Men Are Made, Not Born...And We've Stopped Making Them

    Richard Reeves is right: Men are not simply born. They are made. This simple insight has become strangely controversial because it collides with a culture that celebrates autonomy but resists obligation — and stepped back from formation itself.

    For decades, the conversation about men oscillated between critique and confusion. Masculinity is either treated as inherently suspect or as something that should simply “work itself out” over time. Both views miss the point.

    Men are not self-forming. Students arrive in colleges and universities all over this great land fluent in the language of identity and expression, but far less comfortable with responsibility — what it means to be needed, to be accountable, to carry something larger. They are formed by institutions, expectations, and obligations that shape raw potential into something socially constructive. When those structures weaken, masculinity does not disappear. It fragments.

    Reeves’ work has helped re-center this reality. He has documented that boys now lag girls at every level of education, from K-12 through college, where women earn nearly 60% of bachelor’s degrees. That gap is not just an educational issue. It is a formation problem.

    For most of American history, the pathway to manhood was structured. Schools demanded discipline. Religious communities provided moral frameworks. Civic organizations offered mentorship and belonging. Even informal neighborhood life-imposed expectations: Older men corrected, guided, and modeled. These institutions did not merely socialize boys...they formed them. 

    Today, many of those structures have eroded or retreated. Schools increasingly hesitate to enforce standards that disproportionately affect boys. Colleges increasingly reject the language of moral formation — retreating into neutrality in some cases, and ideological signaling in others. Civic organizations have declined sharply, leaving fewer spaces where young men encounter responsibility before adulthood. What remains is a vacuum.

    We can still see what intentional formation looks like — proof that this work is possible. A number of boys' schools, often dismissed as outdated, have quietly held onto something many institutions have abandoned; the belief that boys need structure, responsibility, and clear expectations. They build it into culture. The result is not just academic success, but young men who are practiced in leadership, accountable to others, and oriented toward contribution.

    Pews Research show that young men are less likely than young women to attend college, complete degrees, and remain connected to traditional pathways to adulthood. Research from the Institute for Family Studies finds that men who lack stable work, marriage, or community ties report significantly lower levels of meaning and life satisfaction.

    These are not isolated trends. They are symptoms of a deeper failure of formation. Too often, the response has been to individualize the problem - to tell young men to adapt, to self-correct, to “find themselves.” But identity without structure is not freedom. It is drift.

    Reeves is right to emphasize that masculinity involves risk: biological, psychological, and social. The question is not whether men will take risks, but whether those risks will be directed toward meaningful ends.

    Historically, societies answered that question clearly. Men were expected to take risks in service of others; to protect, to build, provide, to lead. These expectations offered direction. They gave young men a reason to discipline themselves. Today, that direction is far less clear.

    We have grown uncomfortable with the language of obligation. We emphasize autonomy and self-expression but detach them from responsibility. The result is a culture that affirms young men without asking much of them and then expresses surprise when they fail to thrive. 

    But affirmation is not formation — and without obligation, formation does not happen. Men do not become responsible by being told they are enough. They become responsible by having duties that require them to rise to the occasion.

    If men are made, them we must ask: Made by whom, and for what? The answer cannot be left to chance. In talking to the Breakfast Club gang, schools must recover a willingness to set and enforce standards. Colleges must reengage their role in moral and civic formation. Communities must rebuild institutions that connect young men to mentors, peers, and shared purpose.

    We must also restore a cultural language that treats responsibility not as a burden, but as a path to meaning. The alternative is already visible: A generation of young men untethered from institutions, uncertain of their role, and increasingly disconnected from the civic life that depends on them.

    We are not facing a crisis of masculinity. We are facing a crisis of formation. And until we are willing to rebuild the institutions that make men, we should not be surprised by what fills the void in their absence.

    Young men are not the problem. Our failure to form them is.

Write to Peter: magtour@icloud.com