Podcast

A Shocking Turn in the War on Men - Richard Reeves -

Modern Wisdom

Last highlighted April 21, 2026 Source ↗ ← All highlights

The Boys And Men Debate Finally Reached Policy
- Richard Reeves says boys and men finally have real political traction, with governors, Congress bills, and state initiatives now openly targeting male mental health, education, and service.
- He argues this stopped being a fringe complaint after Democrats saw how badly they lost young men in 2024. Transcript: Chris Williamson What has changed? How has the debate about boys and men adapted since we last spoke? What’s new? Richard Reeves I think when we last spoke, I was still frustrated that there was no political space for this. People have become aware things aren’t great with boys and men. There was raised awareness of it, but I still felt, maybe particularly on the center left, that it was difficult to actually do anything about it. And that’s changed. One of my talking points used to be that it was very hard to get people, especially on the political left, to actually do anything about this problem. First of all, we have to get them to talk about it. A, it’s a problem. B, we can talk about it. And then C, we can do something about it. And I can’t say that anymore. We’ve got governors, Governor Newsom, Governor Whitmer, Governor Wes Moore in Maryland, also Governor Spencer Cox in Utah, all of whom have got pretty serious initiatives now to Try and promote boys and men. We’ve got, as I’m speaking to you now, two bills have just been introduced to Congress to create a men’s health strategy in office and to help men with their mental health after fatherhood, Right? The Men Matter bill. And there are a bunch of stuff happening in states. And so I can’t credibly say anymore, you know what? No one’s paying any attention to this. I can’t sort of say anymore, like you’re shouting into the wilderness. And I used to say, like, I’m banging my head against the brick wall, especially on the Democrat side of the aisle. That is just not true anymore. And there’s some politics behind that, of course. I have to be honest that I felt like I was banging my head against the brick wall with Democrats until November 2024. And then there was an election. And then my inbox started filling up with Democrats. Chris Williamson Because they saw how much they’d fallen behind with men, especially young men. Richard Reeves I mean, they can read a poll. And there’s no question that one of the things that happened in the 24 election was that Democrats lost men, and especially young men, in a very, very big way. And I don’t think it’s a coincidence that many of the Democrats I’ve just mentioned, and that we’re working with, are very often also mentioned as potential presidential candidates. And so they’ve realized that we can’t win without young men. So I’m not going to lie, I think there’s a political dimension to this. Unlike many people, I don’t blame politicians for doing politics. So some of the more men’s rights-y people have said about Governor Newsom’s initiative, for example, which is a serious initiative. What is it? So he signed an executive order last year telling his administration to come back to him with comprehensive plans to help boys and men in K-12 education, employment, and especially Mental health. He’s already done a male service challenge. He’s done a call to get 10,000 more men in California into service, into mentoring, into coaching. They’re following that up with a big push on getting more men into teaching, like male role models in the classroom would be a good idea. And it was very interesting that the men’s rightsy folks, if I can use that language for now, or they’re on the more conservative side of it, they’re just like, oh, he’s just doing politics. He’s just realized that the Democrats have lost young men. And so he’s just doing stuff to try and win their votes back. And why is that a bad thing? Isn’t that how democracies are supposed to work? And so I just can’t say it anymore. I think there’s real progress on this. It’s serious. Not all of it’s making it into the culture war, but that doesn’t mean that it’s not good. (Time 0:00:00)
Winning Means Making The Issue Boring
- Reeves calls this moment significant because policymakers moved from talking about boys and men to building commissions, executive orders, and line items that could outlast the current news cycle.
- His aim is to make the issue boring through durable institutions like Virginia’s proposed commission on boys and men. Transcript: Richard Reeves It’s a significant move in the sense that it’s the first time we’ve seen serious political figures and policymakers making serious efforts to address the problem. Chris Williamson Right. Okay. So it’s a significant move in the same way as firing the first shot of a war is a significant move. It’s the first thing that happens. And from that, it suggests that more will come after. Richard Reeves That’s right. So the question is, is there substance behind it? Not sufficient yet. No. And I think part of my role and part of my institute’s role is to hold these people to account, is to say, okay, thank you. You said you were going to do that. Yeah. You said you were going to do this. Great. Six months later, we’re going to be like, did you do that? Where is the initiative to get more men into mental health care, Governor? What did happen? Did you get 10,000 more men into service, Governor Newsom? Did you increase access to mental health care and paternity leave, Governor Moore? Yes or no, right? So I’m certainly not saying it’s enough, but it is a lot more than we had three or four years ago. I mean, three or four years ago, you couldn’t even get people, particularly on that side of the aisle, even to talk about this problem. When did your book come out? 2022. Chris Williamson Okay, so pretty much bang on that. And when did Obama endorse it? 2024. Okay, so you’re sort of tracking this journey over time. Richard Reeves Yeah, and honestly, it’s been for us, then we’ve suddenly got a pivot and say, okay, we’ve now got policymakers coming to us saying, okay, I got it, what shall I do? Wait, wait, wait, hold on, that was on our 2029 plan, right? We didn’t quite expect to catch up this quickly. And that’s obviously a good problem to have. But we have had to pivot and say, okay, how do we actually help these governors or these senators or these legislators do something about it? And my worry, honestly, is that this will just have a moment. Either it will be driven by the politics or it will be driven by suddenly there’s this issue, right? Boys and men are being discussed in a way that they weren’t before. Sexy to talk about it. Yeah. Where are we going to be five years from now? Five years from now, it might be, I don’t know, something else, right? Because these things do have their moments. And the question I’m asking myself is, what will I be able to appoint to that’s still standing, that’s still here? And so actually, Virginia is a good example. Virginia is, if the governor, new governor signs it, going to create the first commission on boys and men to sit alongside the commission on women and girls. Now, it’s just a government commission in a state. You might say, great. But what that means is that the issues of boys and men will be at the table in policymaking in Virginia in a way that they weren’t before. And that will still be there five years from now if that happens. That’s going to get a line item. It’s going to be real. It’s going to be institutionalized. And my whole thing, I think we’ve talked about this before, is I want this issue to become boring. I want this issue to be mainstream. Chris Williamson Yeah, yeah, yeah. Guys are falling behind. We’ve heard it. We’ve heard it. We know we’re working on it. We’ve got it. Richard Reeves Kind of. Yeah. And I want people to say, well, that’s why we’ve got this Office of Men’s Health. And that’s why we’ve got this big push on male teachers. Chris Williamson We’re doing it. (Time 0:03:26)
Some Activists Become Attached To Losing
- Reeves says some men’s advocates resist progress because grievance became their identity, so every win gets dismissed as fake, compromised, or politically motivated.
- He compares this with other activist spaces where success threatens purpose, leading people to keep slaying smaller and smaller dragons. Transcript: Chris Williamson You said the men’s rights-y types don’t actually want to win. What do you mean? Well, I’ve just noticed that when something does happen, there was very nearly a commission in Washington State. Richard Reeves I’ve mentioned the governor’s moves. Is that sometimes what will happen with the folks, some of whom have been in this field for a long time, and I would say that they come at this from a more conservative or sometimes even A reactionary perspective. It’s like they tend to dismiss these efforts. They’ll say, oh, sure, there’s been an executive order. Sure, they’re creating a commission on boys and men, but they’ll put their people on it, or they don’t really mean it. Are these people inside of government, the men’s rights? No, no, no. These are advocates. These are activists. Okay, like commentators. Yes, or people that have been like, there are various groups out there. They tend to be small and not that well-funded, and honestly, quite often fueled by grievances. Not necessarily illegitimate grievances. I don’t want to be misunderstood, but I’m on various conversations with them. I heard this rabbi, I think it’s David Wolpe’s name, on a podcast the other day, and he said something that really struck me. He said, activists are always psychologically reluctant to succeed because there’s something about your identity and your purpose that is tied up to your own failure. If you succeed, you’ll have to start saying, great, we’ve done it. Now I have to find some new identity. If you’ve actually wrapped up your identity in the sense that the whole of society is stacked against men, there’s been a feminist conspiracy against men, no one cares against men, And I’ve spent decades saying this, and then suddenly people do start caring about men, and they do start doing stuff about men. You’ve either got to say, oh, that’s not true anymore, and change your identity, or say, no, no, that can’t be true. I think that’s true for LGBTQ activists. I think it’s true for climate. Basically, people can’t take a win anymore. People can’t say, that’s a win. It may not be perfect, but it’s a win. It has to be glass half empty rather than glass half full. Chris Williamson I think one of the reasons for that is that people worry if they are too grateful for a success, it’s not going to continue to push the purpose forward. It’s the same reason that hard-charging, overachiever type A people refuse to let themselves feel too much pleasure when they succeed because my displeasure is exactly the fuel that Keeps me going. And it’s not too dissimilar with the climate crisis. Not enough is done because, well, maybe if I stop now, even if lots has been done, it’ll slow down or it’ll reverse or people will forget. So now that we’ve got the front foot, we must keep going. That would be the more virtuous way to put it. But I also agree. There’s a fascinating graph if you look at the uses of the word racism in the New York Times over the last 20 years, and you compare it to how much racism is actually happening. The two lines just have nothing in common and going completely opposite directions. It’s like some insane multiples times increase in the word racism. Lots of people made their careers around identifying racism. So you concept creep out things like racism. Richard Reeves Yeah, you end up slaying smaller and smaller dragons. Yes. Which makes your cause less and less legitimate. Yeah, which makes it easier for your opponents then to say, actually, that’s kind of silly. And so in the end, I don’t think it works. And I said that I want to be balanced about this because I remember getting an email, I think, from the Human Rights, whatever they’re called, HRA. And it was something like, along the lines of, there’s never been a worse time to be trans in America. And this was two months after Gorsuch had written his really, I think, incredible civil rights victory to include trans people under the sex discrimination law. I mean, that was a massive civil rights victory for the trans community. And it was almost like, yeah, we did get that, but look at this terrible thing over here. And I don’t want to be misunderstood. I don’t want to suggest there aren’t still challenges for trans people. But the idea that after extraordinary civil rights victory, I mean, really no one saw that coming, especially from that Supreme Court. They couldn’t just take that win. And then you have to send out an email funding saying, it’s never been a worse time. And I, is that true? And I’m not saying it’s a left-right thing. It’s so attached to the idea that you can’t win. And I’ve really noticed it in my space too. And it’s something I think about a lot in my own work is to try and, I really want to update my own view of the world and make sure that if good stuff’s happening, I don’t get trapped in this Kind of rut. (Time 0:06:09)
Media Coverage Lags Behind The Real Debate
- Chris Williamson says concern for boys and men is more mainstream, but much of the loudest coverage still feels like symbolic trend-chasing rather than serious structural engagement.
