Boys and young men doing poorly? Look to fathers and the ultimate Father.

Here's an interesting opinion piece in the Star Tribune by Kay Hymowitz of the Manhattan Institute.  She points out the growing concern with the poor outcomes afflicting boys.

When I started following the research on child well-being about two decades ago, the focus was almost always girls’ problems — low self-esteem, lax ambitions, eating disorders and high rates of teen pregnancy.

Now, though, with teen births down more than 50 percent from their 1991 peak and girls dominating classrooms and graduation ceremonies, boys and men are increasingly the ones under examination. Their high school grades and college attendance rates have remained stalled for decades. Among poor and working-class boys, the chances of climbing out of the low-end labor market — and of becoming reliable husbands and fathers — are looking worse and worse.

This spring, MIT economist David Autor and coauthor Melanie Wasserman suggested a reason for this: the growing number of fatherless homes. Boys and young men weren’t behaving rationally, they suggested, because their family situations had left them without the necessary attitudes and skills to adapt to changing social and economic conditions. Anyone interested in the plight of poor and working-class men — and, more broadly, mobility and the American dream — should hope this research, and the considerable biological and psychological evidence behind it, become part of the public debate.

 At the end she points out this problem is more than just a political question.

But the truth is, we don’t know for sure what will help. It just may be that boys growing up where fathers — and men more generally — appear superfluous confront an existential problem: Where do I fit in? Who needs me, anyway? Boys see that men have become extras in the lives of many families and communities, and it can’t help but depress their aspirations. Solving that problem will take something much bigger than a good literacy program.

I think a good place to look for wisdom is the Bible and the prophet Malachi who addressed a crisis facing ancient Israel in exile.  He talked about God sending another prophet like Elijah who would "restore the hearts of the fathers to their children and the hearts of the children to their fathers, so that I will not come and smite the land with a curse." Malachi 4:5-6.  Turning back to God and fathers is essential for restoring boys and young men.