- I used to work for a short time as an IT teacher. The kids there were wonderful, even the troublemakers weren't that bad. What struck me is that clearly for some of the boys I seemed to be the only male figure they could related to in their lives: direct, available, happy to just be there and listen, sharing a common passion. They would come to me very often to talk about anything, not just computers. The younger ones also tried to hug me, which of course I had to stop, which is a pity as I believe these kids should be hugged as much as they need, obviously not necessarily by me.
- Whole bunch of factors involved in this which HN is ill-equipped to deal with. But I think paranoia about "grooming" should probably be counted as a factor as well. A lot of people are going to be suspicious about an adult man who wants to hang out with children. So everything gets tangled up and shut down in the name of safeguarding.
If you ask the question "what proportion of girls and young women have a male mentor", the problem becomes even more obvious.
- I have lived in a country where communication between adults and minors is not frowned upon in the slightest and so I have been a male mentor for a bunch of girls in an orphanage for many years.
(Once I perish, no one is going to remember any of my business projects, clean codebases and unit test coverage. But that little hobby of mine - oh, these deliverables are gonna last).
Anyways. Happy to be a mentor to teenagers but it seems to me that in the US that's impossible on multiple levels.
- This article is based on this https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA4451-1.html which is NOT a peer reviewed study but a "research report", which doesn't mean it's wrong or false or fake, but it means that you have to read it with extreme precautions.
Nothing in there has been double-checked by reviewers :/
- Maybe it’s because boys have been told a literal wild animal is preferable to any of the male adults around
- I think there is a big problem around "man things" and "girl things" that has cost a lot to society, the women scientists who thought it wasn't for them, the men teachers and nurses who thought the same, and all the knowledge kept from people seen as being the wrong gender for it (cooking, cleaning, car repair ...) and i think the solution and a necessary step for the advancement of humanity is the recognition that the importance of sex is overinflated in society, and that a lot of things attributed to sex are actually social constructs, like gender.
In other words i think a post gender society would allow the distribution of occupations and knowledge to better match the populations skills and interest and children having access to better mentors.
by GeoAtreides
3 subcomments
- Why is this flagged?!
dang, mods, this is getting ridiculous. A couple of people are deciding what the community is discussing. Something needs to change.
by lelanthran
1 subcomments
- This will not change anytime soon; the "women are wonderful" talk is as relevant as it has ever been.
Regardless of the criteria you choose to establish a ranking, males dominate the bottom of that ranking.
by CalRobert
3 subcomments
- It does feel a bit cruel that we were told to be vulnerable and open, and then when men said we’re lonely got accused of asking other people to fix our problems and that we just needed to deal with it.
Also I don’t think I’d risk being e.g. a teacher - the girls in my high school would casually joke about accusing their teachers of being creeps if they failed a test, etc.
by Urahandystar
3 subcomments
- One of the saddest things I heard was a young kid say he's never heard the word masculinity unless it was paired with the word toxic before it. With that kind of attitude is this any wonder?
- What about their dad’s & uncle’s? Mum’s male friends? I don’t know, external (outside the family) isn’t the only source of “mentorship” and we should stop trying to pretend it is
by HardwareLust
0 subcomment
- Why is this flagged?
by RickJWagner
0 subcomment
- 1. Why would this possibly be flagged?
2. The article is right. Boys without good fathers/mentors are worse off in many ways. Readers, please consider helping Boys and Girls Club, scouting organizations, etc.
- does shortage refer to actual size?
all those fellowships and fanboy cultures and follower counts and network and everybody gets all they want to evolve and raise their children to be witty and snappy and vibe with that pan all the chill kids are playing in those pretty red forests nowadays and some researchers found a shortage of male mentors?
is this one of those "we want you" recruiting scarcity tactics?
by incomingpain
0 subcomment
- It started with the paradox of women unhappiness. Which wasnt a paradox at all, fully understood. Yet for some reason 1 political side refused to understand. Ideological blindness.
Then a large amount of $, time, and effort was spent on women to solve this problem, but since they refused to understand the cause. It really was just a boost to women. This shifts men behind. Government intentionally caused this.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/13/upshot/boys-falling-behin...
Then men needed a role model. Men would need to work extra hard to just come up to parity. But government didnt like the messaging of those role models, so they censored their speech and deplatformed them.
Creating the gap/shortage in role models; but men moved to beyond their control. This new role model became huge. He'd talk for hours upon hours with anyone who would listen.
The people who wanted to censor/deplatform but couldnt. So they publicly killed him.
by fzeroracer
5 subcomments
- People are going to misread the article and go off in their own direction but the problem is clearly capitalism. It's always been capitalism. Lower income boys have drastically less access to male mentors than higher income ones and the article even states this.
Low family income means less options. Most of your mentors at a young age are going to come from schooling, which still generally has a gender tilt towards women for multiple reasons. But lower income schools are going to be more resource starved with larger classes and less time for teachers to interact with students individually.
edit: fixed wording to better emphasize what I meant
by sam_lowry_
0 subcomment
- [flagged]
- I'm flagging this based on previous experience with similar threads.
Hacker News