- Reeves adds that TV and documentaries often land years late, so by release they reflect an outdated moral panic rather than current culture. Transcript: Chris Williamson There’s definitely been more of a mainstream recognition of it. To me, I have to certainly sort of do a little bit of breathwork when I read one of these headlines because I’m trying to work out, is this lip service being paid to blowing with the wind Of a cool topic the moment, is it kind of like a disclaimer? Well, we did talk, you must remember, we released a four-part series in Politico on the crisis of boys and men, by the way, all written by women. Well, not my piece in Politico, but yes, I take your point. Christine Ember had theirs and theirs came out at the same time. Not one was written by a man. If it was why are men talking about women’s bodies, that would have probably been an issue had it been reversed. So I’m trying to work out, okay, there’s definitely more headlines about it that I see in the press. I’m not tapped into what’s happening in Washington, what’s happening on the policy side. It would probably be good. I know that you guys are promoting it, but it would be good if there was a way to get that out more, that, you know, good news about men newsletter or something to really allow that to sort Of make people who care about the issues of boys and men not feel like it’s a permanent losing battle or like all of their efforts, the best that they can hope for is a Washington Post headline Once every three months or something like that um yeah we’ve got Ross Kemp just released a three or five part series about young men uh Louis Theroux’s documentary just came out on Netflix Um adolescence did so much fucking damage, I think, with the way that it tried to frame things, with the language that it used. Richard Reeves Not so much adolescence itself, I think, but the way it was picked up by and interpreted. Chris Williamson Well, that’s correct, yeah. It was purposefully left up to interpretation. There was a lot of vacuum in there, and I know that at least some of the guys that helped to contribute to it. Some of the showrunners, I feel like, had a bit of an agenda and actually did have some things that they wanted to put across that I didn’t like, I didn’t really like. But yeah, it was purposefully left open to interpretation. Unfortunately, if it’s, it’s like a Rorschach test, it was like an ideological Rorschach test for the world. And what did almost everybody think? They all thought the same thing. All the mainstream thought the same thing. What was it? Richard Reeves Kemi Badenoch was being pulled up for having not watched it, as if it was a fucking documentary. I know, it’s the first time in British history that a political leader has been criticized for not watching television. Chris Williamson Do you see this, Jared? Mate, it was fucking insane. She gets pulled up on morning TV by i haven’t watched it saying saying you need to watch this hey what wow what do you mean it wasn’t even reality tv let alone a documentary it was you need Richard Reeves To watch this fictional portrayal wow it was wild the show adolescents right so that’s the uk is a good example i Actually, since we spoke, I set up a think tank there as well. And we’re working quite closely over there. It is, you do feel, always one step back, one forward. And some of the stuff that gets the most attention is not necessarily the stuff that either should or is most important. So simultaneously, the UK has released the first ever men’s health strategy. And it’s a very good document. Wes Streeting’s kind of put that forward. They had a very serious debate in Parliament on International Men’s Day. And actually, all of the MPs told a dad joke. At the beginning of that thing, this organization called Dad Shift did that. And it’s absolutely fucking amazing. I really kind of like this. It’s so cool. Wes Streeting did it as well. It’s very fun. It was an amazing debate about men’s mental health, about what’s happening. They’re doing a summit on this. Were you happy with what they very happy with it. But then the way that they were talking about adolescence wasn’t great for a while. So it’s never going to be a straight line. And the other thing that happens is, particularly with things like adolescence, and I suspect with these new documentaries too, I’ve really noticed this, is that the lag between the Idea to the screen is so great that by the time it lands, it’s out of touch with where the culture currently is. Correct. So it feels like, yeah, that’s maybe how people were thinking three years ago, but it’s not how it feels now. (Time 0:12:22)
Meaning Crises Start With Structural Failures
- Williamson argues the deepest male problems come after earlier failures in literacy, schooling, apprenticeships, employment, and mental health, so identity crises are often downstream effects.
- Reeves says cultural spaces still matter because young men need to hear they have problems, not that they are the problem. Transcript: Chris Williamson Wars or the sex wars, I guess, of what’s happening inside of the home, what’s happening with men’s roles, those things, that is going to be downstream from all of the structural changes That need to be made. Like, how are we doing with boys’ literacy rates, which I know are just falling through the floor? Like, they can’t read, boys can’t read. What’s happening with getting them into education or higher education or apprenticeships? And then what’s happening with employment? And then what’s happening with your place in society and fatherhood and all the rest of it? Like, all of these, the issues that I think matter most, that people feel the most, which is, well, where’s my meaning? And what’s my job like? And what’s my income like? All of those are after effects of the stuff that comes before it. And that is education, that’s employment, that’s mental health support, that’s all of the systemic kind of, like your work. And it almost feels- Did you just call my work systemic and boring? Richard Reeves Yes. Because if you did, I’m so happy. I’ve always wanted to be- Oh my God. This is like, hallelujah. Chris Williamson I feel like a guy who’s in a relay race and I’m the last dude. I’m the last dude because this sort of stuff, the way that I speak and the place that I can have the biggest impact is actually much closer to the end, I think, in some ways that if we’re going To talk about what is the role, maybe not that, I can definitely influence the way that people think and the approaches that guys and girls take to the sort of structure of their lives. But ultimately, the big movers that come before that really lay the groundwork are going to be more on the side of what’s happening in school, what’s happening in employment, what’s Happening. Richard Reeves Right. Well, I think actually it’s interesting you put it that way because in some ways, I think you’re kind of at the back and the front of the relay. Okay. And both of the guys in the human centipede. Sort of doing the work of both. They feel like, and I’m somewhere in the middle. I’m like the rest of them. You can be the middle of the show. Can I be the middle of the show? I don’t know this analogy is working for me. But anyway, so because you have to have space for a good faith conversation about what’s actually going on with boys and men and a good faith investigation of that. And you also need young men, especially, to hear that conversation and to feel like we’re talking about this stuff in a way that takes them seriously and that says they have problems, Not that they are the problem. And so I do think that these sorts of spaces are important for creating the conditions under which policymakers and politicians and others can then do their work, which will then hopefully Address the material problems. We’re not going to change some of these material issues overnight, but I think that we could at least do no harm. And for too long, the deficit framing around this issue of young men- What’s deficit framing? We start with what’s wrong with them. So a classic example, of course, would be toxic masculinity, which I think we’ve talked about before. And just like, let’s start with that. Let’s start with not making you toxic, right? Or like, what’s wrong with boys in school? They don’t try. And even like my friend Scott Galloway falls into this a little bit when he says, oh, the daughters are a pen or a lawyer, and then the guy’s in the basement vaping and playing video games Or whatever. There’s just this way of talking about young men that really suggests that they’re the problem rather than looking at the kind of systems around them. And I will just say, given the young men I know who listen to you and to others, that this hunger just for honest disagreement, good faith engagement around the problem is huge. And so I do think we have to set the table in a way that allows us to do the work, right? (Time 0:18:47)
If You Vacate Masculinity Others Fill The Gap
- Williamson says boys were told what not to do without being shown what to become, creating a vacuum that outsiders predictably filled.
- He argues if mainstream culture refuses to answer what it means to be a man, people like Peterson, Tate, or worse will supply the script. Transcript: Chris Williamson I get what you mean. I think that the challenge that you have when speaking to men about the balance between ambition and compassion, I know you can be more, but you are enough already. We need to do things to help you, but you also don’t want to be a victim. That’s right. Especially for men, it comes into contact inside of their minds because nobody wants to feel like they’re not doing it on their own, especially if you’re a guy. Where’s the heroism in that? And, you know, I think what Scott’s sort of trying to point the finger at there is he’s saying you need to pull yourself up by your bootstraps. Right. And for many men, that is true. I had this idea earlier this year called advice hyper responders. So advice doesn’t distribute evenly like medicine. It distributes like alcohol. The people that are already drunk on it take too much when the people who need to loosen up don’t have a drink. Richard Reeves I think you’ve talked about this in the context of Me Too, haven’t you? Yes, exactly. Chris Williamson The guys that are told that they shouldn’t be push with women, the nervous ones take it to heart. And the dudes that were blowing through boundaries just disregarded entirely. A person who is already loading too much responsibility and working too hard, he has just worked harder and goes, I knew that I wasn’t working hard enough. I must push more. Whereas the guy that is laying on the couch, and there is a huge, what is it, 14 million men who are- Not in education at the moment or training. Yeah, exactly. Nicholas- Eberstadt. Eberstadt. Eberstadt. Yeah, he corrected me. Really? Yeah. Richard Reeves God, I’ve been getting it wrong for years. It’s fine. Chris Williamson Look, you’re right that we’ve gone through this period of informing men of how to be men by telling them everything that they shouldn’t do. That’s right. A long list of don’ts. Yeah. It doesn’t inform what you should actually move toward. And the vacancy is hugely detrimental. And if you’re going to complain about what men are doing, but only tell them what they shouldn’t be doing without a replacement. You can’t complain when people step in and fill that gap. Whether you don’t like Rogan or me or Peterson or Tate or Nick Fuentes or fucking Myron or whoever. Whoever it is that you do or don’t like, whoever is or is not. If you don’t like Aragon from fucking Lord of the Rings, if there’s a vacuum, that will get sucked in because there’s a market to speak to people. And if nothing else, even if people aren’t speaking to it, if you don’t service the market, someone will reverse engineer another message to become the thing that they’re missing. If you can’t eat food, you’ll eat tree bark instead because it’s the closest thing that’s approximating food. Yeah. Richard Reeves So there’s a certain naivety in thinking that we don’t have to answer the question, what does it mean to be a man? Correct. Because every culture has had to answer that question. And so the question is not, is there going to be a question? It’s who’s giving the answer? And if you don’t like the answers, as you say, that some of the men are getting, then what’s the alternative? And so you can’t just vacate the ground and then complain. You can’t give up the ground and then complain that somebody else takes it. And that’s exactly what’s happened. (Time 0:22:30)
Young Men Need To Hear That They Are Needed
- Reeves argues young men now hear masculinity mostly in the phrase toxic masculinity, so even the word itself signals attack rather than aspiration.
- He says the better message is not poor you but we need you, because men want to feel useful, wanted, and socially necessary. Transcript: Richard Reeves Mainstream culture just basically gave up the ground and said, we’re only going to talk about masculinity if we put the prefix toxic in front of it. In fact, you can’t even really use the word masculinity now with young men because it codes the left because it’s come with the modifier toxic. Only people on the left. Even if you use it as just on its own. Yeah. So what young men have kind of heard, they’ve only heard it in that context now. And so even the words really count here in terms of how does it signal? And it’s really interesting to me that the word masculinity itself now to a lot of young men, they’ve only heard that coming out of the mouths of people who are about to say something bad About it. And sometimes they’ll say healthy masculinity, implying, of course, against unhealthy. That normal masculinity without the modifier is unhealthy. Just don’t hear it the other way around. And so they know what’s coming when you hear you talk that way. And I do think you’re right that there’s been this huge cultural vacuum. I’ll come back to something you said a minute ago, which is, and I struggle with this a bit in my own work and in some of the work that policymakers are doing, which is you don’t want to say To young men especially, we’re here to help you, poor you, right? Look at you struggling, poor you. What we want to say is, we need you. That’s the message I think most young men need, is we need you. Society still needs you. The tribe still needs you. Your family still needs you. Your kids, for the love of God, definitely still need you. We need you. And we also need you in these service offerings. I wrote a thing with Robert Putnam in The Times last year, talking about the boy crisis of the early 20th century and how all these civic organizations, Boy Scouts, Boys and Girls Clubs, Big Brothers, Big Sisters, were created almost overnight to respond to what was happening with boys in the cities after urbanization. There were staffed by men, there were four boys, and there was a huge civic response. But it took men to do it, whereas all of the youth serving organizations now have way more women volunteers than male volunteers. And of course, I’m not blaming the women who are stepping up to do that work. God bless them. But I am saying, if you want to serve boys and young men, you better have some men too. But are men hearing that message? We need you, not despite being men, not as a volunteer, but as a man, we need men, right? It’s just not- Because you’re good. Because you have something to add. As a man, not- Yes, your masculinity, and I’ve used the word again, your manhood, right? Well, basically, we want you because you’re a man, not despite being a man. (Time 0:25:25)
Looksmaxxing Reflects Confusion More Than Desire
- Williamson thinks looksmaxxing could become a new male subculture focused less on attracting women and more on male status competition and formidability.
