An open letter to young men

NOTE: The following post contains a pretty strong takedown of American baby boomers: I argue that they’re largely to blame for the current state of manhood and gender relations bc the war between the sexes started then. Of course, plenty of boomers did not take part in what I’ve written about here. There are also other culprits, which is why I wrote that boomers are largely, and not solely, to blame.

This past spring I had a conversation with Chris Williamson of the Modern Wisdom Podcast that I think may interest you. The episode was originally entitled “The career trap that makes women miserable” and was later retitled “Women Work So Hard For Lives They Don’t Want”— which probably sounds like a subject exclusively for women. But it isn’t.

Yes, we discussed the various choices women make that shape their futures. But those choices directly affect you, just as the choices you make affect women. Men and women are inextricably linked—unless you’ve joined the dark corners of the web and sworn off women altogether. Hopefully you haven’t.

During our conversation, Chris and I talked about dating, about the Girlboss mindset, about living together before marriage, about roles in modern marriage, about work-family conflict, and about the overall differences between women and men—all topics in which you presumably have a vested interest.

In fact, many of the comments on this Insta clip asked where men fit into this discussion. It’s a fair question, and Chris and I didn’t address it in the interview. So I thought I’d do that now.

I’ll begin by apologizing to you, just as I did to young women in my interview, on behalf of the culture and possibly (probably) your parents. So much has been lost in our culture over the past fifty years with the values and ideas brought forth by the boomer generation.

There was a time, believe it or not, when America was a pro-male, pro-marriage, and pro-family culture. The generation that raised boomers was known as The Silent Generation. These folks lived through the Great Depression and World War II; and they prioritized values such as loyalty, stability, respect for authority, and the traditional family structure.

Boomers changed all of that, beginning in the 1960s and 70s. This generation takes a lot of heat for the state of the current economy, but its negative influence on our country goes way beyond money.

This was the generation that ushered in to America widespread divorce, lackluster parenting, and just a whole lot of bad ideas that spread like a contagion. Simply put, boomers eschewed all things traditional and called it liberation.

Perfect example: the idea of sexual freedom. This was the movement that permanently disentangled sex and commitment. Forget about marriage—even a committed relationship was viewed as unnecessary for sex. Just have it whenever with whomever. No problem!

I personally believe this was the genesis of the breakdown between the sexes. Commitment-free sex, aka casual sex, was quite possibly the dumbest idea to come down the pike. As author P.J. O’Rourke once told Tom Brokaw about his generation, “The sexuality was utterly irresponsible, utterly irreligious. We were a bunch of morons.”

It was also boomers who introduced the concept of moral relativity, or the idea that there’s no such thing as right and wrong as long it feels good to the individual—which set off a chain reaction that still permeates American culture today. Charlie Kirk tried to set the record straight on that score, and look at what happened to him.

Due to our divorce culture, chances are you’re the product of a broken home. Or maybe your parents stayed married, but your mother is a feminist type who espoused the “women good/men bad” script. Both scenarios are harmful when it comes to turning boys into men.

Parenting went south, too. In response to their having had strict parents, boomers (and many Gen X) went overboard in the other direction and decided to be friends with their children instead of parents. They pulled back the reins and let their kids rule the roost.

Boomers also sold the narrative that American women are oppressed and must therefore prove their value in the marketplace in order to get respect. Their children, women were told, will be fine in daycare, in after-school care, and being left home alone. It’ll teach them to be independent.

Instead, these empty and/or broken homes severed the mother-child bond and gave older children unfettered access to the internet. You had the world at your fingertips, and no one around to monitor your consumption. If you wanted to watch porn, or kill people, or simply blow things up—virtually, of course—who was going to stop you? If you wanted to do drugs or get into trouble out of sheer boredom, you had the freedom to do that, too.

As for your sisters and your female contemporaries, they were groomed to build career-laden lives that leave little to no room for marriage and motherhood—all while being told to “never depend on a man.” Even women whose parents didn’t specifically say this got the message just the same. The message was everywhere. It was in the very air women breathed.

So where does all of this leave you? What is a man’s role in American life today?

My son’s astute friend Joe, 23, said it best when I asked him in a text what he thinks is the hardest part about being a man in today’s world.

“The problem is the definition has become so muddled that getting to that first step of knowing what a man is becomes a task in itself. Then comes the challenge of actually embodying it.”

He goes on, “I believe men lack noble role models. I also don’t think there are many expectations of us—yet that kind of pressure is vital for growth. We need a clear rite of passage for boys to become men that says, ‘You are now a man; these are the expectations. This is how you proceed.’”

Indeed, anyone who’s paying attention knows that a lack of direction and purpose is exactly what plagues today’s young men. And Joe is right: It is in large part because so little is expected of them.

There’s been such an inordinate amount of attention paid to women for so long that we’ve neglected our boys and men. When we do pay attention, rather than offer solutions for success we attack the very essence of manhood itself.

