The mission of Issues in Perspective is to provide thoughtful, historical and biblically-centered perspectives on current ethical and cultural issues.

In 1963 Betty Friedan published her bombshell, The Feminine Mystique, which argued, among other things, that traditional gender roles had compartmentalized women as homemakers—to their detriment.  Arguably, Friedan’s book was the manifesto of the feminist revolution.  Laws and cultural norms changed as equal treatment of and more professional opportunities for women increased—many changes which were welcomed and long overdue.  But what has been the effect of all of this on men and women?  Has it all been positive? Fifty years later, the feminist revolution has been augmented by the advent of gender dysphoria (a person’s unease and dysfunction due to a “mismatch between their biological sex and their gender identity.”)  Consequently, transgenderism and the LGBTQIA movement have heightened the confusion and chaos in understanding male/female roles and gender and sexual identity.   Ultimately, these issues impact the search for the meaning and purpose of life.    What is the evidence for this growing confusion and chaos?

1. The number of teen girls who experience persistent feelings of hopelessness or sadness sky-rocketed over the past decade, according to a 10-year survey released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).  Poor emotional health and suicidal thoughts increased from 2011 to 2021, with higher rates seen among female and LGBT+ students.  Josh Zumbrum of the Wall Street Journal adds the following observations about the CDC report:

• A closer look at how these numbers come together suggests that the data might be a little bit off: If anything, teens’ distress levels could be higher than reported. “The problem is as bad as what is suggested by the survey, if not worse,” said Bonnie Halpern-Felsher, a professor of pediatrics at Stanford University who has authored research on the strengths and weaknesses of the CDC’s youth survey. She thinks the CDC might be underestimating the extent of some of the most alarming numbers in its report, but “the point is it’s high, whatever the numbers are, it’s high,” she said.  “Some of the CDC’s latest statistics, which are drawn from its biennial Youth Risk Behavior Survey, are staggering: 57% of high-school females reported experiencing persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness, up from 36% a decade ago. For males that age, feelings of hopelessness rose to 29% from 21%.  For females, 30% said they had seriously considered suicide, up from 19%. These figures are also high for students who don’t identify as heterosexual, 69% of whom felt hopeless and 45% of whom considered committing suicide.”
• [A] limitation of the CDC data—highlighted in a 2020 paper on the strengths and weaknesses of the Youth Risk Behavior Survey, of which Dr. Halpern-Felsher was a co-author—is that although the survey is conducted at schools, roughly 5% of those ages 14 to 17 aren’t in school. Reasons for being out of school can vary, but overall, 16-year-olds not in school have an elevated chance of exposure to exactly the sort of risks the CDC is attempting to measure.  “The reasons they are not in school may actually be related to these risk behaviors,” the researchers note. “For example, pregnant or parenting teens are more likely to drop out of school, and substance use or violence in or around school can lead to suspension, expulsion, and/or involvement with the juvenile justice system.” “If they were included, the risk factors would almost certainly be higher.  But even if the true prevalence of some behaviors is slightly lower or slightly higher than the CDC finds, many of the trends are unmistakable. This is especially the case for the mental-health data.”

Columnist Ross Douthat makes an astute observation about the social and cultural context of the CDC report:  “it seems obvious that social media has worsened the coming-of-age experience relative to the halcyon 1990s—creating a ‘sense of another consciousness that’s welded to your own consciousness and has its own say all the time’ . .  . [S]ocial media entered into a world that was experiencing the triumph of a certain kind of social liberalism, which the new tech subjected to a stress test that it has conspicuously failed . . . [Social liberalism’s] defining features were rapid secularization (the decline of Christian identification accelerated from the 1990s onward and increasing social and sexual permissiveness—extending beyond support for same-sex marriage to beliefs about premarital sex, divorce, out-of-wedlock childbearing, marijuana use and more.”

The smartphone revolution asked people “raised under these conditions—raised with less family stability and weak attachments to religion, with a strong emphasis on self-creation and a strong hostility to ‘normativity’—to enter and forge a new social world.  And they went forth and created the online world we know today, with its pinball motion between extremes of toxic narcissism and the solidarity of the mob, its therapy-speak unmoored from real community, its conspiracism and ideological crazies, its mimetic misery and despairing catastrophism.”