- Reeves doubts its durability but agrees it reflects rising male body dysmorphia and deeper confusion about what masculinity is supposed to be. Transcript: Chris Williamson But the manosphere was used to describe a group of people, not necessarily a movement or an ideology. The group of people happened to all agree about it. So maybe the manosphere was never going to be it. I’ve given you my bit about the three waves of the manosphere, right? There was first wave, which is pick apart history, second wave, which was red pill, and then third wave, which originally I was going to say was the gentle manosphere. But I actually think it’s luxmaxing. I think that is going to be the third wave. What? Luxmaxing. You think that’s the third way i so here’s my here’s my theory about about lux maxing most of the lux maxing guys if if it sticks because it’s only been around for six months if it if it sticks And it becomes even more ascendant it might do because it’s really memable if it stays what it will create is basically a sexier version of the black pill and MGTOW. So it’ll be men going their own way. If you look at what the men are coding for, presenting for, it’s not for women. They don’t care about women all that much at all. They care in as much as women can get them a claim in the eyes of other men. But it is basically formidability is what they’re signaling. Height, unbelievably masculinized faces, which if you look at the evidence, most women prefer an either average in terms of masculinization or a slightly feminized face with a masculinized Body. That’s what they find most attractive. But men think about giga-chad. They think about these protruding cheekbones, insane drawer. Yeah, the mandible. Richard Reeves People mewing. Mewing, learned about that the other day. Pushing their tongue into the roof of the mouth. Chris Williamson Why do they do that? It’s to try and create a tighter jawline. You’re doing it. Am I doing it? Yeah, you look like a gigachad. You look fantastic. I look like a twat. Richard Reeves Yeah, you do look like a twat. Chris Williamson Look, a lot of the most extreme version of male luxmaxing basically is a male-to transsexual operation. It is taking a man and trying to turn up the caricature. So my thinking about this, if it sticks, what it will be is basically disregard women and just focus on mogging, which is male-to intersexual competition. It’s trying to be as formidable as possible. Now, you saw this with Ziz 15 years ago in 2010, but he was still obviously very female attraction coded. It was a much more kind of holistic, bro-y version of this. It was way less autistic. And he had this great line, which was, disregard women, acquire dance moves. But it was done in a lol pal kind of way. Whereas this to me feels like genuine disregard of, we’re not bothered about mating. We’re not bothered about getting women. We’re not bothered about really anything other than male to male intersexual competition. Richard Reeves And if that sticks, it’s going to become very insular well it won’t stick will it i mean the idea that these these guys are hammering their faces or breaking their bones or doing the thing You just what i just tried to do kind of mewing that worked uh and they’re not interested in women uh no i i don’t i think it’ll go do you see stephen colbert just did a thing no on looks maxing No uh From a very feminist perspective. It’s funny, as you can imagine, but the whole thing about it. It’s just worth watching because he goes into it. But I just, again, I think, I don’t want to be empirical about this, but how many men are we talking about? How long will this last? Will it last? Will it go? Is this the start of a decades-long shift in the gender tectonics, or is it just another decades-long? But it could stick about for a while, and it would definitely put things on the back foot because it’s going to be less… I see that. I see it breaking through. I hear people talking about it. I’m not saying it’s not happening. And actually, we’re doing some work on growing issues around body dysmorphia and so on. Which is on track to overtake female body dysmorphia within the next decade Yeah, I’ve seen that stat. I don’t know if that’s true or not. Scott Griffith. Scott Griffith. Yeah, and I just always worry about those lines being projected forward. But anyway, it’s a real thing. (Time 0:29:38)
Masculinity Vertigo Comes From Conflicting Scripts
- Reeves describes masculinity vertigo as young men being told one day to man up and the next day to soften, therapize, and suppress dominance.
- He says the result is pinballing between incompatible scripts rather than building a stable sense of self. Transcript: Richard Reeves Whatever the thing is now, what it will be before, is what we’re talking about a moment ago was just this guy, John De La Volpe, I don’t know if you know him, Polster. He wrote this really nice piece a few months ago where he talked about masculinity vertigo, in which he says basically what’s happening to young men is that, I call it pinball, but same Idea, which is on Monday, what you’re being told is the problem is that you’re not masculine enough, right? You need to work out more, eat more protein, looks max, be more dominant, etc., right? You need to man up and be more masculine. The next day, what you’re being told is, you’re too masculine. You need to cry more and eat more salad and go to therapy more and find your feminine side. And then on Wednesday you’re back to so it’s just become this very contested and kind of difficult thing right now uh in a way that just wasn’t before and into that you’ll get looks maxing Or you’ll get whatever body dysmorphia will get whatever moral panic people want to put into it they will but behind it what I actually see is just a bunch of men especially young men, Honestly just trying to figure this out and to be good people and to be good dads and good friends and have a good life. And to matter. And definitely to matter. They want to be wanted. They want to belong. (Time 0:33:42)
Men Need A Social Script To Matter
- Reeves argues manhood and fatherhood are heavily social constructs that societies must actively build rather than assume will emerge automatically.
- He warns the message many men heard was we got it from here boys, which feels like tribal expulsion and invites backlash. Transcript: Chris Williamson This is what I fought Louis about. He pushed back against the idea that women are born with value, men need to create it. And well, what value are men born with? Women have this unbelievable capacity to make the next generation. What do men have? What are they born with? Not in the same way. And look around the animal kingdom and every male needs to construct himself into something useful in order to matter and be a part of it. And is that a bad thing? Is that part of the drive for men to sort of push for mastery and conquer and progress and improvement. I think that’s something that you have the choice between men that are driven or men that are useless. I’d much prefer the driven men. Obviously that can overshoot and turn into very squirrely outcomes where they become tyrants or scammers or whatever, because that’s the same drive just turned up in the wrong direction. They can be Lotharios and they can play the field in a way that really hurts people. But yeah, I am. It’s a question of driven by what, isn’t it? Richard Reeves See, that word driven is really sitting with me, interestingly, because as if you’re driven, what you actually feel is like you belong, you’re connected, you’re needed, you have a Role, you have a purpose. And so, sure, if that’s what we’re talking about. And that has to be constructed a lot more. I mean, I think Mead’s right. And you’ve had animation on talking about, you know, the birth of fatherhood, how we invented fatherhood to survive as a species, right? Chris Williamson Because baby’s heads got too big and women were either, they had the choice between being snapped in half or having a husband that would care. Richard Reeves Right. That’s basically right. That’s a good summary of the work. So it’s just true and i just think it’s incredibly naive for anybody to just assume that we can just get to some androgynous future and that we don’t have to keep doing the hard work of making Sure that there is a cultural message to men like we need you we need you to do this we need you to not do that sure but this is why our tribe the tribe still needs you. There are these cave paintings from, they’re in northern Italy, I think, Remegia. And they’re famous because they’re some of the oldest, or if not the oldest, cave paintings that have ever been found. And the famous ones are the ones where there’s kind of very violent, there’s kind of stabbing and spearing and stuff like that. But the most haunting one is actually of a group, clearly the tribe, and then another figure who’s moving away from them. And the interpretation of that is an ostracism. Yeah, I’ve heard about this. Spelled by the tribe. And actually, yeah, because the tribe’s saying, we don’t want you anymore. We’re spitting you out. We don’t need you. And in fact, you’re worse. So now we’d probably incarcerate. But to ostracize someone, there was social death and then very often kind of physical death too. Chris Williamson So this is not a new thought about how do we kind of make sure that the tribe needs you. That’s true. But when you en masse ostracize an entire sex, all of them feel like they’re being pushed out of the tribe. Richard Reeves If you do that, yeah. And so the message I think too many young men have got is that, we got it from here, boys, right? Thanks for the last X thousand years. Don’t need you anymore. We got it from here. Or get on board the Futurist Female train, right? That is a fatally flawed message. And I actually don’t think if you get away from the culture war, it is not what the overwhelming majority people think, right? Most people think moms and dads are a bit different, and that’s cool. Most people think men and women bring some complementary skills, right? That’s the whole argument for DEI, right? Is that you want a mix of skills. You want a mix of backgrounds, right? And so most people get that. (Time 0:37:06)
Modern Fatherhood Grew Without Restoring Patriarchy
- Reeves rejects the idea that restoring male purpose requires restoring household hierarchy or female subordination.
- He says actual data show fathers sharply increased hands-on childcare, with dads now doing as much primary childcare as mothers did in 1985. Transcript: Richard Reeves But of course, I don’t think that the answer is to go back to a more kind of reactionary and kind of conservative view about the role of men and women, or to introduce some kind of gender, Bring back gender inequality in order to resupply men with their purpose. That’s not the answer either. And it’s also not what most people want. I mean, we’re about to publish some work showing that we’ve just seen the biggest increase in the amount of hands-on fathering that we’ve seen for probably half a century. Chris Williamson So American dads are just doing more. Wasn’t it that millennial fathers spend as much time with their kids as a silent generation of baby boomer mothers. Richard Reeves That’s exactly right. Yeah. Chris Williamson The amount of direct child care gets complicated because it’s secondary and primary child care. Richard Reeves But the amount of primary child care being done by dads now is as high as was being done by mums in 1985. Chris Williamson And of course, mums are doing even more. The whole fucking deadbeat dad thing. Richard Reeves Yeah. I mean, this is a bit of a rant coming now because I think the whole deficit framing around fatherhood and dads, either deadbeat or doofus, is really upsetting me. And I think partly as a dad. And one of the things that upsets me in here, I’m going to really take aim at some folks on the left, is this idea I just exposed to again recently that if you look at full-time mothers and Full-time fathers so working full-time in the labor market that mums are doing 25 to 30 percent more of the housework and child care right that’s the fact that’s out there’s a book by Eve Rodsky and fair called fair play this is the second shift and then there’s the idea of the second shift yeah women working the double shift etc and I, again, a women’s group just kind Of put out the same thing. And the stat, this is a good example of a category of statistics that feel true, go with your intuition, but on close examination, collapse. But they’re not actually false. So it is true that men and women living together with kids, both working, quotes, full-time, she’s doing more of the housework and the childcare than he is. But what they’ve done is defined full-time as 35 hours or more. He is doing more hours. So full-time working dads are doing more hours than full-time working mums. And if you add it all up, it’s about 60 hours a week each. It is, to quote Suzanne Bianchi from a paper 20 years ago, she describes the contributions of mothers and fathers in those households as, quote, amazingly similar. And that remains true to this day. So dads are doing about eight hours more paid work a week. And mums are doing about eight hours more unpaid work a week. And they’re doing exactly the same amount of work. They are putting in the same work week. But this idea somehow that like dads aren’t doing their, they’re not pulling their share, they’re not doing, it’s just untrue. And every time I see that, it infuriates me as a dad and on behalf of dads and also because it’s just a colossally terrible social science. And it’s going to be blown up within three minutes by anybody that wants to destroy it. And so it’s actually not even in the interest of the women’s groups to put out this bad social science because it’ll (Time 0:41:27)
Head Of Household Language Smuggles In Hierarchy
- Reeves pushes back on conservative language that makes fathers the household CEO and mothers the COO because it quietly smuggles hierarchy back in.
