On today's episode of WNYC's popup advice show, David Furst, host of Weekend Edition on WNYC, leads an advice call-in conversation about the masculinity, and men's mental health, with NYU developmental psychology professor Niobe Way. Listeners call in with questions and their advice about healthy masculinity, and what Way calls a 'crisis of connection' among men and boys.
Note: You are listening to the podcast version of a live radio show. The call-in number only works between 1 and 2 PM Eastern, while the show is live. Some music that was part of the live broadcast has been removed from the uploaded program due to license requirements.
If you'd like to submit advice questions to be featured on the show, or topic suggestions for future shows, please use the form on our showpage at wnyc.org/advice
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David Furst: Welcome to Please Advise, a popup advice show from WNYC. I'm David Furst. I've been your host this week on Please Advise. Coming up next week, a new host, comedian Josh Gondelman, takes the reins for a series on navigating all of the conflicts, tensions, and possibilities that are coming up around the midterm election. Today we're talking about masculinity. Our guest, Dr. Niobe Way, has spent the past 40 years of her career researching the social and emotional development of young people, including boys and young men. In her findings, she's identified a crisis of connection among boys and men and explored the toxic culture behind it that impacts all of us.
She's here to advise us on how we can change that culture, and we'll get into how to raise sons in this environment and ways to deal with an epidemic of alienation, isolation, and violence. Listeners, we would invite you to join this conversation. Call us or text us with questions and with your own advice. Here's the number, 212-433 WNYC. That's 212-433-9692. Joining us now is Dr. Niobe Way. Welcome to Please Advise.
Dr. Niobe Way: Thank you very much. I'm excited to be here.
David Furst: You are a developmental psychologist?
Dr. Niobe Way: Yes, I'm a developmental psychology professor at NYU.
David Furst: That's right. Also the author of Deep Secrets: Boys' Friendships and the Crisis of Connection. More recently, Rebels with a Cause: Reimagining Boys, Ourselves, and Our Culture. It is great to have you with us today.
Dr. Niobe Way: Thank you so much.
David Furst: Again to join the conversation, the number is 212-433-9692. We framed this conversation around masculinity. In your writing, you use the term boy culture. Can you explain that concept? What is that?
Dr. Niobe Way: Thank you for asking, starting off with that question. What boys teach us, real boys, meaning boys in our study, my studies, but also the boys in my classrooms. I also have a son. What they teach us is that we live in a culture that privileges what I call "boy", which is a cartoon character of a boy that only has a hard side and no soft side and doesn't need relationships, just needs independence. That's a stereotype of a boy. What boys are teaching us is that's not a real boy.
When I say boy culture, I don't mean a literal boy, I mean a cartoon character of a boy that we actually see as not only what boys are, but who we are as humans, meaning we value only our hard sides. Thinking over feeling, autonomy over connection. The most amazing part of that sort of insight is it comes from boys themselves. Boys say things like, "It might be nice to be a girl because then I wouldn't have to be emotionless." They say, "I don't need to talk about my feelings anymore, I'm mature." They reveal a culture that doesn't value our so-called soft sides, but they do, boys do. They want us to as well.
David Furst: Explain some of the rules of this cartoonish boy culture as you describe it.
Dr. Niobe Way: Well, the reality is that it's pervasive. Boys and young men are teaching us this, but it's really the broader waters in which we swim that we're all swimming in which we only value half of who we are. I want to have your listeners understand something very fundamental that boys teach us. What we have deemed masculine and deemed feminine is not masculine and feminine. It's just human. When we say thinking is masculine, or dominance is masculine, or even aggression is masculine, it's just a human capacity. Same with what we've deemed feminine. Feelings, relationships, sensitivity, that's not feminine, that's just human.
Boy culture in some ways, and again, I want to emphasize it's not literally boys, it's "boy" in quotation marks, meaning a cartoon character of a boy actually gives a gender identity to thinking and feeling, wanting autonomy, wanting relationships, sensitivity, when it's doesn't have a gender identity. It's just a human capacity and need. Again, I want to underscore something that's so deep for me is that boys and young men are teaching us that boy culture actually gives gender identities, masculine and feminine, to actually what is human needs and capacities for us to be able to survive, let alone thrive.
To me, that is the important part. It's not my theory. It's what boys are asking us to value both sides of their humanity. There's hard sides, and there's soft sides, not just one or the other.
David Furst: How far-reaching is this boy culture?
Dr. Niobe Way: Well, this is the interesting thing. Boy culture of privileging the hard over the soft, hard skills, hard professions over soft professions, I could go on and on and on. You really see it around the world. You see it certainly in the United States. It's emphasized by a certain belief system that oftentimes we do things like privileging money over people. That's also hard over soft. We are driven by making money rather than caring for people. That's a hard over soft dynamic. Definitely, our notion of maturity is about autonomy and self-sufficiency rather than also about being able to have quality relationships.
