By Ellie Green, Director of Qualitative Insight, Beano Brain
In about a month’s time, I’m going to become a mother. Whether that’s to a daughter or a son is something my husband and I have decided to keep as a surprise. In decades gone by, we might have assumed that our baby was in for an easier ride at life if it were born a boy. But for boys growing up today? It seems the opposite may be increasingly true.
Perhaps the very suggestion of this has riled you up. You may be thinking, what about the gender pay gap? What about sexual violence against women? Upskirting? Casual, everyday sexism? I don’t mean to diminish any of that. There are still plenty of things that, whilst improving for girls and women, still have a long way to go.
Equality shouldn’t be about just fixing things for girls, though. By ignoring the things stacked against our boys, we are doing them a disservice. Take school, for example. As a former primary school teacher, I speak from experience when I say how often boys’ inferior ability to sit still, their distractibility and generally poorer behaviour is remarked upon. The attainment data speaks for itself: the DfE’s 2024 report on the Educational Attainment of Boys notes that boys perform worse than girls on most major educational indicators through their school years, as well as being nearly twice as likely as girls to be suspended.
So - should we accept that boys are just ‘worse’ at school than girls and passively watch on while their attainment continues its downward trajectory? Or should we be looking at biases within the system, in our expectations of male pupils, and the way we’re raising our boys to find ways of changing the narrative and bringing them in line with girls?
Alongside the casual sexism endured by women and girls, what about the everyday messages our boys are witnessing and internalising? From the useless dad narrative in popular shows and cartoons such as Peppa Pig (ok, I know Bluey’s dad Bandit is a great role model but he stands somewhat alone), to the Barbie movie’s mockery of Ken as a loveable but ditzy ‘himbo’, as well as darker narratives around boys’ and men’s treatment of women in areas such as consent, and physical and sexual violence.
We talk about negative male influencers, the likes of Piers Morgan, and Andrew and Tristan Tate as THE problem, THE force to be feared when it comes to the future of masculinity, shaping a whole new generation of feminism-bashing misogynists. But it could be argued that they aren’t the problem; rather, their popularity is a symptom of the broader societal neglect of boys. Think about it: if you grow up seeing girls do better, be listened to and celebrated while boys and men fall behind, are criticised or poorly portrayed, is it any wonder you’d be left feeling despondent? It’s not really such a surprise that boys are subsequently finding comfort in content and people who speak to their insecurities and build them up by offering an alternative, anti-feminist view.
“What about Harry Styles?” – I hear (imagine) you exclaim at this point. “Isn’t he the answer to the problems of modern boyhood: a positive role model, widely loved and celebrated, for boys to look up to?” Now, I love Harry as much as the next person and whilst he’s a fantastic role model for many boys, much of his appeal and stand out is rooted in his femininity. Relying on the likes of Styles to singlehandedly right the wrongs of modern boyhood isn’t fair on Harry OR fair on boys, who shouldn’t feel they have to adopt feminine traits in order to be an acceptable citizen, if that's not how they're made or want to express themselves.
Anecdotally, it seems boys’ experiences of being ‘forgotten’ have been brewing for longer than you might think. My husband tells me how jealous he was of the girls at primary school proudly shouting GIRL POWER in the playground. But I’m not sure when we fully gave up on the boys. All I know is, it's time to give them the same sense of pride in boyhood that the Spice Girls gave us girls back in the ‘90s.
I don’t suggest this is anything less than an Everest-level Mountain to climb, but as a start, we need to stop assuming things are easy for boys, stop ignoring and dismissing their unique struggles. We need to stop rolling our eyes at their behaviour in schools, shaking our heads at their choice to support the likes of Andrew Tate - and instead recognise these things for what they are: a cry for help. And if we bring home a son from hospital next month, I want him to grow up in a society that makes him feel GREAT about being a boy, and accepted no matter what boy he chooses to be.