- He says calls for men to lead families often imply women must again accept subordinate status. Transcript: Richard Reeves Also noticed, like, I just done my rant about, like, the anti-dad rhetoric of the left, right? But I’ve also kind of noticed in a lot of these conversations, there’s this implied return to a world where the dad is the head of the household, where we’re going to reassert this idea Of gender inequality within the household. And I wish I could remember who it was, but you had somebody on- Arthur Brooks. Chris Williamson CEO, COO? Richard Reeves Yes. Someone said that the mom, she’s got a hugely important role. I’m not saying, the mom’s like the COO of the household. And somebody else will say, men need to lead their families. But the COO one really stuck with me. Because, okay, so she’s COO. Who’s the dad again? He’s CEO. Okay, so what you’ve just done there is you said, we’re going to go back in a way to a world where there was this implied gender inequality within the household. Chris Williamson Do you think that there’s an inequality between CEO and COO when it comes to the household? Richard Reeves I think there’s an, if you’re going to use that as an analogy, right? The CEO is the boss of the company, right? And the COO reports to the CEO. Interesting. Chris Williamson So look, I think it was Arthur Brooks. Have you got any more to say on that and why you had an issue with it? That framing. Richard Reeves Just because of that framing, but I’m hearing it elsewhere generally. I’m more on the sort of conservative side of this argument. And here’s what I don’t like. It’s very rarely stated explicitly. The explicit version of it would be, we need to get back to stable families and families where men feel a sense of purpose. And so we need to go back to families where he is the head of the household. He is the ultimate decision maker. He is the leader of the family, whatever language you want to use. And therefore, women are going to have to kind of recognize that they are in the end subordinate. (Time 0:47:40)
The Real Feminization Problem Is In Care Work
- Reeves says society is not broadly feminized, but some crucial professions are, especially K-12 teaching, psychology, social work, and mental healthcare.
- He sees that as a real issue because those sectors are growing and boys increasingly need male role models inside them. Transcript: Richard Reeves Has there been a feminization of society? Helen Andrews thought so. Yes, I know. But, well, it’s interesting. I mean, Helen Andrews, have you had her on by the way? Chris Williamson No, she didn’t. I can’t get her on. I don’t know what she thinks of me or the show, but we can’t get her on. Yeah. Richard Reeves I mean, I didn’t, it was one of those things where I tried to ignore it because it was a culture war thing, right? Everyone’s talking about this great feminization piece that she wrote. In the end, I just did something on my own sub stack about it, where I don’t see the field. She talks about law, et cetera. They’ve only just approached 50-50, right? For one thing. And so I just don’t see the evidence empirically that that’s driving any of the changes in those fields. What upset me most about it was there are some fields that are being quite strongly feminized, mental healthcare, psychology, social work, and K-12 education. There was no mention of that. So actually i’m very worried about the real feminization problem which is a lot of these occupations are skewing more and more female over time that has implications for the people In those professions the kids being served or the patients but also for men like last as we record this the last jobs report showed that three times as many women had gone into the labor Force as men now this is one month we’d be careful about that and the reason was health care jobs so, again, one of my differences with some of the folks on the right, political right, is That I’m saying, look, the jobs are going to be coming from areas like healthcare, et cetera. And so, we have got to get more men into them. Especially with AI. Yeah. And they’re like, no, no, those aren’t jobs for men. We need to get men into men’s jobs, into factories and mines and stuff like that. And like okay good luck with completely reordering the economy again to make that happen but in the meantime i see where the jobs are actually coming from um and so i think that’s a real (Time 0:49:32)
Conditional Concern For Men Backfires
- Reeves says parts of feminism are slowly realizing that dismissing or demonizing men is both cruel and strategically self-defeating.
- He dislikes only defending boys and men as useful to women, arguing young men notice that conditionality and want to feel valued directly. Transcript: Richard Reeves It’s very hard for me to answer that because I see it through the lens that I approach it. And I am at quite a lot of meetings and conferences, stuff now, which would be described as feminist meetings. And I would say that slowly but surely, the women’s movement or feminist movement is coming to realize that demonizing or dismissing men is not a good strategy. It’s happening patchily and slowly but surely, but it is happening uh i’m seeing a lot of leaders in those spaces saying okay we have got to do better about the boys and the men now you might Say well they’re only doing it for tactical reasons or political reasons and they will very often say because it’s good for women right and so i have this interesting disagreement with Them and i’m very open about this so they say we should care about boys and men because we care about women and i’m saying we should care about boys and men i just end the sentence earlier Than you right um the same way that we don’t say we should care about women because it’s good for the economy or good for men, right? I think we should care about boys and men more generally. Chris Williamson I’ve had to do that too. I had this piece about zero-sum empathy, and I tried to legitimize the reason. There was a lot of things, it wasn’t just this, but I remember I sort of tossed this coin into the pool that I knew would be effective, which was if you don’t care about boys and men falling Behind and also whine about there being no good men to date, that is the equivalent of sort of mating logic seppuku, that you are creating the precise dearth of eligible partners that You say that you and your daughters and your friends and your sisters are looking for. Like if you’re not prepared to help boys and men, you can’t go, where are all the good men at? Because that’s precisely what is causing the lack of eligible partners that you’re talking about. But I didn’t want to have to couch good men are good in as much as they can be of service to you as a woman. It’s just that we should care about the falling behind of any group. Richard Reeves We should care about human flourishing, right? And if there’s a group in society that aren’t doing well, then we should care about them. I just think that’s just, for me, that’s just a straightforward moral proposition. Now, I’m also, obviously, different groups of different agendas, right? And so if you care about this group or that issue because it affects that other issue, I’m fine with that. So when people kind of say, like, Melinda French Gates has, you know, supported me and Gary Barker because it’s part of a gender equality thing, right? And she’s very clear. She says, it’s not good for women and girls if boys and men are struggling, right? Now, you might say, oh, okay. So this is where the kind of, again, the reactionaries will be like, oh, of course she has to couch it as that. And it’s kind of, I’m like, guys, for the love of God, she is a global feminist. Like, what do you want? Right? And she’s supporting my work. She’s supporting boys and men’s work. Like, no, no, no. They’re like, they’re the purists. They’re the ones that are saying, no, no, no. She has to completely come over to our side. I’m like, guys, take a win. Of course, as a feminist, she says she’s going to couch it that way. That’s okay. Do you find yourself doing the same thing? Couching it that way? No. With some leading women. And I’m just like, no, my position and the position of the American Institute for Boys and Men is just very straightforward. We care about boys and men doing better and flourishing. We just care about that, period. Now, is that also good for the economy? Is it good for families? Is it good for women? Is it good for… Yes. Yes, of course. Yes. In the same way that the Women’s Services Prevention Initiative, their tagline is, when women are healthy, communities thrive. I’m like, true. Also true that when men are healthy, communities thrive. But you don’t have to condition it. And I honestly think there’s a deeper point there, which is men in particular, I kind of see the conditioning coming. You see it like, oh, well, if something bad happens, like men do bad thing, A, oh, now we should care about boys and men. And they see that conditionality. They see, oh, you only care about me if X, if I do something bad or something bad happens. And what they actually need to hear is, no, dude, we just care about you. (Time 0:51:56)
Politics And Apps Both Distort Dating
- Reeves worries politics now teaches young women to blame patriarchy and young men to blame feminism, turning each sex into the other’s explanation.
- He also argues dating apps distort expectations because humans evolved to pair within smaller, socially known groups rather than giant anonymous markets. Transcript: Richard Reeves Well, as a 56-year man who’s been married for almost my entire adult life, my… Your expert subject. Fortunately, I have three sons in their 20s at various stages. That helps. And a bunch of younger friends. I mean, it comes back to bits, this politicization point, which is I worry that the message that young women are getting from the left is life’s really tough for women now, and it’s the Fault of all those men and the patriarchy. And the message that young men are getting from the right is life’s pretty tough for young men right now, and it’s the fault of all those woke feminists and those women. So they’re being encouraged respectively to blame each other for their real problems. That is a colossal waste of political energy and not true. It is also creating some difficulties, I think, around dating, mating, et cetera, because we do see now that that political polarization is affecting dating and mating. I worry a lot, and Dan Cox has written for us on this, that you see this decline in dating in high school and among kind of young young adults and that’s a huge problem because that’s where You develop the relational skills the ability to endure and deliver rejection gracefully etc i worry a lot about that but i also worry that and maybe something we could talk about that The there’s something about the marketplace make value evo psych stuff. I know you’re very interested in it. I’ve revised my, Paul Eastwick has a book out called Bonded by Evolution. Do you know his stuff? I had him on the show. Oh, yeah. We had a long debate. Right. And I’m not going full Eastwick on you here. Please don’t. But I do find that something, here’s a bit I do like about it. Like, is that if we’re serious about, think about kind of ancestral mating patterns, we do have to take seriously the fact that we didn’t live in cities of 10 million people with a phone, Right? That wasn’t the marketplace we faced. We were in smaller groups. So maybe you’ve done this with him, smaller groups, and we kind of would know these people and they’d kind of come with us. And the whole idea of kind of mate value doesn’t, does shift a little bit over time. And so my middle ground here is that it’s clearly insane not to suggest that there isn’t something, you know, quasi market or mate value thing going on. But there’s also something quite interesting about this idea that kind of knowing somebody or someone being known by the people among you that coming socially sanctioned, like someone You meet through the workplace, friend of a friend, etc. (Time 0:56:01)
Mate Value Changes Once Real Life Starts
- Reeves says mate value is real but incomplete because attraction changes as kindness, competence, commitment, and reputation get revealed over time.
- He argues marketplace models miss marriage’s real work, which is less about the wife you choose than the husband you become. Transcript: Chris Williamson It’s a very sexy argument and the argument is mate value. He thinks mate value simply doesn’t exist, that there is no way that beyond the first look, anybody is more or less preferable than somebody else. That revealed bonded preferences over time end up flattening the mating dynamic down that tens could get with threes and that threes could get with tens. That wasn’t how I read him. Richard Reeves I didn’t read him that way. I think that’s an exaggeration, but maybe I’m wrong about that. Chris Williamson I think it just gets flatter, not that it flattens completely. He said there is no such thing after a couple of meetings there is literally no such thing as mate value there is no such thing as a disparity so well he’s more of the expert on his work than Richard Reeves I am but i read it as like mate values a more complicated idea i would agree with that i would agree with mate values a more complicated idea uh what makes me sort of bristle a little bit. Chris Williamson What makes me concerned is if you’ve got this world that basically flattens, it makes egalitarian the mating market is one way that you could read it. Right. No one’s hot. Yeah. No one’s hot and no one’s ugly. Richard Reeves Yeah. What’s the Kurt Vonnegut short story? Harry Bergeron, someone can check this, where the minister, do you know this story? No. The Ministry for Equality levels everybody out, right? And so it’s a satire. So it’s like, if you’re a really good dancer, you have to wear weights around your feet. If you’re beautiful, you have to have plastic surgery to make you less so. And if you’re ugly, you have plastic surgery to make you more so. The main character of the story is like, if you’re intelligent, if you’re high IQ, that’s right. Yeah, Harrison Bergeron. If you’re intelligent, they put a thing in your ear that’s just making a noise all the time to distract you. Yeah, and it’s obviously like a kind of flattening type thing. So if the idea is like there is just no difference in how attractive someone is as a mate to anybody else, I think that’s batshit crazy. But I don’t think that’s what you’re saying. Chris Williamson Even with the revealed preferences, the revealed value that occurs as you get to know somebody a little bit better, that this is how beautiful elements of someone’s personality and The way they hold themselves and their poise and their patience and their regulation and all the rest of it sort of appear over time. I think that denying the fact that there are more and less preferable mates, and this isn’t just idiosyncratic, that if you were to take a big, broad survey, that many people would rank As more preferable, even if you knew them for four years, and other people would rank less about his work now, but it was that over time, you learn more about someone. Richard Reeves And so more of the different elements of mate value come to the fore. So if you just see me, you don’t hear me speak. You just see me, maybe I’m mewing. So I look great. Or I don’t. I don’t look great. But then we talk for a while and let’s say I’m kind or funny, or let’s say I’m an asshole, right? That’s going to change very significantly, right? And then you see me doing something hard for somebody else, right? You see me taking care of my mom. You see me working hard. All these things are adding up. Revealed over time. Yeah. Chris Williamson That was the best bit of what Paul said. Really i really thought it was a nice um twist on the very shallow sort of typical understood and this is the internet interpretation of mate value right and what’s interesting about This is it’s almost exclusively for short-term mating absolutely almost everything all of the mating advice is for short-term mating as well it’s not it’s not like so actually i got Richard Reeves Into this argument with shadi hamid for a piece of the post where he said, are you telling me to settle? Because I said, we’re talking about marriage. And I think the problem with the marketplace idea is that it sort of suggests that it’s over once you’ve mated. But of course, that’s just the beginning. And the story you tell about your relationship and the way that the relationship evolves over time within that story you’re telling and the way you treat each other as you become different People over the decades, that’s the job. And so the other problem with the marketplace is it doesn’t capture this. It’s about maximizing and you match and so on. And then you cash out. Yeah. And you’ve made a great match and that’s the solution. No, no, no. And I said this to Shadi and said to others too, he said, sure, you obviously, if you’re lucky, you’ll fall head over heels in love and it will just be obvious and you’ll find somebody, But it is much less about the wife you choose than it is about the husband you become. (Time 0:59:49)
Female Employment Does Not Cleanly Explain Fertility
- Reeves says the claim that women entering the workforce caused falling fertility sounds intuitive but does not fit the U.S. timeline.
