The war against boys rages on

Submitted with this link to the Daily Caller, but the full article is here. Excerpt:

'Lost in all the noise about helping girls achieve their potential is a growing body of evidence that boys are in trouble. It's the real "gender gap." Consider this: A recent study by two MIT economists found that men, not women, are less likely to graduate from high school and finish college. As a result, the study said, "over the last three decades, the labor market trajectory of males in the U.S. has turned downward along four dimensions: skills acquisition, employment rates, occupational stature and real wage levels."

The authors say the declining economic value of men and the rise in women's achievement contributes to the breakdown of the American family by making marriage less valuable. Then, with more out-of-wedlock births and single-parent households headed by women, the lack of a male role model hurts boys in particular, both economically and academically.

This isn't a new finding: Multiple studies over the past 40 years have shown that boys suffer more than girls from divorce because they tend to externalize their reactions and act in ways that make them more likely to cause trouble at school or get arrested. Simply put: Boys need fathers to learn how to become men. And too many of them don't have one.

The social cost of this is not just the obvious burden from spiraling welfare and prison populations -- a 2008 study estimated that family fragmentation cost taxpayers more than $112 billion a year -- but in the lost potential as well.'