Ideas from the CBC: Man Up! The Masculinity Crisis Part One

Recent books, articles, and films point in a similar disturbing direction: "what's wrong with men?," "boys adrift," "patriarchy blues." Social scientists have over the decades noticed this trend: that men are dropping out of the workforce, and their addiction rates are climbing. Men are also three times more likely to commit suicide than women. In Canada, female undergraduates are outperforming males. While scholars agree there is indeed a problem, they don't necessarily agree on the cause. But if we trace the history of conceptions about masculinity, the evidence suggests that masculinity itself has always been in crisis.