Restructuring our Thinking about Masculinity and our Approaches to

Male College Students

Collier Lumpkin & Peter Paquette

Ohio State University

February 3, 2006

In the United States a real boy climbs trees, disdains girls, dirties his knees, plays with soldiers, and takes blue for his favorite color. When they go to school, real boys prefer manual training, gym, and arithmetic. In college the boys smoke pipes, drink beer, and major in engineering or physics. The real boy matures into a ‘man’s man’ who plays poker, goes hunting, drinks brandy and dies in a war

“

”-Brown, 1965

BOYS WILL BE BOYS

Early Gender

Socialization

BOYS WILL BE BOYS

SCHOOL

•Boys are 3 times more likely to be enrolled in special education classes than girls.

•Boys are more likely to be held back and more likely to drop out all together.

•Boys are 4 times more likely to be referred to a school psychologist.

BOYS WILL BE BOYS

DISCIPLINE

•Judges commit boys to the juvenile justice system more than girls, even for the same crime.

•6 Caucasian boys are hit for every 1 Caucasian girl, and 8 Asian boys are hit for every 1 Asian girl.

•Boys are also more likely to face verbal abuse by adults in the classroom and at home than their sisters.

BOYS WILL BE BOYS

VIOLENCE

•95 % of juvenile homicides are committed by boys.

•Boys are the perpetrators of 4 out of 5 crimes that end up in juvenile court.

•Boys under the age of 18 are responsible for close to 1/5 of the violent crime in the United States.

•3 out of 4 Americans believe that it is important for boys to have a few fist fights while growing up.

BOYS WILL BE BOYS

WELL-BEING•Boys are 3 times more likely to be diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder than girls. •Boys are 4 times more likely to be prescribed Ritalin.

•Over one million boys in the US take Ritalin daily.

•Boys mature more slowly than girls and as a result are slower to achieve cognitive milestones than girls their same age.

•Boys are slower to develop impulse control than girls.

BOYS WILL BE BOYS

EMOTIONS•Newborn boys are more emotionally expressive than girls. •Boys become less facially expressive with emotions as they age, while girls become more so.

•Are boys less emotional? No. Recent research on second graders found that boys were more emotionally stressed when listening to a crying baby, but were less capable of handling these emotions. The result? The boys tried to avoid the source of the emotional conflict.

BOYS WILL BE BOYS

EMOTIONS

•Studies of parent interaction with both boys and girls suggest that when a girl asks a question about emotions such as "Why is that boy crying?", her mother will give a longer explanation and will more likely ask her daughter to speculate on the feelings behind the emotional response.

•Preschool girls have a greater range of "emotion" words (sad, love, angry) than boys and use them more often.

BOYS WILL BE BOYS

FATHERS•In a 27-year study of children, the single most important indicator of a child's future income was father attendance at PTA meetings.

•Children whose fathers are both emotionally close and highly involved are more likely to go to college and get advanced degrees.

•Research shows that the most influential factor in developing a boy's empathy is having a father who is involved in the child care.

BOYS WILL BE BOYS

FATHERS

•Roughhousing (safe, active play) is highly arousing for boys and is thought to be important to both cognitive and emotional development.

•Of all the people in a boy's life, sons identified their father as the person to whom they would least likely confide their true feelings.

BOYS WILL BE BOYS

21st CENTURY BOYS

•2.2 million single fathers are raising their children alone (up 62 % from a decade ago).

•Dual income households make up the majority of where children are being raised today.

•Single mothers head 7.2 percent of households.

College Men

BOYS WILL BE BOYS

BOYS WILL BE BOYS

HEALTH & BODY IMAGE•40 % of college men are dissatisfied with their

bodies.

•Male eating disorders, on average, begin at age 20, female eating disorders begin at age 17.

•20% of college men display behaviors of eating disorders.

•College men are among those at highest risk for testicular cancer, yet 3 out of 4 do not know how to perform self-examinations. Only 8 to 14 % perform self-examinations regularly.

BOYS WILL BE BOYS

ALCOHOL

•½ of college men are binge drinkers.

•62% of men who were frequent binge drinkers have driven after drinking.

•Driving while drunk is the leading cause of death for those under 25.

•Frequent binge drinkers are 7 to 10 times more likely than non-bingers to have unprotected sex.

BOYS WILL BE BOYS

SEX•45% of college men who are in an “exclusive” relationship have had sex with others.

•College men are 2 ½ times more likely than women to have more than 10 sexual partners.

•Only one third to one half of sexually active college men use condoms.

•60% of men under age 20 are at medium to high risk for sexual infections; 2 ½ times higher than women.

•8 out of 10 persons infected with HIV are men.

BOYS WILL BE BOYS

INSTITUTION-SPECIFIC•At Oregon State, 22% of college men have

obtained intercourse with a resistant woman by using coercive verbal pressure 

•At Oregon State, One in 12 college men have engaged in sexually aggressive acts that met the legal definition of rape.

•At Oregon State, 80% of students referred to administration for conduct problems are men.

•At Ohio State, 95% of all students placed on disciplinary probation were white males from North of I-70 

BOYS WILL BE BOYS

SUICIDE

•6 out of 7 suicides in college are men.

•Many of these suicides are a “complete shock” to friends and family.

“Boys are failing at school, succeeding at suicide, engaging in homicide, and disconnecting from their own inner lives: losing their genuine voices and selves”.

-Pollock

BOYS WILL BE BOYS

What have you noticedin your interactions with male students?