I want to write about young men in the United States, but I am no longer young and I am well aware that my experience is of another time. The culture of this country has shifted dramatically. Still, I will start by sharing a bit of my experience.

I was an academic under achiever in high school. It isn’t that I lacked intelligence, but I did lack maturity. I had poor study skills and I didn’t push myself as hard as was possible. I dates a bit, but I was from a small town and there was no real field to play. Couples formed in seventh or eighth grade and there tended to be little shifting. Occasionally a couple would break up and there might be some shifting. I dated a bit, mostly with a young woman that I had known all through school. She was a member of our church and was a very nice person and she treated me kindly, but there was no particular spark and I never sensed that relationship as being a part of my future. Mostly, I wanted to get out of the small town where I lived. I wanted to see more, learn more, do more, but I didn’t know how to do that.

What happened to me is that our church gave me the opportunity to meet other youth. Through summer camps, youth rallies, and other events, I met young people from other towns and formed new relationships. I gained a bit of skill in social situations that I had not previously enjoyed. And during my junior year of high school I noticed someone I had met a few years earlier in a new way. We talked. There was a spark, or more accurately a lot of sparks. I was smitten. She was from the biggest city in our state. And she was interested in me. From the standards of my high school, we weren’t a typical match. She was taller than I. And she was older than I. In my school, girls tended to date boys their own age or older. It wasn’t uncommon for there to be a couple where the girl was younger, but one where the girl was older didn’t seem to happen in our high school.

Being so interested in someone a bit older turned out to be good for me. I worked hard to behave maturely because I wanted to impress her and practice is good for a young man. She was academically successful and she became the motivation I needed to work hard. She encouraged me to apply to an early admissions program at the college she was going to attend. If I were accepted, we would be in the same class. I took the challenge and was successful.

In college it became immediately clear to me that I was in over my head. I had piles of books that I not only needed to read, but I needed to understand and recall their information. I had not gained good study skills and I really needed them. She was patient with me, however. She taught me how to study. And she gave me a reason to work very hard.

We married after our third year of college. We didn’t have any financial resources except the backing of our parents. But by then we both had good grades, a few scholarships, and plans to keep going with our education. It was a different time.

These days, marriage is a capstone event for most couples. It is something that is done when you are old enough, established enough, and financially successful enough. We didn’t wait until we were established and we didn’t wait until we had achieved financial stability. We traded janitorial services for the rent in our tiny apartment for the first year of our marriage. In addition, I was lucky to find part time work in addition to our schoolwork. We shared the same manual typewriter and the room for studying was also our bedroom. Our bed was a hide-a-bed sofa in the living room. We had a small kitchen, a bathroom, and an everything else room. We had to fold up the bed to get by the desk to get out of the door.

In my case, the important thing is that we didn’t wait. Our wedding was one week after my 20th birthday. In time a son was born to us and we adopted a daughter. Both came into our lives before we had the down payment to begin purchasing our own home. We had almost no savings.

My story is very different from that of most young men in our society today. Throughout my career the average age of first marriage has gone up and up. Marriage is now something that is undertaken after couples have achieved a variety of other goals. For many couples it occurs after multiple relationships. And increasingly, for many young men it isn’t happening at all. Advancing the age of first marriage is only part of the statistic. As colleges began to open up additional opportunities for female scholars, the simple fact that women are often more mature than their male peers prompted them to succeed academically. The Covid Pandemic accelerated an educational gap that was already widening. Between 2010 and 2021, male enrollment in colleges and universities dropped by 17% in the US while female enrollment increased by 13%. By April of this year, women comprised 58% of college students, up from 56% six years earlier.

Add in to the education gap the corrosive effect of increased screen time on relationships and the fact that young men are more likely to spend significantly greater time with their devices than young women and conditions exist for increasing social gaps. In almost every country in the world, the age of marriage and of becoming parents is getting older and older. While young women seem to thrive academically and professionally by delaying marriage, young men seem to struggle. Young men are more likely to be economically disadvantaged and socially isolated. Watching a screen is a poor substitute for a relationship with a living person.

Sociologists are just beginning to accumulate data on this phenomenon but it is well documented that it is a factor in declining birth rates. The US is at an all time low in birth rates. And that means that fewer young men are given the gift and challenge of parenting. Becoming a father is another thing that enabled me to grow up and face the challenges of life. But that is a topic for another journal entry.

The challenges facing young men in our society today is bigger than a thousand words. And they are challenges for all of society. There is much more to be learned and much more to come.