Again, I'm going to repeat it for the third time because we adults have a hard time listening to this. Boys and young men, from 12 years old to 20, the boys that I study over time, they're asking us to pay attention to both their soft and hard sides and also their needs. Guess who we also hear it from? Mass shooters. The manifestos of mass shooters. They talk about that they live in a culture that basically doesn't care, that doesn't care about them, but doesn't care about each other. I'm not being sympathetic with mass shooters. What I'm saying is if we want to stop the violence, we have to listen to people who commit violence, and they talk about an uncaring culture.
David Furst: Where--
Dr. Niobe Way: Where does it come from?
David Furst: I was going to say, where does this culture come from? It's easy to ask that what seems like a simple question. The answer might not be so simple.
Dr. Niobe Way: Well, in some ways it's simple, in some ways it's not so simple. I appreciate that you ask. What we see in the data, when you look over the past century, people always think it's technology. It started at technology, the sort of money over people, the sort of only valuing the me, me, me, not the we. That's part of the hard over soft is the I over other, the self over other. It really started what looks like in the data, even the phenomenon of bowling alone that's been written about for many decades.
It started in the '80s, and what we think from the data in the 80s, with deregulation of the economy, Reaganomics, we started to get more income inequality, and that started to isolate us from each other more and more and more. This drive to make the most money, have the most toys that started in the '80s and has just gotten worse since that time. I would say it's very much linked to economic ideologies that really do privilege money over people and that made us literally disconnect right from ourselves and each other. I think you were going to ask me a question about the crisis of connection, and I can talk about literally what that is.
David Furst: I'll definitely get to that. If you want to join this discussion, we would love to welcome you. The number we're talking about masculinity and boy culture and raising sons in this environment today. If you have a question, if you have some advice, the number 212-433-9692. That's 212-433 WNYC. Dr. Way, in your book Rebels with a Cause, you investigate what you call this crisis of connection among men and boys. Talk more about that. What does that mean?
Dr. Niobe Way: Again, I have to always say it's the waters in which we swim. Living in a culture that only values one part of who we are and not the other side. Only values our capacity to think and want independence and not the to feel and to want relationships. It means that as boys grow up, but also as we all grow up, especially boys because we define manhood and maturity as only the hard sides over the soft sides. When boys grow up, they're actually being raised to go against their nature. Because we're naturally social animals, we naturally have the capacity to care. Our soft skills are natural to us. We're born that way. Caring, cooperation, curiosity, those are all natural skills, regardless of your identity.
In growing up in a culture that only values one side of ourselves, especially with boys and young men, they start to disconnect from their own needs. At 13 and 14, you hear in the data, they talk openly about either having or wanting close friendships. They use the language of love in terms of their friendships. They talk about the need for deep secret friendships. I wrote a whole book about that.
Then, as they grow older and the pressures during adolescence to man up, to actually disconnect from their feelings, disconnect from their male friendships because they're seen as so-called girly and gay to have intimate male friendships with each other. That's part of a cultural belief that's not actually true, it's just human. In that time, they experience what I call a crisis of connection where they start to disconnect from their own needs, but also start to disconnect from others.
David Furst: It's interesting, you're talking about the ages 11, 12, 13, 14, where boys have had these close, meaningful friendships.
Dr. Niobe Way: Exactly.
David Furst: Then later in adolescence and adulthood, they don't. What is happening that really breaks that?
Dr. Niobe Way: It's really the socialization.
David Furst: This feeling that you must man up.
Dr. Niobe Way: Well, mature and man. We define it, in order to grow-- You hear it in the quotes, "It might be nice to be a girl because then I wouldn't have to be emotionless. I'm mature now, I don't need to share my feelings." In our notions of growing up, especially for boys and young men to become a man, but also to become an adult, we actually-- Boys and young men and all people do this to certain degrees. We actually become-- We even think being emotional is childish. Not only feminine, but it's childish. In the name of being an adult, being a man, being mature, it's all about not being emotional.
Thinking emotions get in the way of thinking, when in fact, emotions can sometimes make you a better thinker.
David Furst: That person can't be a good leader. They're too emotional.
Dr. Niobe Way: Exactly. No, you hear it all the time, or you know something, or relationships are less important than your autonomy, than speaking your mind. Well, guess what? Now with our partisan divides, what's most important is perspective taking. Guess what we're losing in this me, me, me culture? Our ability to take the perspective of another person, which we actually don't encourage because it's all about the me at this point, especially as we grow up.
David Furst: Is there something also happening developmentally during those years 11, 12, 13, 14, where that's a time where relationships can fall away?
Dr. Niobe Way: Well, but that's not natural. What we're saying is most of our human history, friendships have been even more important than our romantic relationships, but only since-- Essentially it's a longer question, it's a longer answer to respond to. Only really starting in the mid-20th century did we start to equate friendships with the sexuality, especially for men, and started to feminize those. Friendships of Abraham Lincoln were the most intimate friendships he had. We've always valued friendships in the history of the human world and celebrated them throughout all cultures around the world.