Under these circumstances, I can see why masculinity would seem more like a quaint idea than a viable reality. But genuine masculinity can be a reality, if you reject how you’ve been taught to think by the culture and possibly your parents.

You have to break the generational chain.

Easier said than done, I know. But it’s the only way to avoid becoming lost professionally. Or to getting sucked into the manosphere. Or to becoming addicted to something. Or to winding up alone with no family of your own.

None of that is good for you or for America. We need you.

Of course, I’m aware you’ve been told the exact opposite: that you aren’t needed. You’ve been raised to believe there’s something inherently wrong with you, that all men in past were Neanderthals who tried to use whatever authority they had, whether in the marketplace or in the home, against women.

Which is interesting because I’m 58 years old, and I can think of only one—one—experience I’ve had with a man like that. It was in a professional setting in the 1980s. Even my own father, who was born in 1922, was nothing like this. Every man I’ve ever encountered has supported and respected me unequivocally.

I’m not saying Neanderthal men never existed or don’t exist. But as you know (though you won’t admit it), nasty women exist, too! Anyone can find an example of just about anything—that doesn’t mean it applies to an entire group, or in this case, to an entire sex.

That there are bad apples among us was not a reason to upend society as we know it, yet that is precisely what boomers did in selling the “women good/men bad” narrative.

You’ve also been raised on a steady diet of movies and television programs that depict men as bumbling idiots rather than as upstanding fathers who protect and provide for their families. I can understand why that would mess with your head, too.

So what, exactly, does it mean to be a man? Here is my best definition:

A man, at his core, is a bold provider and protector—that’s what sets him apart. The reason men feel this in their gut is because they know they can’t compete with the miraculousness of what women provide.

It is women, not men, who suffer through the pains of pregnancy and childbirth. It is women who breastfeed and who share a unique bond with their babies and very young children. Most men know (or they used to know before the culture began to beat it out of people) that there’s no greater mission on earth than raising a family and creating a healthy home.

It makes perfect sense, then, that men would view their ability to financially support this task as crucial to their identity.

That is not to suggest financial provision is all fathers bring to the table; their hands-on presence at home is vital. But this does not erase a man’s instinctual need to provide—and this part’s important: regardless of whether or not his wife earns money, too.

Providing and protecting gives a man purpose. This is true whether he’s married or not (it’s why men join the military), but it ramps up big time when a man has a family. My friend Katie once said as a joke to her husband, “Just think about how much money we’d have if we didn’t have all these children!” (They have seven kids.) And he said they wouldn’t have as much money if they didn’t have kids because he wouldn’t have worked as hard as he has.

But as Joe wrote, such expectations no longer exist. Too many women have been groomed to eschew marriage and motherhood, leaving men to question their purpose.

Which is a problem—because unmarried men with no family to support become personally and professionally unmoored. They face higher rates of loneliness. They make less money and build less wealth. They don’t live as long. Even their health suffers. Indeed, the research is clear that married adults are far more likely to thrive than their unmarried counterparts.

In other words, marriage is good for you.

Of course, you can’t marry women who don’t want to be married. Not only have women been encouraged to provide for themselves and to prioritize career over love, they’re also skeptical of men and marriage due to their parents’ divorce or their parents’ negative messaging about the institution itself.

Neither you nor they have experienced the power of sacrificial love or unbreakable family bonds, and many don’t trust that it’s even possible to experience.

To wit, in an article about Vice President J.D. Vance’s love for his wife Usha, millennial author Freya India writes the following:

“Many in my generation come from a world without any kind of love like this. We have barely seen our parents in the same room together, let alone care for or compliment or credit each other. We grew up not with the promises of freedom and liberalism but only with its consequences: a world where spouses are often seen as burdens and where men and women are taught to hold each other at arm’s length. Ours is a world so filled with the sons and daughters of divorce that many of us cope by pretending not to care. We have seen the dangers of having feelings, so we try not to have any. We deal with our parents’ shattered hearts by hardening our own.”

She adds, “We’ve been so persuaded that our pain comes from the constraints other people put on us that we want to be free of everything: conventions, commitments, traditions, even one another.”

This is the pain that governs the behavior of many of the women you know. They are not confident of your goodness as a man. They don’t believe you can be trusted. They’ve also been raised in a sea of propaganda about men, marriage and motherhood that keeps them from running full force toward that life—even though, deep down, most of them want it.

But you can’t change any of that. All you can do is keep your head down and do what healthy, mature, strong men do and let the chips fall where they may.

Study hard. Work hard. Avoid the manosphere. Find male role models who are happy and successful at whatever they’re doing. Keep gaming to a minimum. Never look at porn. Join a gym. Find a career path you don’t hate that pays well. Be wary of women who have a bad relationship with their father unless they’re actively trying to heal. Don’t date women who don’t believe in God if you do. And whatever you do, don’t marry a woman with a feminist mind; you’ll wind up in a lifelong war with her.

These are the things you can control. These are the things that will make you stand out as a man in a world gone mad.

You can’t control the culture, but you can control yourself. You can stay strong. You have to.