Another Reason We Need Men in College
Buried in the back of my American Psychologist (the Journal of the American Psychological Association), in the comment section, there is a blurb from Vicky Phares and her colleagues at the University of South Florida. The blurb comments on a 1992 article entitled, "Where's Poppa? The Relative Lack of Attention to the Role of Fathers in Child and Adolescent Psychopathology." The authors did further studies and found that in the past thirteen years, fathers are still coming up short when it comes to being included in research studies in child and family research.
When dissertations were reviewed, it was found that fathers were neglected significantly in research that focused on developmental psychology and developmental psychopathology. Sixty percent of the dissertations explored mothers only, 30% studied "parents," and 10% explored fathers only. The authors note that few personal or professional characteristics distinguished between those graduate students who did and did not include fathers in their research. The only difference was that male graduate students were more likely to include fathers in their dissertation research.
Why is this important? Because the role of fathers in the development of their children is crucial in understanding adolescent pathology, particularly that of aggression. For example, I believe that fathers teach their children, particularly boys, about aggression and boundary issues during play. Fathers teach boys to wrestle and fight but also how to stop before they hurt someone. We need to explore the father-child dynamic, just as we need to understand what boys need in the classroom to prepare them to go out in the world with some degree of success. And who is going to do that if we do not have a male perspective in colleges and schools to tell us and guide us in helping boys?
Some of my commenters have stated (like Grim) that it is not important for men to go to college, or that they will find their own way regardless, and get high paying jobs in the technical world. ("Men are pretty good at sorting out problems. It's what we do.") I don't know why they think that, as most men don't have high-paying jobs in the technical world. We need men in higher education, though, for the same reasons that gender-diversity advocates have said we need women -- because we miss out on an important perspective without them.
When dissertations were reviewed, it was found that fathers were neglected significantly in research that focused on developmental psychology and developmental psychopathology. Sixty percent of the dissertations explored mothers only, 30% studied "parents," and 10% explored fathers only. The authors note that few personal or professional characteristics distinguished between those graduate students who did and did not include fathers in their research. The only difference was that male graduate students were more likely to include fathers in their dissertation research.
Why is this important? Because the role of fathers in the development of their children is crucial in understanding adolescent pathology, particularly that of aggression. For example, I believe that fathers teach their children, particularly boys, about aggression and boundary issues during play. Fathers teach boys to wrestle and fight but also how to stop before they hurt someone. We need to explore the father-child dynamic, just as we need to understand what boys need in the classroom to prepare them to go out in the world with some degree of success. And who is going to do that if we do not have a male perspective in colleges and schools to tell us and guide us in helping boys?
Some of my commenters have stated (like Grim) that it is not important for men to go to college, or that they will find their own way regardless, and get high paying jobs in the technical world. ("Men are pretty good at sorting out problems. It's what we do.") I don't know why they think that, as most men don't have high-paying jobs in the technical world. We need men in higher education, though, for the same reasons that gender-diversity advocates have said we need women -- because we miss out on an important perspective without them.
posted by Helen at 4:54 PM
14 Comments:
I agree with you! It isn't now considered a "good" thing to have a male dominated education system. So, why is a trend in the opposite direction, toward a female dominated system considered to be either... no big deal... or (worse yet) better?
This reminds me of women who send me email telling me that the world would be better if it was run by women... whereupon I ask them if they've ever tried to work on a committee with all women. (generally I don't have to go any farther than that to stop them in their tracks)
Having attended, and graduated, from both a liberal arts undergrad program and a masters program, I can attest to the relative shortage of male perspective in higher education, especially if it challenges feminist and multicultural approaches. If a man doesn't buy into the guilt that is often expected of a white male, he can expect a drubbing in the classroom, often at with the blessing of the instructor. With such abuse, it is no wonder some men opt out of academic pursuits. They don't want to be labeled misogynistic or bigoted out of hand, so they won't often challenge the culture that denigrates them. If change is to come, it needs to come from within academia.
Academia change? As far as I can tell, the persons least capable of learning are academics who have written a couple articles on a subject. Domestic violence is a good example of an area in which entrenched, agenda-driven "feminist" academics refuse to recognize some realities of a complex, tragic problem. This has produced bad public policy that hurts men and women. See www.vawa4all.org
Sometimes I wonder if medival chivalry is part of the problem. Men find it much more rewarding to come to the rescue of fair maidens. Combine this with the political power of feminism and politicians trying to please the feminists and not much else is left.
If male perspective is, 1,useful, and, 2, in short supply....
If you want male perspective, what are you willing to pay for it?
Drop the men-are-brutes bit? Too much? I thought it might be.
Possibilities suggest themselves.
Dr. Helen:
My sense is that males need to be needed by women. For the last thirty-five years or so, successive generations of males have grown up with the feeling that women don't need them.