It's really only in this particular culture, modern culture, that we started to see friendships as less important than academic achievement, which is what we're starting to do now. It's not natural that they-- That the crisis of connection is not natural. It's actually a cultural phenomenon.
David Furst: Is there anything that has turbocharged that crisis? Because did something extra happen during the COVID lockdown to boys who happen to be in that exact age range that you're talking about?
Dr. Niobe Way: Yes. I would say what really turbocharged it is social media, starting at about 2004, where, guess what? We all know this. Friendships became how many likes you have on a post. The whole notion of even what a friendship is totally transformed with social media. I would say social media and technology. I want to say this very clear. It's not the root of the problem. The root of the problem is that beginning to privilege money over people, especially starting in the 1980s. It certainly fanned the flames. The idea is now it's becoming, it's all a me, me, me culture. Social media is not social media. It's me media.
It's, "Let me show you how beautiful, sexy, talented I am so I can get a lot of likes," or "Let me show you how toxic I can be so I can get a lot of likes," like you see in the manosphere. The idea is that the technology is just consistent with the culture. A culture that's the me, me, me culture and about making money over about caring for people, and boys are upset by it. That is really the root of a lot of their acting-out behavior, a lot of the violence, even the suicides, reading suicide notes. They are upset that they're living in a culture that doesn't value their caring capacity and their caring needs. We are a culture that doesn't care fundamentally about each other, at least.
David Furst: You're listening to Please Advise here on WNYC. I'm David Furst. Our guest today is Dr. Niobe Way. We're talking about masculinity and what she calls a crisis of connection among boys and young men. We'll take your calls now. If you would like to join the conversation, here's that number again, 212-433-9692. That's 212-433 WNYC. Nicole in New York, welcome to Please Advise. Do you have a question?
Nicole: Hi. Yes. Thank you so much. I called because I have a question and some insight as to how I'm raising my little boy. I guess I'll start with the insight first and then the question.
Dr. Niobe Way: Also, give me the age of your little boy, too.
Nicole: Sure. He's seven.
Dr. Niobe Way: Seven. Good. Thank you.
Nicole: Yes, of course. The moment I found out I was going to be a boy mom, I made it my intention to raise him fully aware of his feelings. That way, he would not be emotionally constipated. I can attest to dating emotionally constipated men and realizing that, wow, there's a lot of arrested development when it comes to their emotions. You hear it in their vernacular when they are talking to you, and they're like, "Men don't do this. Oh, that's girly," or whatever. You're like, 'Wow."
As soon as I found out I was going to be a boy mom, I made it my intention to raise someone's future husband with emotional intelligence and the understanding that the main thing that people say is, "Boys don't cry." With the main thing understanding that if boys didn't cry, then why would they have tear ducts? That's exactly how I raised them to understand that.
Dr. Niobe Way: Beautiful.
Nicole: Thank you. He's now my proud seven-year-old who manages his big feelings, identifies his big feelings. When he cries, I actually don't say, "Don't cry." I actually tell him, "It's okay to cry. Keep crying. What's most important is this, you cry, but you work towards a solution."
Dr. Niobe Way: Exactly.
Nicole: Crying doesn't solve anything but working towards a solution.
David Furst: I love these comments, but-- Oh, yes, go ahead. Sure.
Nicole: My question, Dr., is with that being said, I am raising a seven-year-old boy in today's society, which is a society that is far away from the society I grew up in. I'm also raising a seven-year-old autistic child. What would you say is something that would be a great tool or word of advice or maybe some insight as to helping raise a seven-year-old autistic boy, who is already in touch with his feelings, but also maybe to help manage and navigate, especially with the help of ABA?
Dr. Niobe Way: I would say, first of all, it sounds like you're a terrific mom, so he's lucky to have you. I want to start that off because it's really-- You're doing all the right things. Whenever I offer ideas, I never want to suggest that you're not doing enough. First of all, I'm going to say that to you, Nicole. Secondly is what we have to understand as moms and I'm a boy mom too, by the way. What we have to understand as moms is that our sons, just like all other humans, are born with a natural capacity to express their feelings, and they're essential to having relationships, which you alluded to.
We have to recognize that, that this is not just about having your boys cry or being emotionally sensitive. That you cannot have high-quality relationships of all kinds, not just romantic, if without emotions. If we understand that, then the idea that we nurture their emotional sensitivity, not just their ability to cry, but even just their natural capacity to be sensitive to another person's feelings, sensitive to their own feelings, sensitive to their mother's feelings, to their best friend's feelings, all those kinds of things. Sensitive to a child that's being picked on in school, sensitive to their feelings.
The idea is we're raising them to be sensitive human beings, which means helping them have relationships that they need. What the research says, Nicole, and then I'll talk about the autistic thing in a second. What the research shows is that having healthy relationships is the sole predictor. I'm going to repeat that for your listeners, David. The sole predictor, high-quality relationships, social health, we call it social health is the sole predictor of mental health, physical health, well-being, happiness, all the things that we want in our lives is predicted by the quality of our relationships.