- Women’s labor-force participation surged from 1975 to 2005 while fertility slightly rose, then fertility dropped after participation largely flattened. Transcript: Chris Williamson Some people have argued that women entering the workforce has caused fertility rates to drop. Yes. What’s your perspective there? Richard Reeves Didn’t you have someone say that? I feel like I’ve heard someone say that on your… Chris Williamson Dani Sulikowski definitely pushing back against a lot of what women are doing at the moment. I think she implied it. I don’t know whether she’s- Yeah, I think she did. And I’ve definitely heard other people say it, which is this idea. Richard Reeves And again, this is a great example of this category of claim that feels intuitive, fits with your priors, and is wrong. And so those are the ones I always worry. So if someone brings a claim to me and I’m like, yeah, that feels true. And as it happens, I was thinking that myself, that’s when I always like triple check it because it worries me. And there is this claim that the fertility decline is being caused by the entry of women into the workforce. Again, it sounds perfectly plausible, like women are too busy earning to be sprogging, can’t do two things at once, etc. But you look at the data and you look at from the period from 1975 to 2005, the labor force participation rate of women went up by 20 percentage points, massive. That was a huge period of growth. And over the same time period, the total fertility rate went from 1.8 to 2.1, something like that. This is me and Claude figuring this out. So hands above the table. Haven’t done a peer-reviewed academic article. And then the women’s labor force participation leveled out. It’s basically been pretty flat since, and then it just had a little bit of a spike. Leveled up since when? Since about 2007, 2005, 2007. I mean, it’s just drifting up. So it went, and then like that, right? Unlike in other countries, actually, where it continued to go up. And that’s when the fertility rate really went down in the US. So it seems to me there’s got to be something else going on here. And the fertility rate conversation, I know you’re very interested in this, you just had Steven on again, right? The fertility rate conversation is a great example of where people take their priors and explain the fertility rate based on what they already thought, right? And so Jennifer Schuber, who I know, it’s a TED Talk, she’s got a book, co-authored a book, Toxic Demography. And her basic conclusion is the thing that’s causing the decline of fertility rate is a lack of gender equality, right? Chris Williamson Korea, Japan, et cetera, right? Gender equity, right? Richard Reeves And that might be true. There’s some evidence against it, but there’s some evidence for it and then conservatives will say uh you know the thing that’s causing the is feminism and the entry of women into the Workplace right okay again you can see the arguments there’s evidence for it and i’ve just given some evidence against it and truth’s like no one knows um and so it’s a really dangerous Subject because it is one of those things that we don’t know yet. (Time 1:05:48)
Falling Fertility Signals A Wider Social Problem
- Reeves treats sub-replacement fertility less as a single solved cause and more as a flashing signal that something broader is wrong in society.
- Williamson adds that later family formation creates a ratchet because once first births move rightward, everyone feels increasingly out of sync and behind. Transcript: Richard Reeves Good thing. Right. For some of the reasons it’s good. I just don’t. But it’s very interesting because people, when you actually try and push people on why they think it’s a bad thing, you get into all kinds of discussions. And I think people are bringing lots of prize and lots of, they are. I think Jennifer’s right about this. There’s a lot of morality being brought into this. People bring a lot of ethics. So a lot of very pro-life people, I think if they’re honest, are saying, like, we don’t like there to be less life because we like life and we want more of it, right? More life is good. Less life is bad. That’s a perfectly legitimate religious and ethical position. And it could be for institutional reasons. It could be for fiscal reasons. It could be because it’s, or it could be for me, it’s more symptomatic. The reason I worry about it more is like, I think if you got to a point where you’re significantly below replacement rate and your society is rapidly declining in size, that should be Seen as a big flashing signal that all is not well, somehow or other. Chris Williamson Now, what’s not well, we don’t know yet. Okay. Some things that I’ve thought of to do with this, it seems to me that births are just downstream from coupling for a large part. If you look at the number of couples who are together for a while and get married. Well, yeah. Richard Reeves Lots are going to depend on how you define coupling in this example, but yeah. Chris Williamson Marriage, married couples. Richard Reeves Well, no, because one of the reasons the fertility rate’s gone down is a decline in teen pregnancy, and most of them were not coupled. It was an accidental pregnancy. Chris Williamson Okay, that’s interesting. At least from, I was speaking to Stephen, I actually asked him after we went for dinner last night, I asked him what his thoughts were, and he agrees with you, that his whole thing is this Vitality curve, which was the most recent episode that I did with him. And that’s kind of- It’s kind of a measure of the society’s forward-lookingness and vitality and energy. And the vitality curve is basically when are people looking to start families? And if you have a graph that’s like this, and it’s the age across the bottom, and if it goes from 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, if it does that, if you’re looking to go to the dance With someone and you’re looking for another dance partner, it’s really easy if everybody is dancing at the same time. But if you’re 21 looking for a dance partner and the curve is now flatter and longer and shifted, right? Right. Half the people think the dance is five, 10 years from now. Exactly. Exactly. This is his point. And also if you shift it later, there are just some raw physics of the system that come in to sort of squish down what you’re able to do. If you are cycling through partners, if there’s a more permissive culture of casual sex, of moving on, so on and so forth, more options, which means that you don’t need to quite invest So much. But his point around the labor force entry for women thing, the dips that you see in 1970 and then 2007, 2008, what’s interesting there is because you now need a two-parent income in order To drive the household, people are much more sensitive to economic indicators. And that means that if you have a term, that’s why he thinks in 2007, 2008, 2007, 2008, global financial crisis saw sudden accelerations in the delaying of first births like a ratchet. And as we discussed in our last podcast, once first births move later, the whole starting a family system shifts for everyone. As the vitality curve shows, delaying the median age of first birth predictably raises childlessness and lowers total birth rates. And that goes in line with what you said, there’s fewer teen pregnancies. If you shift this all rightward, this begins to skew. But his position is that it’s a ratchet, that it never snaps back because you need to lose a lot of the things that people want. You need to sequester your independence. You need to do things that makes you feel like you’re falling behind. One of the points that my friend who I spoke to, I told you the story about her friend saying she wished that she was with her when she had more going on. She made this point, I wish I’d had a kid during COVID because it wouldn’t have felt like I was missing out on anything. The rest of the world’s moving forward. And I think that that’s a one person microcosm of why is it a ratchet? Why does the average age of first motherhood move only to the right and never to the left? Well, because it feels like you’re missing out. All of your friends are continuing to do things in the real world, and you’re not. He’s got this line here, vitality curve shows delaying the median age of first birth predictably raises childlessness and lowers total birth rates. In that sense, childlessness is largely a timing problem. And so even if women no longer worked, hypothetically, of course, my thesis from data modeling is that birth rates would not fundamentally change unless family formation also happened Sooner, which arguably occurred. This is cross-cultural. Economic uncertainty pushes parenthood later across nations, religions, and political systems. It all comes back to timing. P.S. Historically, the U.S. Managed this better than most countries. Women could work and start families at the same time, although that balance has clearly started to break down since the 2007-2008 crisis. Richard Reeves Well, that would be consistent with what we were saying earlier about the need to kind of just economically for boys and for men to do better so that they can actually, we know that particularly In low-income areas where men are doing better, the marriage rate is higher. And so I think it’s true. One thing I do worry about is the the bar that you have to clear now before embarking on kind of parenthood is just wildly higher than it used to be right if you’ve got to have your feels like It’s why yeah yeah and it’s just and i i think i really really don’t i really want to stand against that idea people set the bar so high how much parenting how much you got to bought your house You got a career. The number of boxes you’re supposed to tick now is terrifying to me. (Time 1:09:36)
Delaying Family Formation Removes A Growth Engine
- Reeves says the checklist before parenthood has become unrealistically long, making people feel they must perfect life before starting a family.
