I remember standing in a store when my daughter was a toddler, smiling at t-shirts that said “girl power” and “throw like a girl.” With only one child at the time, a daughter, I didn’t give it a second thought.
A few years later, I found myself in that same store with my son too. And I noticed something I hadn’t before, that there was nothing like that for him. No shirts, no slogans,and no celebration of boys. That small observation prompted a question I’ve been sitting with ever since.
What has happened to our appreciation of boys?
The vital work of creating opportunities for girls has been worth celebrating. But somewhere along the way, without anyone intending it, we stopped paying attention to our boys and a crisis began to take shape.
What does research tell us?
The data is hard to ignore. In the 2024-2025 school year, for every 100 girls who repeated kindergarten, 145 boys did. By high school, girls are significantly more likely to earn a GPA above 3.0, while boys are nearly twice as likely to fall into the bottom 5% of their class. Our educational systems tend to reward stillness and verbal processing, skills that many boys, especially younger ones, naturally struggle more with.
This gap doesn’t close at graduation, it widens. As of 2025, men make up only around 42% of four-year college students. Research suggests that nearly half a million young men have “missed out” on higher education compared to their female peers over the last decade.
The Invisible Backbone of Society
There’s another aspect to this that is rarely named. Beyond the classroom, much of the work that keeps the world running, work considered ‘dirty’ and dangerous, yet essential, is carried out overwhelmingly by men.
When the power goes out in a blizzard, it is almost exclusively men climbing those lines. The fatality rate for lineworkers is nearly 400% higher than the national average. These crews, often nicknamed “storm chasers”, work punishing hours in brutal conditions to restore our heat and light. The same is true in industries like construction, waste management and snow removal, where men are disproportionately represented in roles that carry the highest risks of injury and death. They are out there in the cold and the dark, doing the jobs that society relies on but rarely stops to celebrate.
Bringing Men Back into the Conversation
In my practice as a therapist and coach, I see the human side of these statistics every single day. There is a persistent myth that therapy is a “woman’s space,” but in my work, approximately half of my clients are men. That’s not a coincidence; it reflects the real need that exists and also what is possible when men aren’t seen as a “problem to be fixed” but as individuals with unique strengths and challenges.
I work with men from a positive point of view. When we step out of clinical language and meet men where they actually are, something shifts and they show up. They want to be more present fathers, more connected partners, more fulfilled in their own lives.
We don’t have to take anything away from girls to make room for this conversation and start celebrating boys again. But we must be willing to have it, not as an afterthought, but as a vital, necessary part of a healthy society. If we want a world that truly works for everyone, it has to work for our sons, our husbands, and our fathers too.
My approach seeks to build upon male strengths, while mitigating their underlying issues. Many of my clients have accomplished remarkable success against all expectations, yet still feel like that little boy with the odds stacked against him. Reconciling the shadow within and finding deeper meaning and contentment takes real work. But it’s work worth doing.
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