You're basically arming your child when you foster and nourish relationships and emotions, as well as thinking, of course, you're nourishing your child's happiness, you're nourishing your child's capacity to have healthy relationships and hence be mentally and physically healthy. Now I'm going to answer quickly your autistic component. What I've discovered in my research with my students, and it's not actually research, it's just working with hundreds of students every year, is that actually kids that have been identified as autistic are oftentimes very much truth-tellers about how they think and feel.
It's not that they have an impediment, I would say they have an impediment about the typical social skills. I'm going to give you a suggestion of a technique you could use. Just remember that he's probably more skilled than most other children who haven't been diagnosed with understanding other people's and his own thoughts and feelings. This is what I would suggest. When you infuse curiosity into your child, you encourage them to ask questions of other people. How are they thinking? Why do they think that way? What do they want to-- What can they learn from another person?
You're actually literally giving your child skills, we call it relational intelligence skills to have relationships, because the secret sauce of all relationships is that capacity, what I call interpersonal curiosity. Kids with all sorts of diagnoses can oftentimes be incredibly good listeners, and also being deeply curious. They can use those tools, those curiosity questions to form friendships. I would say nourish your child's curiosity regardless of what label they have. Definitely with kids with labels such as autism, et cetera.
David Furst: Thank you so much for that call. If you'd like to join this discussion, we have to take a quick break here on Please Advise. The number to call is 212-433-9692. We want to hear your questions and your advice. I'll just read this text we just got right before we break. Someone writing in to say, "Your speaker is so correct and clear. I have a 10-year-old. I grew up the oldest of four boys with a strong and loving mother. I was taught to tap into the soft and strong parts of myself."
Dr. Niobe Way: Fantastic.
David Furst: "Being caring towards others and empathetic is a human trait and should be attributed to all of us, not just the matriarchal components of society. Many cultures seem to lead their boys into manhood, distancing themselves from their mother's teachings. It's important for fathers to talk to their sons about the importance of honor, morality, and family, and not to discount their female companions, but to embrace their softer side. It's needed in parenting if we engage boys to recognize their softer side, we promote compassion and empathy in them for their future adult self to try to always do the right. Boys need to be strong and also loving and have emotional intelligence."
Dr. Niobe Way: Yes, and I really appreciate that comment. It's just so important what's being expressed. I want to say something very clearly to all you parents out there, mothers and fathers and grandparents as well too.
David Furst: I'm listening because I'm a boy dad.
Dr. Niobe Way: Good. Is that what we find in our research across and I've been doing this across many decades. It's been four decades I've been thinking about these and researching this, is that if children have at least one parent and oftentimes it's the mother, but it doesn't have to be the mother, have one parent that nurtures their hard and soft skills, their capacity to think and feel, their need for autonomy and connection, their need to be sometimes emotionally stoic and sometimes emotionally vulnerable.
Remember, when you're talking to someone who's emotionally vulnerable, your response needs to be emotional stoicism. They play together. These things are not happening separately. They happen together. When you have at least one parent that nourishes your hard and soft side, you are more likely to have be able to maintain friendships throughout your life. We find that you just need one parent, one person at home that nourishes it. Typically, we find it's the mothers. The mama's boy myth is literally that we think a mama's boy, we demean a mama's boy, but actually a mama's boy is getting those beautiful hard and soft skills, oftentimes, of learning how to have relationships.
David Furst: Valuable skills.
Dr. Niobe Way: Definitely. I want to say to all the dads, including you, Dave.
David Furst: I'm listening.
Dr. Niobe Way: Is that it doesn't have to be the mother. It ends up being the mother because we live in a "boy culture," which we think that it's girly skills and that it's maternal skills. It's not maternal skills, it's human skills. Fathers can be fantastic, so-called stereotypically. I'm going to use this intentionally, mothers in the sense, not literally mothers, but bringing in the hard and soft skills. David, you look yearning to respond.
David Furst: I have so many things I want to say, but what I truly need to do is take a quick break. We'll continue this discussion and pick up on that thought in just a moment. You're listening to Please Advise here on WNYC. More with our guest, Dr. Niobe Way. Just a moment.
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David Furst: You're listening to Please Advise here on WNYC, a popup advice show. I'm David Furst. Our guest today is Dr. Niobe Way. We're talking about masculinity and boys' culture, what she calls a crisis of connection among boys and young men. We want to hear your questions and your advice, your thoughts on this topic. The number again to call, 212-433-9692. Let's hear now from John in Brooklyn. John, do you have a question or maybe a comment?
John: Yes, I'm a father, not to a boy, but when with respect to the manosphere, and I have to confess, I didn't hear the whole segment from beginning to end. With respect to the manosphere, I feel like if you sit there and listen to it or watch it all day long, it's toxic. I will say there are kernels of truth in some of the things that these people say. I don't think the influencers or whatever term you want to use should replace a mother or a father. I don't think that everything they say is BS either. I think a lot of it is, but not all.