- He also argues marriage and fatherhood historically helped men grow up, so delaying them may remove a major prosocial developmental force. Transcript: Richard Reeves This was the discussion that we had last night, which it doesn’t matter where people are. Chris Williamson It’s where people feel they are compared to where their parents were and where they feel like other people were. It is all through the interpretation. I can’t think of a way to emphasize how much this is the fucking driver of so much. How much money do I think I need to have? How much do I think I need to be earning? How big do I think my house needs to be? How secure do I think my life needs to be before I can do this thing? And where do I think my parents were at my stage? And where do I think their lifestyle was like? And what do I think that everybody else is doing with their life? And how easy do I think that they have it? Because all of this is being filtered through what we feel like we should have and what we feel like our level of exposure to risk is. And it’s not necessarily objective. Richard Reeves And that, yeah, and it goes against people and then people come along and say but that’s not true and here’s my chart and here’s my data and like and you try and argue people out of the feeling Which you can’t do but that feeling of what did you say economic precariousness or whatever um it’s a challenge but it maybe maybe i’m going to change my mind about something here because I one of the things we do know about men is that becoming a father actually does significantly change their behavior in the world, right? And not least economically, towards themselves, et cetera, right? And we now know that it changes their brain. Darby Saxby has this book coming out, Dad Brain, and how kind of your brain changes as well. And we obviously know the stuff about testosterone, et cetera. Risk-taking. Feel like we actually used to use marriage and fatherhood as a way to kind of help men grow up. And yeah, exactly. I just really hate that word to say we have to domesticate men because it sort of feels- Keeping them feral is good. Yeah. It’s because the alternative is feral, right? And also it tends to put the burden on women. We basically say to women, would you mind domesticating the men for us? And they’re like, no, I’m not. There’s a man child over here. Marry him and make him a normal person. The men want their house trained. They don’t think it’s their job to house train the man anymore. And I find that a difficult position to argue against. But the problem is, what’s going to happen to the men in the meantime? Are the men getting themselves ready? Are they getting their competence skills ready? Yes. If so, yes, maybe. I’m a dad and there is just this imperceptible feeling of this kind of cog inside you just going click. And you become a different kind of creature. You do. I mean, it’s very hard. In fact, some philosopher whose name I’ve forgotten now, she had this great analogy. It was like trying to explain to someone who doesn’t have kids what it’s like to have kids is like trying to explain to someone that’s not a vampire what it’s like to be a vampire. So I’m the vampire. I’m like, yeah, well, I like to go out at night. I like to suck blood. I hang upside down, et cetera. And you’re like a human. You’re like, right. And she uses that as an analogy between the chasm of the different kind of creature you become. And it’s like you suddenly, it’s just existentially obvious to you that there are lives, there is a life, or lives in the world that are just unambiguously more important than your own And for whom you would do anything. You would give your life for them. Chris Williamson It’s very pro-social. Richard Reeves Yes, you would throw. And so it changes men in this massively kind of positive way. This is why fatherhood, fatherhood is, one of my colleagues put this to me the other way, fatherhood is the last male institution. You don’t have institutions anymore that are kind of just like male. I’m not saying there aren’t still some that are predominantly male, but like actually fatherhood, like that is always going to be a male institution. And it is so in a way that isn’t just a fact. It’s actually a thing. It’s an institution that changes us. It transforms us from the inside out. And so if that’s not happening to enough men, and you do see this rise in childlessness, I mean, for all the discussion about incels, it’s the kind of what would be the equivalent of like Not having a kid and in involuntary dad dad you know in dads but yeah that’s a much more troubling trend because without that pro-social structure and script and implication for men That’s a huge problem so maybe maybe make it going later is bad but i also think the way free societies work as opposed to communist china where they just said wait there’s going to be too Many children you’re only allowed one or even happened in singapore i just learned recently that like your third government would pay for the births of the first two kids but you’re On your own after that so you’d have to pay for the medical costs of your third child right so because they read eric’s book and they just freaked out so you saw it um in a free society, what Happens is we learn only from our own mistakes, but from other people’s mistakes. And so if we’re starting to see more and more women say or men saying, you know what? I kind of regret not doing that earlier. I kind of wish I’d done that, et cetera. Then that learning will get passed on. Chris Williamson Do you hear many women saying that? Is that a popular topic that’s being pushed much at the moment? Richard Reeves There I will have to plead ignorance. But I’m just saying as a general point, cultures learn if they’re free. And so if it’s not working out for people, people will see that it’s not working out for people and they’ll do it differently. (Time 1:15:08)
A Country Song Made Delayed Motherhood Feel Costly
- Chris Williamson cites Kelsea Ballerini’s song about choosing touring over motherhood and later wondering if Rolling Stone praised the wrong life.
- Reeves says that kind of public regret matters because free cultures learn by watching other people’s outcomes, not just their ideals. Transcript: Chris Williamson If you look in the media, if you look in popular culture, if you look in music, there’s a really fascinating song by Kelsey Ballerini, and it’s called I Sit in Parks. What she talks about is she was in a long-term relationship she was 30 her partner was 37 and he was ready to have kids she said she wanted to freeze her eggs and that was a gift to her and him On her 30th birthday because she wanted to go and chase her music she wanted to go and play music and do this to her and he said i’m ready to have kids now if we’re not ready to have kids now I’m going to move on she said i’m not he moved. And then this song and the album, the EP got released two or three years later. And it’s a story about her sitting in the park and watching this family, this mother and father. And she sits on the bench and she rips her vape. And she says, Rolling Stone is telling me that I’m doing all the right things. But I wonder if I’ve left it too late to be a mother i chose to do the damn tour instead of going back so i take my lexa pro and i i make my next song and she’s watching this family sort of have A wonderful saturday morning to to themselves and wondering whether or not she’s made the wrong decision that was so fucking shocking and she’s a country artist anyway but that was So so fucking shocking and the comments are filled with women who agree but that is not i’m saying what’s the equivalent song from the parents who obviously like everyone’s glamorized Richard Reeves There right the parents song is like god i wish i could have gotten up late like her and had time to make myself up and have a dress and have be free maybe that maybe the mom is looking at her Thinking like why did I have kids with this guy when I could be like her on a swing in a gray dress? The grass is always greener when you’ve got optionality. And also like, she probably got a good night’s sleep kind of last night. I remember like when our kids were really young, we kind of lived on this flat in Belsize Park in London. And I did the early shift like a lot of dads did. I remember like, my wife would be sleeping and I’d be there with the kids, but I had two under three at one point. And I would wait. Dawn would break. I’d be tired. And then this gay couple, these gay guys lived opposite us, right? The other side of the street. You think about being gay. I thought I watched. They would get up. They had lovely bathro they’d make a great coffee machine hang on you were watching two gay guys through the window listen it’s like a long night okay and i’m just watching them and they Had this kind of terrace and the point is like i know and i would just i say they’d get up late they’d have nice coffee they’d read the paper on the thing they didn’t have kids crawling on The mechanic so yeah the grass is always greener but here’s i actually think i think you’re making my point you’re making my point for me which is there you have this incredibly breakout Country artist right with this strong message which is maybe i wait too long like maybe this wasn’t maybe this wasn’t the right thing for me to do it’s a story of regret, right? Song of regret. That is going to be listened to, as you said, by like millions and millions and millions of women, right? That’s how cultures change, is that we get stuff a bit wrong and we try it and we try this and that didn’t work. We do this and we all learn from each other’s media and we adapt as a culture. (Time 1:20:51)
Paternity Leave Should Be Defended As Pro Dad
- Reeves rejects both Scott Galloway’s idea that fathers are useless early on and the view that paternity leave only matters for closing gender gaps.
- He argues dads should be home because fathers bring distinct value and children benefit directly from having them around. Transcript: Chris Williamson Did you see it? I didn’t know that this happened. Richard Reeves Oh, you didn’t see it? Okay. Well, partly because I know them both, and on our advisory board, as I mentioned. So Derek Thompson came back from paternity leave, and it was actually the first thing he did was go on Scott Galloway’s podcast. I think he said, it’s not just like the first day back, it’s the first hour back. And he’d been, I think, on paternity leave for a couple of months. And that just triggered this debate scott said uh you’re just back from paternity to leave how you know how are you doing you know i’m finding my way back i won’t be as coherent as usual Of course derek was incredibly coherent um and scott just said well honestly i don’t understand this whole paternity leave thing or even why men should go to the births i don’t think Men should be at the births it’s disgusting uh the men should be outside smoking cigarettes like the old days and then they should go back to work um i just think it’s ridiculous uh basically And derek was like uh well actually men do need to take time time off to kind of be with their kids because otherwise like women are the only ones doing it and you’ll have gender inequality In the workplace right well i found interesting about that i haven’t like said anything about this publicly yet but i think you’re both wrong i think that scott was wrong in suggesting That men and dads are of no use in the kind of early months they are of a different use to mums for sure but they are very often the main allo parent now right they’re very often the kind of One that’s around and they very often are the one that’s like getting stuff done. They’re like, have you heard of the owl monkeys or like the best dads in the natural world, apparently? No, owl monkeys, right? Where the dads are kind of around all the time. And basically, moms are doing the breastfeeding and nurturing. Dad’s doing everything else, right? Dad is getting shit done, right? He’s getting the food. He’s getting organized. He’s around them, but he’s still around them, right? That’s kind of how it is, I think was certainly my experience right so you’re not gonna you can’t do what mom’s doing at that point you also don’t feel the same way that mom does about the Baby you just can’t right just can’t you’re not wired to at that point and so you’re still useful so scott was wrong about that um but i didn’t like the way derek framed this as like men should Take time off so that women aren’t the only ones taking time off so we can get close the gender pay gap he framed it as a gender equity issue right okay and i i my view is dads should actually Be able to take time off and should take time off their kids not just when they’re young etc not because they can do what mums do nor in support of gender equality, but because dads are awesome And kids are awesome and kids do really well with their dads around them. So I don’t want to be the deputy, the kind of malfunctioning mum, the kind of, oh, if only you could be a mum. No, no, dads are amazing. And so I’m really pushing this idea that kind of fell between those two stools. So like the old idea of like, dads, you should go back to work, smoke a cigar, have a cigar. I think he meant cigar actually, but have a cigar, a whiskey, back to work. And Derek Singer’s like, no, if you’re a good gender egalitarian, you’ve got to take time off. Even if you hate it and you suck at it, right? Because that’s the way to get gender equality. I’m like, guys, guys, what about just saying dads are cool? And being a dad and the way dads are with their kids, a bit different to moms on average, in many ways, amazing. So I want like, again, a pro-dad argument rather than a gender equality argument for fathering. (Time 1:27:20)
Richard Reeves Had A Chaotic Education In Childbirth
- Reeves says evidence on whether fathers should be in the delivery room is mixed, then illustrates it with comic memories from his own births.
- He assembled a fan mid-labor, hunted for swim trunks to avoid testicle confusion in a birthing pool, and mangled the cord cutting. Transcript: Richard Reeves Should dads be in the birthing room? The evidence, and actually interesting, Darby Saxby, who I mentioned earlier, dad brain, she did write a response to this kind of thing which people can find and she can’t rightly point It out that actually the evidence on how the unprecedented trial of dads being in the birthing room is going is really mixed we don’t know and actually kind of sometimes in surveys afterwards Like mums have mixed feelings about it if the birth doesn’t go well i think you talk to animation about this it can be quite traumatizing for the dad. So I think, look, I might get in trouble for saying this now, but I think we have to be honest to say the evidence is a little bit mixed. And I think it shouldn’t be like, it shouldn’t be shamed for doing it or shamed for not doing it. And mums, by the way, should also feel like if they feel that they’ll be better off with their mum or their friend or kind of somebody else, they should feel okay saying that to their partner Too for the actual birth, right? Neither are obliged to. Yeah, just sort of, because as Darby points out, we’ve never done this before, right? This is completely unprecedented. Chris Williamson How long have men been in the birthing room? About 30, 40 years. No way. Richard Reeves I shared this with my wife. I said, things blew up and she said, oh, Scott says that men shouldn’t even be in the birthing room she said yeah i probably wish you hadn’t been what i said what it’s like 25 years 25 years Later i said what i thought it was really useful what about all of my words of encouragement you’re more harm than good you did more harm than i mean i mean i don’t i haven’t i’m now sort of Litigating something personal on air like we just go back to it but there are pros and cons. But, but I honestly think like, it’s not, it wasn’t, I mean, the real truth is it was a very hot day and I’d ordered a fan because I knew it was going to be hot, but I didn’t realize the fan wasn’t Made. So I opened the box and she went into labor, she’s in labor, she’s in labor and I’m shouting from the other, I go into the other room, she’s having contractions. So we did it at home, right? And I said, do you know where the Phillips screwdriver is? She said, I don’t need a Phillips screwdriver to have a baby. I’m like, no, but I need a Phillips screwdriver to make the fat. I’m not great at DIY anyway. So I said, do know where it is it’s just i’m in the other room i’m trying like i’m this huge pressure now right this is like i’m trying to make it i’m trying to make it and she’s like forget The fucking fan just like i’m having the baby i’m having the baby fan or no fan the baby’s coming. I’m nearly done. I’m nearly done. I’m on like, I’m on like step seven with the Phillips screw. So I, you know, I didn’t, I wasn’t amazing from that point of view. So I think that the fan thing, it jaundiced her about my view. And then, anyway, the other one, I’m all in now. The other one, I’d say was in the birthing pool, right? Because I was very into that. I need a birthingthing pool and we’d been to one of these very i think yeah i think i could share this but it would be just very very like progressive forward thinking like midwifey thing Right about birthing a home and if you have it in the pool that’s kind of great which is good by the way i mean i’m i think the whole like-medicalization of childbirth thing, I’m really Persuaded by that argument now, that actually doing it more naturally is really good. So I don’t really misunderstood here. But in the pool, she said, but guys, can I just say something to you? She said, it can get quite murky in there. Can’t see it around, which is true. And she said, and so the only thing I’ll say is if you get in the pool with your partner to support them, right, put something up, put some swimming trunks on. She said, because there have been occasions when I’ve seen something spherical and hairy in the water and I’ve assumed that it’s the baby’s head crowning. And I’ve gone in to help it and it wasn’t the baby’s head crowning. It was the dad’s testicle. And so I grabbed him by the bollocks. And literally every guy in the room was like, I must buy a pair of speedo. So this is the other child, right? So this time she’s having a baby. She’s like, you know, I want you to get in and rub my back and do it. So I’m cool. I’m here for you, honey. And then I go into the other room and then I’m shouting out, where am I swimming? She’s like, what are you talking about? So I need my swimmers. She’s like, I don’t know where they are. I can’t find them. I’m slamming trunks open. And the midwife is like, for God’s sake, she’s having the baby. Get in the pool. I don’t care. I don’t care. I said, it’s not about modesty. I said, the lady at the thing, the lady at the Lamaze class, she said, you’ve got to wear swimming trunks. I said, I’m not getting in there without swimming. So anyway, so my main advice. And then I guess the other one, the other trial is like, you get to cut the cord and i was terrible at it i couldn’t cut it i was hacking through it i thought you’d have these massive shears You know like like opening up a new fucking city hall it’s a tiny little pair of scissors and you’re trying to hack through it it’s really grisly took me ages and in the end the nurse started Crying i’ll do it and to this day my eldest son has got this really weird belly button and he blames me for it because so so all the fathers out there key key items if you are going to be with A phillips screwdriver or make pre-make the fan or have a phillips screwdriver a really good pair of scissors because the ones they give you a crap and swimming trunks and then you’ll Be fine oh (Time 1:30:37)
Offline Reality Looks Better Than Online Panic
- Reeves says away from online culture war narratives, ordinary men and women are already quietly adapting, with dads parenting more, women working more, and violence falling.
