There are headlines about it every day — “Men are falling behind.”

Female students now make up around 58 percent of undergraduate enrollment, according to the National Center for Education Studies.

There are fewer and fewer fields where young men are more engaged than young women, according to Time Magazine. While recent polls indicate that young men are becoming more conservative, many are simply turning away from politics altogether.

In fact, in every political election since 1984, women have voted at higher rates than men, according to the Pew Research Center.

These gaps have taken shape in the past few decades and only widened since.

Behind the numbers, young men are struggling with isolation, finding purpose and left with an uncertain sense of what it means to be a good man, with many ultimately choosing to disengage and opt out of systems they feel disconnected from. 

While men may appear apathyetic towards politics, another possible view would be to instead look at why women have started engaging more in politics recently.

“It may be more driven by women feeling like some of their rights are eroding, and so they want to engage in making and deciding on these policies,” Victor F. White Master Teaching Chair GayMarie Vaughan said. “Whereas before, when it was codified into law, they didn’t feel the need to go out and vote for it every time.”

Nowadays, men may feel less comfortable talking about certain female-driven issues in politics leading to some self-censoring their own voices.

“A lot of people talk about a kind of a male crisis, and maybe they’re disengaging because they don’t feel as included,” Vaughan said. “I can see in terms of young people, the idea of what the future is going to look like is so nebulous. It’s hard to tell where things are going to go, and so they may be feeling a little bit disillusioned.”

Some argue that men feel threatened by feminism, assuming it is an “anti-man” movement. However, others argue that feminism is rather a pursuit in female equality. This conflict primarily stems from a discrepancy in interpretations.

“Many men feel their masculinity is threatened by capable women, and when they can’t take pride in their own abilities, they fall back on some innate belief that they are superior to women,” sophomore Lucas Herrera said.

To dispel this new belief that feminism is anti-man and promote healthy ideas of masculinity, Vaughan helps boys at the school through ideas from the Character and Leadership curriculum.

“In terms of character and leadership, having a growth mindset and being optimistic and thinking about problem solving and imagining solutions is very important,” Vaughan said. “Things like this encourage people to think about how we can contribute to the world instead of a ‘woe is me’ or ‘the future is bleak’ point of view.”

By encouraging young men to have a more positive outlook on life, Vaughan hopes engagement will be the next step for young men instead of carrying a negative mindset.

This common internal struggle often reflects a broader tension surrounding how masculinity is viewed in modern culture.

In some cases, masculinity carries a negative stigma. While traditional masculinity can quickly be labeled as toxic, men who exhibit traditionally feminine traits are still depicted as weak, leaving many men disillusioned with societal expectations.

But with more widespread coverage of these issues, people are pushing back to promote more balanced views of healthy masculinity.

And that starts at school. In the classroom, boys are generally more active, physical and visual learners at young ages, while girls usually mature quicker and have an easier time focusing during class. Because of this, the traditional classroom setting often suits girls better than boys, especially during lower and middle school.

Although that cognitive gap shrinks over time, the experiences at a young age can still leave a lasting divide in academics.

For Eugene McDermott Headmaster David Dini, one significant advantage of an all-boys school is the ability to tailor a curriculum and environment solely focused on the healthy transition of boys into men.

“There are things that a boys’ school can do, including thinking about learning styles and structuring our day and the organization of their classroom, the schedule and things like rituals and traditions and mentoring,” Dini said. “We can gear those towards the learning styles of boys in a way that really enhances and paints a picture of what positive masculinity looks like.”

An all-boys’ school is also able to explicitly address philosophical questions surrounding identity and manhood in ways that challenge the two extremes of how society interprets boys’ behavior

“I think that there’s concern that there’s a portrayal of some of the natural inclinations of boys as just bad behaviors when they’re natural instincts,” Dini said. “And now the other extreme of that is ‘also boys will be boys’ and you sort of tolerate bad behavior and that’s not good prescription either.”

Ultimately, the school works to build a distinct culture separate from mainstream views of masculinity — one that works to address the issues of male disengagement.

“What we can promote here is try to create a culture and an environment that embraces and pushes at the idea that you have to fit into a stereotypical set of prescriptive rules about what masculinity looks like,” Dini said.