I wanted to also thank the doctor for addressing this very important topic. Even though I don't have a son, I'm a man. It affects society 150% one of the sexes isn't being cared for. There's also Miss Angry out there. I would like to know how the doctor feels about that.
David Furst: Thank you so much for that comment.
Dr. Niobe Way: Thank you for asking the question. You're pointing out something that be surprising but that I agree with you about the manosphere, but I'm going to offer another way to think about it. The manosphere is a product, what I would call-- Earlier you missed this part, but it's important, boy culture, which is boy in quotations. It's not a real boy. It's a stereotype of a boy that only values our hard side and not our soft side.
When boys are raised in such a culture where only their so-called masculine sides, which are not masculine, it's human. Their so-called hard sides are valued over their soft sides. It produces the manosphere. It produces, if boys are raised to think that they're naturally assholes, to be blunt, are we allowed to say that? No. If boys are raised to think that they're naturally jerks, then what happens is that they then get frustrated because who wants to be seen as a jerk? Nobody.
The anger comes from not only feeling like they're being put on the bottom of a hierarchy where their needs aren't valued, which is what we also do in so-called boy culture, but also that notion that they're angry that people think they're naturally jerks. They're not naturally jerks. No one's naturally a jerk. Our culture makes some people jerks and some people not. The idea is that I want the responsibility of manosphere to be honestly all the adults in the room who repeat this culture of ours.
David Furst: Well, I'm getting a text right now, picking up a bit on this saying, "I have often thought that--" Oh, wait a minute, I'm losing it. Oh, yes, here it is. "Great about raising boys, but how do we deal with husbands who are just now realizing their emotional incapacity?"
Dr. Niobe Way: Well, I'm going to push back on that because no one has emotional incapacity. We're all born exactly the same way. That's not an opinion. I am a developmental scientist, which means we do studies from zero to five, the first five, six years of life. There are no gender differences in emotional capacity or needs in the first five years of life. There just literally isn't. Emotional needs it doesn't vary by gender over the lifespan. What varies is the capacities. Because if we make the capacity lame and soft, because we think what is soft is lame, what happens is boys and men can go underground with their own capacity. Meaning they can start to cover over.
Now this is the good news. I'm going say this because it's very important to understand. In schools, we've been working with students of all identities called the Listening with Curiosity project, where we reteach them their five-year-old capacity to be curious about each other. What happens when you actually teach this natural skill to look at each other with wonder and say what can I learn from you? Not only about you, but also about me, your experiences, your thoughts, your feelings, what happens? Guess what happens. Those five-year-old little boys in the men, in the adult men start coming back.
That sense of they already have this capacity to actually connect with somebody. For your husband, it's the husband, right?
David Furst: Yes.
Dr. Niobe Way: With the husband, what I would say is that what he's recognizing in himself is that he was born that way to have this emotional capacity, now it just needs to be nurtured. It doesn't just mean that he gets to express his feelings, but also that he gets to hear the expression of feelings from other people in his family.
David Furst: I love this idea of listening with curiosity. You're talking about five-year-olds. I'm also thinking about five-year-olds who in class are not really told to listen with necessarily curiosity, but sit still and be quiet.
Dr. Niobe Way: Exactly. When you ask kids what curiosity looks like, when you ask especially a seven and eight-year-old, they shut their mouth. Yes, exactly. They shut their lips tightly. The idea is we teach children that actually listening is shutting up. Listening is actually curiosity. It's actually wanting to know what I can learn from the other person about the answer to my question.
David, I'm going to say this because we've talked about it before our interview. It oftentimes entails interrupting, and why interrupting is so important for listening to curiosity. You're not interrupting me to tell your own story. You're interrupting me because you're wanting me to answer your question. Sometimes I trailer off, and then you bring me back to your question. Listening with curiosity, interrupting is critical for actually listening to someone.
David Furst: Of course that's difficult when it's a room full of 30 kids in front of you. I understand. I don't mean to suggest otherwise, and I want to take-- We have many more calls coming through right now. We'll get to your calls right now here on Please Advise. Thanks for joining the discussion. Let's hear from Lynn in Westchester. Do you have a question?
Lynn: I have a comment. First of all, I appreciate the conversation very much. I believe that professional sports in this country provide advantages for some, but have a generally a pernicious effect and a negative effect on our culture. However, when I watch games with my husband, usually my favorite part is when a touchdown is made, or a home run is scored or a basket is made. The joy with which the men, because I'm talking about men in this case, embrace each other and come together in a large group hug. Their comfort level in expressing their physical appreciation and joy is beautiful to watch.
At the same time, when somebody does something and it's negative, there is also the same outpouring of support. Maybe it's just a pat on the back or a whisper in the ear. There is where I think men feel the most comfortable expressing how they feel in physical ways.