- He warns that constant doom framing becomes self-fulfilling and obscures real though messy progress. Transcript: Chris Williamson Seems a little bit more of an easy discussion to pass. Richard Reeves Much easier now. And it’s interesting, most states are doing something on it now. Basically, the Democrat states are passing some sort of paid leave policy for dads. And the Republican ones are having tax credits to encourage employers to offer paid leave. And so the idea that dads are parents too and bring something different, that’s not really a controversial idea anymore. And we have seen a massive increase, I mentioned earlier, in parenting by dads and a massive increase in the uptake. There are some states now where the new parental leave policy is as likely to be taken by dads as by moms. And so there’s been this, I find this very interesting, like a way, you get these culture wars, right, where either we’re being overrun by woke feminists who are like, you know, demonizing Men and running everything into the ground, or you get these kind of reactionary podcast, you know, people are reactionaries who are kind of taking us back to the Handmaid’s Tale and Then you just go to the day show and you say huh interesting dads are doing more parenting than before it’s not like a significant kind of increase right labor force participation for Women’s actually hit its all-time high after the pandemic yeah i mean it was a little bit um violent crime is way down it’s halved in the last new decades the number of boys fighting at School also halved in the last kind of few decades etc etc and so um away from the cliques to use your language from earlier and away from the culture war what i see is by and large ordinary People, moms and dads, young people, boys and girls, trying to figure this out and figuring it out one way or the other. And it’s bumpy and it’s difficult and it’s messy. But I think that the progress line is there. And I’m a little bit sick of the pessimism. I’m a little bit sick of the deficit frame. My hero, John Stuart Mill, once said, everybody who knows anything of the world is supposed to think ill of it. So that intellectual snobbery in favor of pessimism has always been there right and he was like and so i’m trying to recalibrate some of my own talking about this because there is a danger That you’re like we could talk about stuff we’ve talked about before about wages and male suicide and no real problems but i just kind of worry that it becomes a bit of a almost uh cultural Race to the bottom it’s like who can describe exactly how we’re going to hell in the handcart in the most grave terms the fastest and then you’ll get on podcasts then you’ll get clicks Then you’ll get book deals and and uh the market for that it’s not a new it’s not a new problem actually think about the number of books that start with the end of, right? Actually, at one point, I thought it might be the end of endings or something, because I’m just sick of those as well. Everything’s the end of everything, right? Rather than, you know what? We’re figuring this out. It’s a bit difficult. We should help each other out. We should have some supportive policies. We shouldn’t demonize each other. We should definitely not pathologize men or women or anybody else. And we should try and figure this out, but onwards and upwards, because otherwise, pessimism is a self-fulfilling prophecy. (Time 1:36:50)
Male Drift Is Real But Survey Panic Misleads
- Reeves says men now reach classic adulthood milestones less often than women, but warns against reading too much into flimsy point-in-time surveys about male despair.
- On college, he argues Title IX did not create a thumb against men; female overrepresentation mostly reflects stronger academic performance. Transcript: Chris Williamson What’s happening with men’s life satisfaction at the moment? Richard Reeves I don’t know the latest data on that, actually. I don’t. Chris Williamson You mentioned, here’s a bunch of reasons why stuff’s maybe not quite as fucked as people think it is. Yeah. But I think if you were to lick your finger and put it in the air and take a cultural temperature of how people are talking about this situation. Yeah. I think more people would, what’s the number one reason for why people, uh, the Pew research data around why they don’t have kids just don’t feel ready yet? Uh, yes. Richard Reeves And then the second is couldn’t find the right person. Couldn’t find the right person’s second one, but just don’t feel ready yet. Chris Williamson It’s like unfinished article, a little bit unsure of myself and the world. Richard Reeves Yeah. I mean, there’s, there’s, there’s a mixture of objective and subjective measures here. There was this really interesting paper looking at the kind of five milestones to adulthood, like finishing education, getting a job, leaving home, getting married, having kids. And what it found was that 20 years ago, men were more likely to hit those milestones. And now men are less likely than women to hit those milestones. So the milestones to adulthood are being hit more by women now than by men. The coefficient has flipped. As far as the well-being stuff goes, last time I looked at this, it was relatively stable on the kind of good subjective well-being measures. We do know that men are much more affected by relationship breakup and unemployment and so negative economic and social shocks damage male well-being more than female well-being So you might expect um some of the recent shocks to have affected men more the trouble with this honestly is that there’s just so many bad surveys out there that will ask these kind of point In time questions uh from both sides i’m not throwing anybody under the bus here but just like and it gets clicked and it that some of the surveys like there’s so many surveys on young men Now i mean like if i get another email saying we want to do a survey on what young men are really thinking i mean please don’t because you’ll just ask some stupid questions and then you’ll Over interpret the answers and we won’t be able to repeat the question because it doesn’t it’s there’s no time series on it people are just in that moment, they’ll just react to the question In that kind of particular cultural moment, and then we’ll over-interpret it. Chris Williamson So if you’re in the middle of the Iran war, you’re going to feel differently than if it’s- Yeah. Richard Reeves And also, we’ve seen massive swings in some of these things just like one side of the other of a presidential election. And you think, really, if who’s in the White House is massively changing how you feel about the world, then that’s telling us that this is highly subjective. What was that nuance on Title IX that I texted you about? Chris Williamson I thought this was really interesting. I saw I texted you about, um, some guy had done a video and it was actually of the episode that I did with Scott, just Scott talking. Richard Reeves Yeah. Oh, that’s right. Chris Williamson And Scott had said, yeah, Title IX is used to sort of pull back men, but the guy’s video said it could also be used for raising up men. Richard Reeves Yeah. What’s the nuance? Yeah, the nuance there is that Title IX is anti-sex discrimination in higher education, right? It basically just takes the idea of you can’t discriminate on the basis of sex and it makes it clear that that’s true in higher education there is one exception to that which is undergraduate Admissions to private colleges which i’ll come back to because it’s relevant to the answer um but what it basically says you can’t discriminate on the basis of sex and so it was really An anti-discrimination measure and not a strongly affirmative action measure so it’s not it didn’t say to colleges, everything else equal, you should let women in, not men. And there’s no evidence that that’s happening, right? There’s no evidence that the reason there are more women in college now than men is because there’s a thumb on the scale in favor of the women. They’re just better in terms of the… Is there a thumb on the scale against the favor of men? No, I’ve seen absolutely no evidence for that. In fact, if anything, most colleges, public or private, although the publics don’t have this carve out, actually are quite worried about this. We’ve got a thing now, Higher Education Male Achievement Collaborative working with colleges because they start to worry once they get 60, 40, 65, because not only do their male applications Drop, their female applications start to drop too, because the dating market on a college campus where there are twice as many women as men is not awesome for women. So maybe it comes back to a little bit, but people who don’t think there’s any difference between men and women should look at the difference in the dating market on college campuses That skew to where there are two women for every man. And I’ve had young women saying that they look at the gender ratio of colleges before they decide to apply because this message has gotten out there now that it’s not awesome to be in a College where there are twice as many. So no, no strong evidence for a thumb on the scale against men. (Time 1:40:33)
Optimism About Men Is A Moral Stance
- Reeves says his optimism about men is moral as well as temperamental because constant negativity teaches young people hopelessness and then blames them for feeling it.
- He believes men and women will eventually work through today’s mess once they move past zero-sum ideological traps. Transcript: Chris Williamson 50 years, what do you think happens for men over the next few decades? Are you optimistic, pessimistic? What are you most concerned about? What are you most hopeful for? Richard Reeves I’m an inveterate optimist. I do think the glasses are full. But for me, I’ve come to realize is that my optimism isn’t just an orientation or a personality trait. It is that. I think for me, it’s getting close to something like a virtue. That to think well of the future is valuable in and of itself. Because I think otherwise, the kind of messaging to young people more generally is just so relentlessly negative. And then we kind of blame them for feeling down, right? So I’m pretty optimistic. And the reason I’m optimistic is because it’s a hell of a mess right now. Like it’s very messy. It’s goopy, figuring it out. Some of the stuff we’ve talked about here and argued about here just shows you that particularly for kind of young men and young women, just kind of figure out these new realities. But I think we’re kind of past the sort of, we’re breaking past, I hope, more of the zero sum. We are getting more to a kind of world where young men and young women are kind of trying to figure this out in good faith. And I think they will figure it out. I don’t know how, but we always have one way or the other. And I think we will again. And I think that people are ready to get past some of the bullshit ideological traps that people have been trying to put us in for too long. I really think there’s a hunger for that. Chris Williamson I hope so, because one of the byproducts that you have of lots of conflicting messages, you know, you said the pinball or mail vertigo masculinity vertigo um where men don’t know what They’re supposed to be they’re supposed to be masculine on a monday and then soft on a tuesday and then a tyrant on a wednesday and then you know you’re in therapy on a thursday yoga on friday Yeah exactly um one of the problems i think that can come out of that is a type of if there’s lots of conflicting messages it doesn’t convince you of any one particular message. It just makes you immune to being convinced. Apathy, right? This is what a disinformation and a misinformation campaign is supposed to achieve when it’s done en masse as an information warfare by a foreign adversary. It’s not to convince the populace of one thing or another all the time. Sometimes it’s just to make them distrust all advice. And I think that the checking out of men, the retreat, you have a pull in screens, video games, porn, weed, sedation hypothesis. But this is another twist of it, and you’re right, this is a there is an attractor which is it may be difficult to convince men to uh not go out into the real world and try to make stuff happen Through conflicting messages if it wasn’t for the fact that there’s something else that they can do like these two things need to be happening at once yeah there’s uh push and a pull correct Richard Reeves Yes correct and they’re both going in the same direction that’s why i mean you’ve talked i think you’ve talked a lot about this. That’s why I think it’s consistent with crime going down, even as more young men are disengaged, which is historically, I think, unprecedented, which is the kind of sedation or sometimes Like, they’re on the screens, not on the streets, is another way to think about this. And in some ways, I think that makes it a harder thing to get attention to, right? I think if there was, if we did see an increase in crime among young men, if we were seeing like more antisocial behavior, et cetera, then I think it would be very close to the top of the alarm. Yes. Because it’s more of a silent retreat and very often because, you know, turning inward, that’s less likely to sound the alarm. But I actually think in the end, most people do want to flourish and they do want to find someone to be with. And I think that women and men are both seeking partners and someone who’s got someone about them, right? It’s got agency, it’s got forward momentum, got optimism. Dude, that’s going to win. I think it always has won. I don’t know how it’ll win this time, but I’m sure it (Time 1:47:20)
Sedation Is Safer Than Violence But Still Destructive
- Williamson worries sedated men may keep retreating into screens, porn, weed, and passivity, making reversal harder even if they are less dangerous than violent men.
