart of education is the human mind, and important formation happens when boys are little. How does a 10-year-old prepare for life’s challenges? Where does he find courage? Can he distinguish good from evil, control his emotions, tolerate rejection, and understand his responsibilities to his family and neighbor?
Perhaps the most consequential change in America, the author writes, was when men gradually stopped believing educating children was central to how boys became men. That is a cultural mistake that should be corrected. Boys need more male teachers and fathers who are involved in their children’s schools and learning journeys. They need more intellectuals who take childhood education as seriously as geopolitics, and more politicians who care as much about who helps form a child’s mind as who gets to formulate a school’s budget.