Lost boys report: Young men are in crisis due to fatherlessness

Bingo. I think we should start charging biological dads with the crimes of their son.

But that would never be legal or politically acceptable.

So what do we do to prevent this crisis?

Women should be more careful who they have sex with.

Online Rhetoric against dads and husbands in general probably doesn’t help.

But I thought children didn’t need both a mother and a father? Hmm.

You have a father will replace fatherless as an insult lmao

This is a mad comment section. As the son of a single mother who has known dozens of other guys growing up without a dad, here’s the connective tissue: abusive deadbeats raised by other abusive deadbeats shocked to discover they now live in a world where women aren’t forced to stay with them and there are actual consequences for neglecting their kids.

There are a lot of amazing dads out there, the unfortunate fact is many have just never been taught how to be a good dad (or partner) in the first place and this is something we need to nurture in future generations — rather than blaming the “woke feminism” that gave women the agency to spare their kids of the arseholes.

Also agree with comments that capitalism has much to do with this. It’s much harder to be there for your kids when you’re constantly stressing about how to provide for your family and things like paternity leave are withheld from you.

This will only be solved on a large scale once our sexual morality returns to something approximating the traditional Christian view. Sex within marriage. Marriage for life. It turns out children benefit massively from having their mother and father around and that is best guaranteed by adhering to these moral standards on sex and family. Unfortunately, British society has concerned itself with ‘breaking down stigmas’ around sex to the benefit of selfish adults at the expense of innocent children. If we are serious about the next generation, we, as adults, need to start being serious about ourselves; and that starts with taking the marriage vow seriously again.

Update: The number of downvotes just shows we aren’t ready to actually take care of children. Everyone knows this is the solution. What else could be? You want mothers and fathers in the home to take care of children then you need to increase the number of nuclear families that remain intact. Our country just isn’t ready to be serious yet, sadly.

This is why I want to become a therapist so that young men have a space to talk

People are social creatures not science experiments so bare that in mind when we discuss social trends. I know of respectful young men raised by a single mum who worked full time, this doesn’t negate a trend however.

The article itself talks of the real crux of the issue – it isn’t about having a man in the house, it is about having boundaries, guidelines, and positive male role models.

If we focus too much on ‘needing a dad’ then we run the risk of blurring what boys need – firm boundaries and guidelines.

This group has clearly done some excellent work and I hope they can expand, but you can see plenty of boys who have dads yet are badly behaved, failing in school etc. The reason is these dads are not providing the positive role model and behaviour modelling that young boys need.

In the same way that girls can get moody, stroppy, and cry because hormones wreck havoc with them, boys can get aggressive, standoffish, and reckless due to hormones. They need to have discipline and structure to help them realise when they have overstepped the boundaries (which must be clear and consistent) and also to help them deal with their moods.

We have become as a society far too critical of people who discipline children, yet also not understanding enough of bad behaviour. It is the real ‘children should be seen not heard’ and parents shouldn’t shout at their children clashing which has caused this mess. We see it as a failure of parents when they discipline, yet also horrified if children are out of line without realising it is natural they act up regularly. It is hard and boring being young.

If you have a son, and he is acting up, you explain to him what will happen if he continues, then you punish him accordingly each and every time he oversteps the boundaries. You can’t blame them if sometimes you ignore it because you are tired, or sometimes you are in a good mood so let it go. They need clear guidance when growing up. You are raising children not a friend.

I fully support initiative like this in the article that create male spaces, but it isn’t something magical about ‘dads’ but rather the structure and behaviour modelling that allows them to thrive.

I see people blaming capitalism and feminism separately in here but I sort of think the two go hand in hand – albeit neither intentionally. Feminism took a lot of people who were economically inactive and pushed them into the workforce, thus flooding it with supply of labour – the impact of that over the long term was to drive wages down. Where once it was possible to live in a single income household, now it takes two.

I do occasionally look at this and think to myself that if I was a hyper capitalist who wanted to maximise profits at any cost, this is exactly what I would have done. So I do occasionally think feminism in economic terms was a greater victory for capitalists than even women (women won the ability to slave away like men – I’m not sure about the financial independence angle since so many of us can barely afford to leave home these days).

But that movement, and the shift it permitted in capitalism, feels like it had a huge impact on the family life. Are any of us happier? It doesn’t particularly look like it. I wonder what the world would have looked like if men were saved from lives obsessed with work, rather than women being enslaved by it alongside them. Probably more time for family at least.