Dr. Niobe Way: Oh, boy, do I love this comment. I'm so appreciative of this comment. Absolutely. This is the thing, you just gave the secret that is the deep secret, is that boys and men are emotional all the time, but they have to be given permission to feel, which it's a quote from Marc Brackett at Yale, who came up with the expression permission to feel. I would add permission to ask somebody a real question. Once they're given the permission, you see this gorgeous, which sports do, of course. You can see this gorgeous expression of their natural capacities.
It's interesting to me because even the manosphere-- I had a student do a paper on following people on the manosphere. Guess what's happening on the manosphere? It's going to surprise everybody. There is so many men on the manosphere, particularly men, young men, pushing back against Andrew Tate on Andrew Tate's thing. They're pushing back. They're saying, "You can't say that. That's not true." There's so much pushing back. We think the manosphere is all negative. If you actually follow, they're mocking-- Many of them are even mocking Andrew Tate for being so ridiculous in his hyper masculinity. To me, the way men push back is an important part of the story to protect other people.
David Furst: I love that sports conversation, too. Meanwhile, we all seem to have these refs on the sidelines, throwing flags for excessive celebrations. There's that to watch out for as well.
Dr. Niobe Way: Exactly.
David Furst: Let's take another call. Joe in the Livingston. Welcome to Please Advise. Do you have a question?
Joe: I have a comment. I think that this is really a multidimensional problem, as the doctor has alluded to many times, but I think manosphere, I don't know, what's the other term? The female sphere? I don't know, but I think it's a little sexist. Remember, we grow up geared toward success. If you look at employment figures when was the last time an English major or a philosophy major or a political scientist, political science major, or an art major garnered a successful job? It is all science, math, accounting, money-making endeavors.
It isn't in isolation. I'm a father. I have a son, and he's been on dates where the woman say they equate masculinity with money because they equate masculinity with success. Looking at our leaders, we foster this. These kids grow up from parents like us saying, "Well, you got to get a job, you have to be able to make money." It's true.
David Furst: Yes. A lot of--
Joe: If they listen to their maybe what they really want to do, then they become the lost tribe of men and women who no longer fit in society because they're unemployed. What's the trade-off?
David Furst: Yes, well, good question.
Dr. Niobe Way: Basically, you've just articulated exactly what I was calling so-called boy, in quotation marks, "boy culture," which is the privileging of the hard over soft, which we do not only in thinking over feeling, the self over other, autonomy over connection, we privilege the former over the latter, but also in our professions, privileging STEM fields over art and philosophy and music. If you want to know why boys are less likely to go to college these days, it's because college, not only is it ridiculously expensive, but also because it's now college has just become basically vocational training in math and science. There are many boys who are not interested in math and science.
Girls are now getting opportunities in math and science. The reality is that, and I want to say this very clearly, it's a very important point to make, I am not criticizing masculinity in my work. I am saying that what we have deemed masculine is not masculine. It is simply a human capacity and in some cases, a human need. I want to get out of the conversation about who's more to blame. Men, women, masculinity, femininity, it's irrelevant. Boys and young men are telling us they want to be seen as fully human. They think and feel. They want to go possibly into the arts or into math. They have both interest, teaching, nursing. Those are human professions, not female professions.
The idea is that we have to stop pitting each other against each other. That's really what's causing a lot of the problems.
David Furst: I want to pick up a little bit on that thread, just looking at some statistics recently. Women now make up a majority of the students enrolled in college. The Labor Department says the vast majority of newly created jobs are going to women, including a large percentage of the overall job gains in August. For the last eight months, women have outnumbered men in the workforce. Do you see a relationship between some of these trends in-
Dr. Niobe Way: Yes. It's a very clear story.
David Furst: -boy culture.
Dr. Niobe Way: Yes, I'm going to say it, and I'm going to say it loudly because we have to hear this. There is a dramatic departure of teachers. There's a dramatic departure of nurses, home care workers, all the soft professions, they are needing people to come into the field. Because we don't oftentimes pay at a living wage, men are oftentimes not willing to go in those fields, but they're also feminized. If we actually valued the soft professions and we paid them a living wage, I'm going to be very blunt about this, because I've been seeing this in the data forever.
David Furst: Be blunt.
Dr. Niobe Way: We would not have the gender disparity in colleges. We would not have the gender disparity in employment. We are needing more nurses. We are needing more people. Teachers, literally public school teachers are disappearing because it's not a living wage, and it's becoming such a toxic environment in education. The idea is that if we valued both the hard and soft professions, meaning we paid them a living wage as much as we do the hard professions, we would not have this employment thing, and we would not have the college thing.
I just want to throw in this really quickly, the college thing, why STEM fields, vocational training, and STEM fields. I'm being a little snarky there, but it's true, which we're getting in all the top schools, too. The reason why it's so attractive for girls is because girls hadn't had access to that before. STEM fields are going to be, actually, at this point, much more attractive to girls because they didn't get those opportunities before, and they're thriving in those fields just like boys did in the past. To me, we have to understand it's the privileging of the hard over the soft that's leading to all our problems. I'm going to be very dramatic here, all our problems.