2. David French of the New York Times poses this poignant question: “How much should a man’s self-worth depend on the respect or gratitude of others?  I raise this because an overwhelming amount of evidence—from suicide, to drug overdoses, to education achievement gaps—indicates that millions of men are in crisis. And simply put, while many men demand respect, what they need is purpose, and the quest for respect can sometimes undermine the sense of purpose that will help make them whole. To put it more simply still: What men need is not for others to do things for them. They need to do things for others: for spouses, for children, for family and friends and colleagues.”

As the Brookings scholar Richard V. Reeves notes in his indispensable book, Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male Is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do About It, the phrase “toxic masculinity” is counterproductive. “It teaches men there is ‘something toxic inside them that needs to be exorcised.’ Yet there is a danger in the quest for respect. Finding happiness in another person’s regard is elusive and contingent. After all, we have little true control over how others perceive or treat us, yet when we’re denied what we demand, we’re often filled with helpless rage.  More important, a demand for respect or honor should be conditioned on being respectable or honorable. When a man demands respect without being respectable, that often looks like domination and subordination. To elevate himself, he must belittle others.  But is respect a key to happiness and meaning? Let’s consider veterans. They form one of the most respected communities in America. The military is the second-most respected institution in the United States (barely behind small businesses), and many Americans perceive vets as ‘more disciplined, patriotic and loyal than those who have not served.’  Yet as The Times reported in 2021, the suicide rate for veterans is ‘1.5 times as much as the rate for civilians.’ For younger post-9/11 veterans, the suicide rate is 2.5 times the rate for civilians . . . That’s a staggering toll for one of America’s most-respected populations. Clearly, even profound familial and national respect is not enough to immunize men from deaths of despair.”

“Yes, the trauma of combat accounts for some of this terrible toll, but not all. If you speak to struggling veterans, many will tell you that they have respect, but they don’t have purpose. That lack of purpose is often exacerbated by the loss of fellowship . . . Veterans’ groups are supremely aware of this need for fellowship and purpose. ‘Next mission’ is a common phrase in the veteran community, and it’s explicitly intended to help veterans find purpose in their lives. And the need is great. I’ll never forget the friend who told me, shortly after his deployment, ‘I’m not even 30, and I’ve already done the most significant thing I’ll ever do.’  While his despair was genuine, he was fundamentally wrong. As a husband, father and entrepreneur, he’s forging his own path and leaving a new legacy. I rediscovered my own sense of purpose in my family and in a different cause, defending civil liberties in courtrooms across America. But it took time. Nothing at home was comparable to the sheer intensity of my deployment abroad.”

The true challenge to American masculinity is far upstream from politics and ideology. It’s not fundamentally about what ideological combatants say about men — that they have become “toxic” on the one hand, or “feminized” on the other. Rather the challenge is much more about a man finding his purpose, and there are few better purposes than helping the people you love walk through life.  “Virtuous purpose is worth more than any other person’s conditional and unreliable respect. It is rooted in service and sacrifice, not entitlement . . . What we do for others is infinitely more rewarding than what we ask them to do for us.”

I recently preached a sermon series at my church on Ecclesiastes, no doubt written by Solomon near the end of his life.  It is a transparent record of life’s journey by the King of Israel nearly 3,000 years ago.  Like David French’s comments above, Solomon sought not respect but the purpose and meaning of life.  Solomon in effect posed these questions: What then is the profit of living?  What does the human race get for all its work?  What is the value and purpose of life?  He discovered that the answer is the living God!  Humans are responsible beings, not brutes.  The beginning, middle and end of life is coming to know and trust God; receiving His good gifts; learning how to enjoy these good gifts; understanding the major part of His plan for us; and being guided into the joyous and strenuous pursuit of the art of living, even though portions of this life are mysterious and uncertain.

The box of the universe is not closed.  There is a transcendent God who has revealed Himself to us through Jesus Christ.  We can know Him.  We can enjoy Him.  We can walk with Him.  We can experience the joy and fulfillment He has intended for us.  It is a life of faith and confident trust in Him.  Loving Him and walking with Him enables us to then love and serve others, which is the entire theme of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5-7.  Once Jesus was asked, “What is the greatest commandment?”  He answered, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength.  And love your neighbor as yourself.”  [Matthew 22:35-40]  A life committed to those two propositions will be a life filled with purpose and meaning.

See Josh Zumbrun, “Teens’ Mental-Health Distress Could Be Worse Than CDC Data Suggest” in the Wall Street Journal (18-19 February 2023); Ross Douthat in the New York Times (19 February 2023); David French, “Men Need Purpose More Than ‘Respect’” in the New York Times (12 February 2023).