- Reeves replies that most people still want partnership and purpose, so agency and forward momentum should remain attractive and rewarding. Transcript: Chris Williamson Will. Yeah, I just hope that uselessness doesn’t beget more uselessness. Sedation doesn’t beget more sedation because you’re going to have to reverse the trend here, right? Like you can say, we’re worried about there being too many people on the planet and the population bomb is a really big deal. You go, well, if that’s going to stop or if that’s going to slow down, it’s going to require reversal of the direction. And the same thing is true now. If the trend is moving in the right direction, and you’re right, the line is between do we want more useless men or do we want more dangerous men? If those are the two options that we have in front of us, that’s not a particularly good fucking scenario. I would say 51-49, it’s better to have useless men than dangerous men. But that’s only because we’re in peacetime. I would much sooner have competent, peaceful, right? Than useless or dangerous. Um, I got to send this morning, a new Institute for Family Studies survey. There’s some cool stuff in here, which I think you might like, uh, Institute Family Studies survey of 2000 young men aged 18 to 29 challenges nearly everything being said about the male Crisis in America, including by its most prominent voices on both left and right. 68% of unmarried men want to get married with another 21% unsure the crisis isn’t lacking desire at circumstance. 59% are not in a romantic relationship, but 74% of those men are open to dating. So there was that famous two thirds of men say that 50% of men in that age bracket say that they’re not looking for casual or long-term relationships. That looks like it’s changed. 62% of childless young men want to be a father. Less than half of men aged 24 to 29 feel like adults. But the benchmarks most related to feeling like an adult are the traditional ones, marriage, parenthood, full-time work, completing education. Young men’s number one role model is their mother, 79%, followed by their father, 69%. Andrew Tate ranked last among all prominent figures. 89% say manhood requires willingness to sacrifice for others, challenging a man’s fear narrative. Young men who completed trade school programs are employed full-time at almost identical rates to college graduates, 77% versus 80%. And even college-educated young men are skeptical of college with half saying it wasn’t worth the time or money. Richard Reeves There’s a mixed bag in there, I’d say, wouldn’t you? I’m going’m going, yeah. Well, that’s what the landscape is, right? That was an emotional rollercoaster for me, Chris. I got to tell you, like, I was cheering half of it. I was up, I was down. I was like, oh, that’s good, that’s bad. Only 62% of childless men want to be a father. That sounds way low to me. Childless young men, right? That’s under 29. Chris Williamson Wow. Want to be a father. I don’t know whether intend to become a father. It would be interesting to see how they worded the question. Want to become a father. Richard Reeves Because it’s interesting, there was this NBC poll that came out not that long ago. It got a lot of attention, where they ranked young men and young women by whether they’d voted for Harris or not, right, or Trump. And number one for the Trump voting men was family and kids. And actually, men are a bit more likely to say that they want to get married and have kids now than women are. That’s a reversal. So I’m finding that 62% number is going to blow. I think the anti-college thing worries me because the ROI on college is the same for men as it is for women, roughly speaking. Chris Williamson And presumably could increase if you were to go to college now, if in 10 years time, we were to look at how valuable a male college graduate is in the workforce, because they’re going to Be increasingly rare. Yeah. Richard Reeves And just in terms of, I mean, this is another thing I’ve had this argument with Scott about, which is that actually college graduates are getting married as much as they have for the last 40 years, right? There hasn’t been a collapse in marriage among college graduates, even though there’s this massive gender gap in college, right? The collapse in marriage has been among those without a college degree. That’s a huge class gap. And so the kind of fretting about who will my daughter marry now that she’s got a college degree, that’s just completely unfounded. It’s a flat line. And in fact, if anything, maybe a bit more like to stay married than their mothers were because the divorce (Time 1:51:20)
Moral Panic About Young Men Overstates The Threat
- Reeves says Andrew Tate’s actual support is narrower than headlines imply, and many major conservative voices openly condemned him.
- He expects moral panics about young men to keep coming, but says pathologizing men as lazy, radicalized, or broken is both heartless and counterproductive. Transcript: Chris Williamson 89% say manhood requires willingness to sacrifice for others, challenging the manosphere narrative. Richard Reeves Well, as a prominent proponent of the manosphere, I would say that you think men should sacrifice themselves, right? I’m the fucking vanguard of the gentle manosphere. I think that they’ve just- I’ve been kicked out of the manosphere. I don’t know which manosphere they’re talking about. I mean, I guess, and also the Tate thing, of course, the Tate thing was really interesting. And I don’t remember if we talked about this last time. I mean, it really came back and there was a kind of, I guess I’ve lost my friends at the New York Times by this point in the interview anyway, but like there’s a New York Times headline, drove Me mad. Think i read about it publicly tate returns maga celebrates and so i went through it’s like that’s very interesting because i’ve actually i’ve actually heard or read josh hawley megan Kelly uh desantis desantis ag all condemning tate shapiro doesn’t like shapiro condemned him they all like they all condemned him in that moment, right? All that. So I’m like, who are you talking about? And it turned out that it was the young Republicans of so-and county in Florida had said, we’re happy he’s back and we’d love him to come speak to us. It was literally the only people they could find celebrating. But the headline was MAGA celebrates. Because again, that kind of fit, right? We like this idea that kind of MAGA wanted Tate back, but like, actually the truth was, I did write about this and it was like, everyone hates Andrew Tate, right? And that should be, when radical feminists are shoulder to shoulder with Josh Hawley and Ben Shapiro condemning Andrew Tate, then surely we can take that as a win. Like, isn’t this a win? Isn’t that the headline? Chris Williamson I think we’re going to see more around the men’s movement, MRA, come manosphere, come incel, black pill, lux max in mogging community, especially after Ross Kemp and this Louis Theroux Documentary. I can’t wait for you to watch it. It’s Louis Theroux documentary on Netflix. It’s his first ever Louis Theroux documentary on Netflix. And he said it’s the final video game boss of his entire career because it’s all of the things. It’s casual sex with only fans. It’s sort of conspiracy theorist, which he’s done a turn. It’s sort of almost cult-like behavior, which he’s done previously. It’s financial grifts, which he’s been a part of as well. All bundled up into this sort of TikTokification version for 2026. And I, with adolescence, with the way that Louis Dock was presented, I do think that we’re going to see more of a moral panic around what’s happening with young men. I think that it’s going to look a lot like these guys are being led astray by bad actors. There is limited hope. Socially, they are learning not to sacrifice for others, but to dominate and be domineering. Yeah, very much so. It’s very self-serving. It’s not great. Know for all that i can keep on doing podcasts that i think are accurate and balanced and and hopefully really educate people about what’s actually going on um i don’t have the reach of Fucking huge documentaries or or series right like adolescence was a global fucking phenomenon it was a huge hit and it was great drama It was a great TV show. Great TV show. Apart from some of the natural elements. It was the way. Richard Reeves And again, back to, I just think there’s a lag here. I actually think that it’s a little bit out of step now. And enough people are starting to say, the moral panic around men, the pathologization of young men, the demonization of young men is exactly the wrong thing to do. And that kind of narrative rut that everyone’s in, like the easy thing to say, I just think it’s out of date and people are realizing that and they’re realizing it hasn’t, it has not worked Out well for anybody, for us as a society (Time 1:56:32)
Truth Can Still Beat Louder Ideology Over Time
- Williamson says balanced voices on men remain outnumbered online by both militant feminism and reactionary anti-feminism.
- Reeves answers that slow, truthful repetition still wins, pointing to Barack Obama admitting boys were underinvested in and that this had been a mistake. Transcript: Chris Williamson So you’re right. The place that I actually think is doing the worst at this is online. It’s streaming culture, and it’s YouTube, because there are not many reasonable voices that do big plays on social media. There’s just not. Richard Reeves Wouldn’t you count yourself among those reasonable voices? Aren’t you a big platform? Yeah. Chris Williamson But I think if you’re talking about people who are genuinely engaging with the issues of boys and men and of mating and dating and birth rates and stuff like that, it’s certainly in the Minority to be a part of the gentlemanosphere than it is to be a part of sort of militant, aggressive feminism or to be a part of sort of classic. Reactionary anti-feminism. Exactly. Masculinism. Um it’s this is not it’s not superbly sexy you know when i when i sort of look around at whatever motley weird avengers group that i’ve got it’s like me you arthur brooks scott galloway Mack and murphy william costella rob henderson maybe andrew thomas uh like it is it’s a Alexander Datesike, but he’s sort of stepped away from things now. It’s, I’m not, Stephen Shaw kind of, he’s not really talking to men. Like, you know, it really sort of runs flat pretty quick. I don’t know who else is, is engaging with this stuff. And then when you were to look at who does fucking huge plays that push the narrative in a much more bombastic way like it’s i don’t know i mean i the long run way to win this is just to keep Richard Reeves Doing it chris all right i think this whole idea that there needs to be this kind of huge play it’s going to change this is going to change slowly and i also think we should give a little bit Of credit to some of the people consuming this content. I think a lot of young men in particular are perfectly willing to listen to this conversation and agree or disagree with us, but probably agree that we’re having a good faith conversation As you do with others and realize that that is different to what they’re going to get from certain other producers, right? I go there if I want a quick laugh or an eye roll, but I come here if I want a more serious conversation. And then if I get sufficiently enticed, I’ll go and read some of AIBM’s policy briefs, right? No question it’s going to go viral. It doesn’t get any better than that. But I just think people are able to be more discerning about the difference between these content types. And if you look at their actual behavior and what’s happening, I’m just much more hopeful, but just keep doing the work. And then over time, I don’t know if this is going to be a good example or not, but I have, although he put me on his reading list, not always been thrilled with the way President Obama has Talked about this issue, especially in the run-up to the last election. But on the podcast he did with his wife, not long ago, he said, and I quote, we’ve quite rightly invested in the girls, create a level playing field so that we can have equality. We have not been as intentional about investing in the boys. And that has been a mistake. And people are starting to recognize that. When Obama is saying that, now, of course, the only bit that got covered from that podcast was the brief discussion about their so-called marital difficulties in the first three minutes. The remaining one hour long conversation about the challenges of boys and men that he had with his wife and his wife’s brother, whose name I’ve forgotten, that didn’t get covered. But it’s there. And so I just think bit by bit, person by person, governor by governor. Ruben Gallier goes out there with his very episode by episode. And because it’s actually what people want in the end. Also because it’s the truth. The truth. Well, in the end, I do think it’s. And people can tell the difference between something that’s (Time 2:00:37)