If we valued both sides, both our arts music, literature, as much as math and science and computer science, we would be having a much more healthy and meaningful society, but also many more happy people.
David Furst: Well, we're going to take a very quick break. We'll be back with this discussion in just a moment. You're listening to Please advise here on WNYC. I'm David Furst. Our guest, Dr. Niobe Way. We're talking about masculinity, what she calls a crisis of connection among boys and young men. We'll continue this conversation in just a moment.
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David Furst: You're listening to Please Advise, a popup advice show here on WNYC. I'm David Furst. Our guest today is Dr. Niobe Way. We're taking, taking your questions and calls and comments about masculinity and I'll read this text and get you to respond. We're also going to get to more of your calls. Someone writes in to say, "It's not hard to nurture the full boy at home, but when they're out in the world of New York City public schools, their physical safety or perception of safety can depend on their ability to blend in. What's your advice about code-switching? Is it okay for them to wear masks if they take them off at home, or are masks the problem?"
Dr. Niobe Way: I love your listeners. They are asking such fantastic questions. Thank you so much. That's such a deep question. The answer is going to be surprising too. I would say yes. It is sometimes adaptive to wear a mask in a certain context, and it's okay. I call it in my research we talk about the way boys and girls and non gender binary young people both resist and accommodate to mainstream culture and accommodation is sometimes literally necessary for survival. If you're being bullied, if you're being-- In all sorts of contexts, you actually have to accommodate. You have to wear the mask to literally get out of the situation. I don't want to demonize. Sometimes we have to cover over our feelings.
Sometimes we have to look tough when we don't feel tough. Sometimes we have to pretend that we're okay even though we're not okay. That's okay. What I'm trying to say is that we also have to nourish being able to be expressive about our feelings. We also have to nourish, and this is a big one for me. It's not just about ourselves. Nourish emotional sensitivity. Right now in schools across the country, we do something called social-emotional learning in our classrooms. It's a very common curriculum across 80% of public schools now.
The way they define social-emotional learning, in large part, is being able to regulate your emotions. There's no discussion about emotional sensitivity. How about nourishing the sensitivity of our children, regardless of their identity? Sensitivity to another person's feelings, sensitivity to another person's viewpoint. All those things that are happening, that are not happening are leading to all our divides at this point.
David Furst: Well, I see we have several calls coming through. Let's try to get to a couple more before we have to wrap up here. Let's hear from Neil in Brooklyn. Welcome to. Please Advise. Do you have a comment or a question?
Neil: I do, yes. I just wanted to talk about the lack of role models out there in our public culture. I grew up, every New Year's, my family would watch the great film Free to Be, You and Me, which featured a song that had Rosie Grier, one of the [croostalk]
David Furst: You are speaking my language. I grew up on that album.
Speaker G: Talking about It's All Right to Cry.
David Furst: I was jotting that down earlier this hour. It's All Right to Cry from that album.
Neil: I think also that our algorithmic culture now is really feeding people-- There's money to be made off talking about masculinity, and there's money-- I was really glad to hear that kids are pushing back, young men are pushing back on Andrew Tate and his stuff.
David Furst: What about that, though? That there's a lack of role models?
Dr. Niobe Way: Well, I would say it reminds me of a listener a couple 10 minutes ago that ultimately what we think oftentimes are poor role models. If you look a little deeper, they're actually doing things that are more complicated. I'll give you an example. The teacher that is always yelling at the kids, that's not a good teacher, obviously. Then all of a sudden, you'll see him-- I've been working in public schools since the late '80s, so I've seen lots of teachers. All of a sudden, you'll see the way he handles the kids that are struggling to write. He has enormous sensitivity in helping them to figure out how to write.
He all of a sudden becomes a real human in my eyes. Not just someone who yells at the kids, but has this soft side. Guess what happens? His soft side never gets celebrated. It just the administration yells at him that he yells at the Kids, which he should stop doing. To me, I would say we probably have more role models than we think at this point. If we actually didn't stereotype each other in such flat ways and actually see the tenderness of a man who's not acting nicely at the moment, or the ability for a woman who's wickedly smart but is covering over her intelligence in this example to not look too threatening to somebody.
The idea is looking at each other with a sense of wonder and complexity and not through a lens of stereotypes. I do have to say something, because it's so powerful. 85%, according to nationwide studies, 85% of people feel stereotyped by other people. If we're just stereotyping each other, we're not listening.
David Furst: Good point. Thank you so much for that call, Neil. Let's hear now from Tony in Little Neck, Queens. Welcome to Please Advise.
Tony: Thank you so much. I wanted to bring this up. A lot of the things that you're saying I agree with, but they seem to be in a vacuum in this regard. Let me say this. I'm Asian. Growing up during the '90s and stuff, I faced a lot of insults because of my race. I faced a lot of things there. I hate to say it, but sometimes that the toxic masculine was a source of pride for me. I was facing different things. Other men would put me down, and I don't like the idea that it's like men-- Men are not a monolith in terms of what they face. A lot of men face things from other men that have to do with racism, have to do with culture that don't have to do with masculinity. That toxic element can give us a source of pride.
