In Of Boys and Men, Richard Reeves provides solutions to address the male malaise in education, work, training, childcare, legal support, and policy inequities. The prior post (Solutions to the Crisis of Boys and Men – Part 4.1) described the first five solutions. This post covers solutions six through fourteen.

With these broad proposals, Reeves addresses counterarguments and related funding issues but does not attempt to navigate the complex politics needed for execution. Nevertheless, these are important solutions – a roadmap to consider.

6. Redesign jobs to be fairer for women

Reeves advocates for more jobs to be designed with time and place flexibility – jobs that are part-time and from home. He says we need to modernize career ladders away from “greedy” jobs that reward long and interrupted hours. Greedy jobs are in law, finance, and management consulting. Pharmacy is an example of an egalitarian career. There is almost no hourly wage penalty for part-time work in a pharmacy. Thus, there is virtually no gender pay gap because women do not pay the “parenting penalty” — a primary cause of the aggregate pay gap. (For more details on the pay gap, see upcoming Part 6: Pay Gap, STEM Careers and Gender Equality Paradox.)

However, Reeves provides this caution:

As long as men continue to be willing to put in long and often unpredictable hours, the prospects for structural reform remain dim.

And men will continue to work these hours because the prize is sexual access to women. “Greedy” jobs pay dividends for men in the mating marketplace. This is “undiscussable” — the elephant in the room. Reeves “politely” avoids talking about this elephant.

7. Provide more access to childcare and provision for after-school clubs

Men, women, and children are all bending their lives and schedules to fit the largely unilateral demands of the standard workday and typical career path. ~ Richard Reeves

The family has changed, but the labor market has not changed in response. Reeves supports efforts to increase childcare and provide after-school clubs. He worries that current public policy seeks to create work-friendly families rather than family-friendly work.

Our Work and Care Structures Are Relics

“We’ve reached an unprecedented era of equality between men and women economically,” writes Claudia Goldin, “but our work and care structures are relics of a past when only men both had careers and families.” (Goldin is a Harvard economist who explodes the myth of an aggregate pay gap caused by discrimination. See Part 6.)

“Mothers are caught most painfully in this trap right now,” asserts Reeves. But fathers are not necessarily okay with the tradeoff. Twice as many fathers as mothers say they spend too little time with their children (46% v. 23%), according to a 2013 report by the Pew Research Center.

Reeves’ proposals for paid leave (see below) are a step toward lessening this “pain,” but jobs must change too. “More options to work flexibly, or part-time, or from home, can at least ease the tradeoffs between earning and caring,” Reeves explains.

8. Provide six months of paid leave for each child

Mothers and fathers should be entitled to six months of paid leave for each child. Ideally, this would offer 100% wage replacement up to median earnings, paid for by higher social security contributions from employers and employees. This proposal follows the work of scholars of Janet Gornick and Marcia Meyers in their 2009 essay “Institutions That Support Gender Equality in Parenthood and Employment.” They aimed to create a set of institutions allowing parents to spend real time caring for children while promoting gender equality. Gornick and Meyers envisioned a “dual-earner/dual caregiver” society, including symmetrical contributions from mothers and fathers. According to Reeves, six months of leave is necessary to allow parents to spend meaningful time with their children without losing connection to the labor market.

Choosing to Stay Home in the Early years

The labor market is still structured in favor of workers without childcare responsibilities, and those workers are primarily men. Even with access to paid leave, it is likely that mothers will choose to do more of the care in the very early years. After the vast rise in women’s employment over recent decades, most mothers with children under 3 are either out of the labor market or working part-time. By and large, this seems to be by choice; over half of the mothers working part-time (54%) say that this is their preference at this point in their life, and 14% say they would prefer not to be in a full-time job at all. The remaining 33% say they would rather be in a full-time job.

9. Reform schools to be fairer for boys

Reeves advocates that boys be held back a year (“redshirted”) from elementary school so their brain development is more amenable to the school environment. He is emphatic that male teachers are needed as role models and warns about the over-identification of boys as disruptive or learning disabled. However, Reeves falls short of describing how elementary school curriculum might be tailored or the classroom “architecture” and activities could be improved for boys. He probably knows but left that out of the book.

10. Reinvent fatherhood

The role of fathers needs to expand to include caring as well as breadwinning. ~Richard Reeves

Within six years of their parents separating, one in three children never sees their father, and a similar proportion sees him once a month or less. The social institution of fatherhood urgently needs an update to become more focused on direct relationships with children.

Culture and policy are stuck on an obsolete model of fatherhood, lagging way behind economic reality. This results in a “dad deficit.”

“Rather than looking in the rear-view mirror,” says Reeves, “we need to establish a new basis for fatherhood, one that embraces the huge progress we have made toward gender equality.”

11. Protect unmarried fathers related to custody

There are no joint custody laws for unmarried parents. That needs to change, asserts Reeves.

In every U.S. state, an unmarried mother is presumed to be the sole custodial parent.

Unmarried fathers must prove paternity and then petition for visitation and custody. For many fathers, this is a daunting process. In the meantime, a mother can bar all access to the child.

As Kathyrn Edin and Timothy Nelson posit in Doing the Best I Can, “at every turn, an unmarried man who seeks to be a father, not just a daddy, is rebuffed by a system that pushes him aside with one hand while reaching into his pocket with the other.”

12. Consider a father’s ability to pay child support and nonmonetary contributions

Regardless of visitation rights, unmarried fathers are typically obliged to pay child support, often at levels that low-income fathers struggle to meet. Unmarried fathers are seen as walking ATMs. In 2020, $38 billion was collected in child support, and $115 billion was owed in arrears.

Child support payments should be set with greater sensitivity to a father’s ability to pay and consider their nonmonetary contributions, including direct provision of care for their children. “If we truly believe in gender equity,” write Edin and Nelson, “we must find a way to honor fathers’ attempts to build relationships with their children just as we do mothers’ – to assign father rights along with their responsibilities.”

13. Establish an Office of Men’s Health in the Department of Health and Human Services

An HHS Office on Women’s Health already exists, and a similar one should be created for men.

14. Establish a national coalition for men and boys in education

A 2017 report by the National Coalition for Women and Girls in Education recommended financial incentives to boost the number of female trainees in male-oriented careers and technical education. The report acknowledged that men might be discouraged from taking “nontraditional” courses in high-growth, high-wage fields such as nursing and paralegal work. But where are the financial incentives to boost male participation in “female-oriented” careers? Low participation by men in “nontraditional” courses has no organizational attention; there is no such organization for men. 

Reeves advocates that a coalition for men and boys be established similar to the National Coalition for Women and Girls in Education to address HEAL job preparation and vocational training and one similar to the National Girls Collaborative Project that promotes gender equity in STEM education.