A man instinctively wants to be the hero. But how can he be the hero if previous generations have made it safe for women to thrive without him?
It's sort of a Catch-22, isn't it?
I'm a firm believer that it's important for men to go to college. And, as a recent graduate, I can say that there are places with plenty of male influence on campus: but those places are where we hear so much about women being "underrepresented". I can tell you first hand that the number of pretty girls in an Econ class is inversely proportionate to its level. Get up to the heavy stuff, and there are very few women at all.
My reasons for leaving the Journalism department and heading for Econ were many, but the constant crapping on maleness certainly didn't help. This is the reason I largely ignored departments that weren't Math or Econ after I finished my general ed requirements. It didn't help that Oregon had these odious "multicultural" requirements, which were mainly excuses to teach me exactly why I was evil/inferior due to being a middle-class white kid. I wasted so much time and money getting half-way through those things, hating them, dropping, and having to find some other class to satisfy that requirement. Fortunately, we had a Judaic Studies department.
What I said only started with that; it ends with an assertion, which I think is accurate, that liberal-arts academia is foundering as a social institution. Liberal arts colleges, and not men, are becoming less influential and less necessary.
Most men don't have high paying jobs in the technical world in part because most people don't. The question shouldn't be "How can we make most men rich?" Most men can't be rich, because "rich" is a status that is relative to the community around you. Most men will always be poor or middle class, because by definition four-fifths of the population is that.
What matters isn't pay, but influence. Here is where I think men are proving out as stronger performers than women, regardless of academic statistics.
In the technical and hard science fields, men outperform women, both in numbers and especially in accomplishments. Whether it is engineering or mathematics or biology or medicine, there will be more men than women at the top of the professions.
In politics it is the same.
Women strongly dominate the English departments of colleges. Yet in literature and journalism, in spite of strong attempts by the industries to promote female voices, women are simply not showing up on an equal basis.
The challenges of the age, as we can see them from here, are these: terrorism, national security more generally, medicine (both in dealing with arising diseases and improving the quality of longer lives), physics, information technology, diplomacy. All of these fields are, and will remain, dominated by men.
Women are attending colleges at record rates, and rates that outstrip men. It does not follow, however, that this is a threat to men. Most women who get degrees in sociology, psychology, literature, and similiar arts will end up conducting endless studies, talking to each other about their problems and depressions, writing unread books and poems, and generally pursuing what I hope are fulfilling but what are not really critical functions.
The critical functions will achieve an increasingly strong market position, on the other hand, because they are critical. As I noted, we're seeing pay increases for military and police functions across the board. These increasingly require a well-educated, intelligent pool of candidates: but they need not be educated by colleges. They can be self taught, or they can be schooled in academies, such as USMC RD Parris Island, or the Federal Law Enforcement school in Glenco, Georgia.
The jobs men get may not be "technical," but they will tend to be more critical. They may not make most men rich, because most people can't be rich.
However, there is no danger of boys or men being 'left behind' by the women of America. Women's opportunities to achieve their personal dreams do not come at the expense of men, because men and women tend to want different things. Women who happen to want things men usually want will find themselves welcome and encouraged in those fields; men who happen to want things women usually want, the same.
So far as I can tell, it's a happy situation for everyone except liberal arts colleges. Yet the function of the liberal arts college was to produce the classical liberal, at which the colleges have lately failed. An institution that neglects its core purpose will not survive, nor does it deserve to do so. We will produce the liberally educated in other ways -- consider the Basic School at Quantico.
Re: "However, there is no danger of boys or men being 'left behind' by the women of America."
I have to disagree. Yours is a well-considered opinion, but the reality for a majority of black men is that of being left behind. And this is beginning to affect more men of other ethnicities.
A culture that relegates males to gigolo status tends to reap what it sows. Just look at the whole hip hop gangsta nihilism.
Pogo.
There is nothing Grim said that could not apply to black men.
The interest in hip-hop/gangsta s*** is a choice.
They can make other choices.
To Grim:
So influence is the most important--I agree--but have you ever heard of Michelle Malkins, Ann Althouse, Wonkette and Meagan Mcardle?--all women--all influential.
希望大家都會非常非常幸福~
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I wish that I could somehow force my representatives in Congress to read your blog, this post in particular. I have been trying to talk with them about these types of issues for years and they simply won't listen. I find that when a woman speaks, they at least pretend to care, but when I speak it is a waste of time. We need more women like you saying these things. And I thank you for what you've written here, even if it was years ago.
By the way, I see that you've been getting spammed with the same oriental crap that I am. I changed my settings to 'comment moderation' for any post older than 14 days. This way, anyone commenting on a current post doesn't have to wait for moderation, but the spambots that hit old posts like this one can't get through. It has worked well for me so far.
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