It's a bad bandage, but sometimes it works. I remember a time when I was insulted because of my race in grade school, and I think it was my mom who sat me down and said, "Listen, you should know that this. That person is an idiot. Not just because of that. Because you're smarter than they are. You're better at STEM things than they are. You're stronger than they are." Things like that. Those definitely reinforce toxic masculinity ideals. When you're facing other things, I don't think it's fair to just say that we have to point out that as toxic as it is, it's like-- The analogy, I think, is it's like drugs. They hurt you, but there's a reason people are taking them. They're making up for something else that--
David Furst: Dr. Way, do you want to respond to that? Very interesting.
Dr. Niobe Way: First of all, write about exactly what you're talking about. You should check out Rebels with a Cause. Because my samples are always incredibly diverse. Lots of particularly Chinese American young people in public schools in New York City who experience an enormous amount of bullying for a wide variety of reasons and the ways they respond to it. It's a critical part of the conversation. It's not just about gender. It's an intersection of class and race and ethnicity as well.
This is what I'm going to say. As I said before, sometimes it's necessary to act like a jerk or to say something harsh or to say something direct or sometimes even to hit somebody who's hitting you. The idea is that the idea that there's one way to do it or that the problem is masculine is problematic. That's not what I'm saying. What boys and young men are saying is that they have hard and soft capacities. When you just tell them to be hard and not soft, it messes them up. The flip side, if you were just soft, that would be just as problematic. You're able to defend yourself and you--
David Furst: I still want to push back on that notion that you say sometimes it's okay to act like a jerk.
Dr. Niobe Way: Let me rephrase that. If someone is taunting you and saying mean things to you, it is okay to-- I've said that to my son and my daughter, by the way. It is okay to say mean things back to them. To say that the only solution has to be just to ignore it. I don't think is a real thing of an eight-year-old who's dealing with girls saying mean things to her. The idea is, sometimes it's necessary. I want to get us out of this conversation of picking sides and then deciding which side is better. We are complicated human beings. We have the capacity for both the hard and the soft. Let's nurture that.
David Furst: This conversation is going to have to keep continuing because you have a lot of books. I want to try to get the few seconds we have left here. Can you respond to this text here? "I'm a man whose father was very unavailable emotionally. Now with a son of my own, I don't want to smother him to make sure that he gets what I never did. How can I be available emotionally without being a helicopter parent?"
Dr. Niobe Way: I'm going to answer that by saying the new book that's about to come out for the summer with Harvard Press is called Our Social Nature in an Anti-Social: A Five-Part Story. I turn the phrase boy culture into antisocial culture because it's more inclusive, and it doesn't sound like I'm blaming boys, because I'm certainly not doing that. We are social by nature. We have social-emotional skills. That is our natural capacity as a human species. Darwin said the same thing. We have a natural moral sensibility and social sensibility. We grow up in a culture, the me, me, me culture, a money-over-people culture that's fundamentally antisocial.
The best way to raise sons, daughters, non gender conforming kids, is to nourish both sides of our humanity. The hard and the soft, the sensitivity and the stoicism, the me and the we, all at the same time, all at the same time nourishing that. If you do that, if you nourish the hard and the soft, if you nourish being artistically expressive as well as science, if they're interested in science, you will get a child, an adult who has healthy relationships and ultimately will be a much happier person than if they weren't raised that way. That's my message to all parents.
Recognize it's not your fault. This is the last thing I want to say. It's not your fault. You're living in an antisocial culture that fundamentally is going against our nature, and we're raising our kids to go against our nature. We need to create a pro-social culture that nourishes our nature, which is our hard and soft sides of ourselves, not just one or the other.
David Furst: If you want to read more, you have many books out there. Dr. Niobe Way, thank you so much for joining us today. Once again, your most recent book is Rebels with a Cause: Reimagining Boys, Ourselves, and Our Culture. That book that's on the way, what's the name of that one?
Dr. Niobe Way: It's called Our Social Nature in an Anti-Social: A Five-Part Story. It will come out likely this summer with Harvard University Press.
David Furst: That's great. Thank you so much for joining us today, and thank you everybody for joining the conversation. It was great. So many comments and texts and calls. Thank you so much for being part of the discussion. This time tomorrow, on Who's Running This Place here on WNYC, Mayor Zohran Mamdani joins Brigid Bergin to preview the upcoming election. That's tomorrow afternoon at 1:00. Coming up next week here on Please Advise, the comedian Josh Gondelman will be taking over as host. Very cool. His guest on Monday is Priya Parker, author of The Art of Fighting: The Transformative Power of Conflict.
Please Advise is now available, by the way, as a podcast on Apple, Spotify, and wherever else you get your podcasts. Give us a follow if you want to get all of our shows sent straight to your device every day that we're on the air. Once again, thank you for joining us. Thank you for listening and for joining the conversation. This is Please Advise here on WNYC.
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