UK: Without any fear for the future, boys have given up their ambition

Article here. Excerpt:

'Fathers of boys have a perennial subject of conversation. Is it us, our parenting skills or the wider society that is creating so many disaffected, troubled and disengaged young men? One friend of mine has hit on the theory that boys have lost their fear at the same time as having misplaced any sense of ambition. With the two great animators of human motivation – fear and greed (at its best, ambition) – knocked out we have a growing army of underperforming, unnecessarily idle and too often unemployed young men. Unable to motivate themselves, they just stew.

Young men's underachievement when compared with women has multiple causes – but a growing inability to find motivation, whether growing up on a social housing estate or in a top boarding school is, I think, one of them. The roots of this simultaneous collapse in ambition and loss of fear are hard to fathom and much contested, but they are there for all to see. It has been apparent in boys' GCSE and A-level results for some time. Now, as the Observer reports, it is extending into work. Graduate male unemployment on the most recent figures is rising so much faster than women's that it is more than half as high again – 17.2% compared to 11.2%.'

Commentary is found here. Excerpt:

'I have been a teacher for 25 years. There was a time when boys embraced education because they saw it as a pathway to success in professional life or rejected it in favour of going off to be successful plumbers or farmers. I interviewed boys and, whatever they thought of education, they had some idea of what they wanted to do in life. Now, when I speak to boys, I rarely get any plans for the future. If they are not "discovered" on a talent show or talent-scouted for a football club, they see no point. There is no success for them any other way.'