They are struggling in the classroom.

American girls are 14 percentage points more likely to be "school ready" than boys at age 5, controlling for parental characteristics.

By high school, two-thirds of the students in the top 10 percent of the class, ranked by G.P.A., are girls, while roughly two-thirds of the students at the lowest decile are boys.

In 2020, at the 16 top American law schools, not a single one of the flagship law reviews had a man as editor in chief.

Men are struggling in the workplace.

One in three American men with only a high school diploma — 10 million men — is now out of the labour force.

The biggest drop in employment is among young men aged 25 to 34.

Men who entered the work force in 1983 will earn about 10 percent less in real terms in their lifetimes than those who started a generation earlier.

Over the same period, women's lifetime earnings have increased 33 percent.

Pretty much all of the income gains that middle-class American families have enjoyed since 1970 are because of increases in women's earnings.

Men are also struggling physically.

Men account for close to three out of every four "deaths of despair" — suicide and drug overdoses. For every 100 middle-aged women who died of Covid up to mid-September 2021, there were 184 middle-aged men who died.

Richard V. Reeves's new book, "Of Boys and Men," is a landmark, one of the most important books of the year, not only because it is a comprehensive look at the male crisis, but also because it searches for the roots of that crisis and offers solutions.

I learned a lot I didn't know.

First, boys are much more hindered by challenging environments than girls.

Girls in poor neighbourhoods and unstable families may be able to climb their way out.

Boys are less likely to do so.

In Canada, boys born into the poorest households are twice as likely to remain poor as their female counterparts.

In American schools, boys' academic performance is more influenced by family background than girls' performance.

Boys raised by single parents have lower rates of college enrollment than girls raised by single parents.

Second, policies and programs designed to promote social mobility often work for women, but not men.

Reeves, a scholar at the Brookings Institution, visited Kalamazoo, Mich., where, thanks to a donor, high school graduates get to go to many colleges in the state free.

The program increased the number of women getting college degrees by 45 percent.

The men's graduation rates remained flat.

Reeves lists a whole series of programs, from early childhood education to college support efforts, that produced impressive gains for women, but did not boost men.

Reeves' has a series of policy proposals to address the crisis, the most controversial of which is redshirting boys — have them begin their schooling a year later than girls, because on average the prefrontal cortex and the cerebellum, which are involved in self-regulation, mature much earlier in girls than in boys.

There are many reasons men are struggling. Many men just seem less ambitious. Continue reading

"Those who are sowing in tears will sing when they reap. They go out full of tears carrying seed for the sowing; they come back full of song, carrying their sheaves", Psalm 126.

Years back working in the parish in Hastings, I started a vegetable garden. The soil is so rich in the area the local people said, ‘if you plant an ice block stick, it will grow!'

They neglected to mention oxalis and convolvulus also grow.

Sowing is a beautiful occupation, but it calls for hard work: the ground needs be prepared, the seed sown, then there is regular watering and aftercare.

The first green shoots bring an up-tempo beat of the heart; the joy of new life.

Then, after time, there is the delight in digging the new season's potatoes, or a lettuce, cabbage, carrot, whatever.

Many of the great artists we admire know well the tears of sowing and one of them is Vincent Van Gogh (1853 - 1890).

The image is a pencil, brush and ink drawing by Van Gogh, with the title "The Sower", 1882. It hangs in The Hague, Netherlands.

During his life, Vincent experienced poverty, loneliness, and much illness. At times life was so difficult for him that he felt he couldn't go on.

Once he said, ‘It is getting too lonesome, too cold, to empty.' Van Gogh's greatest heartbreak was a failure to win recognition as an artist.

Most people who knew him considered him a failure.

He was only thirty-seven when he died and by then he had sold only one of his paintings. It was sold for a few hundred Francs.

"Painting requires a lot of faith because one cannot prove at the outset that it will succeed.

"In the first years of hard struggling, it may even be a sowing in tears. But we shall check them because in the far distance we have a quiet hope of the harvest,' wrote van Gogh.

In spite of everything, he persevered. And the harvest did come, though too late for him.

The day after his death a few of his friends came and decked out the small room where his coffin lay with some of his paintings. It was only then that they realized how beautiful those paintings were. Today his canvasses are almost beyond price.

Van Gogh had a special interest in sowers throughout his artistic career. All in all, he made more than 30 drawings and paintings on this theme.

May the words of Vincent van Gogh, ‘Life is only a kind of sowing; the harvest is not here,' echoing the words of Psalm 126, ‘sowing in tears, they will sing when they reap' fall on rich soil.

• Gerard Whiteford is Marist priest; retreat facilitator and spiritual companion for 35 years. He writes regularly at www.restawhile.nz

As a teenager in the early aughts, I believed that life was found by identifying my desires and rushing toward their satisfaction.

I played this out in academics and especially in sexuality. My life beat to the pulse of Ariana Grande's chant, "I see it, I like it, I want it, I got it."

The right response to desire was indulgence.

Unbeknownst to me as a nonChristian, the purity movement was running in parallel.

Those who experienced that movement from the inside have spent recent months breaking down its excesses and missteps.

Their conclusion (and mine) is that repression and avoidance are unbiblical responses to desire, no more Christian, perhaps, than my teenage, atheistic abandonment to it.

In the midst of these reoccurring public square discussions, the tension between libertinism on one side and repression on the other leaves most of us yearning for the reasonable via media, the middle way between failed extremes.

In that space, is there a scripturally sound theology of desire?

Yes. I want to suggest that Christian asceticism, ancient though it is, offers a way forward.

It uniquely treats God as the end, not the means, of desire.

It also circumvents the shortcomings of repression and avoidance.

Here, I'm not talking about biblically wise avoidance.

It is stupid and unsafe to put ourselves in places where we know we will be strongly tempted to lust or sin.

Temptation, while not sin, is not safe for us; Jesus commands us to pray that we would be kept from it. Similarly, Paul's admonition to "flee sexual immorality" (1 Cor. 6:18) can't mean any less than this.

Instead, I want to point out that repression and avoidance have a Christian name but a pagan lifestyle.

Both are tactical responses that center around willpower.

A person practicing repression might attempt to ignore desire in a "pretend-it-isn't-there" way. Or he might avoid most contact with people he finds attractive.

Others are unwilling to acknowledge their sexual feelings at all (especially if one happens to be female or same-sex attracted), because that acknowledgment might bring shame from one's community.

First, both of these tactics try to wrest reward from God through bribery. If you are sexually pure, goes the thinking, then God will reward you with a sexy, best-friend spouse.

This so-called "sexual prosperity gospel" is unbiblical and untrue.

Not only that, it's devastating to young men and women who work diligently to be faithful only to come up empty-handed.

Like the uncured invalid at a faith healing, they're left to wonder if the problem is with them.

Second, repression and avoidance strategies are often motivated by a desire to conform to social expectation.

But if pleasing pastors, friends, or parents becomes our primary source of motivation for sexual purity, we are deceived.

Just because the end product aligns with God's commands doesn't mean we are practicing Christian virtues.

This leads to a third indictment of repression and avoidance. Continue reading

It was a great celebration. The angels were in fine voice, and Jesus consented to be a baby again. He lay in Mary's arms while Joseph sat to one side, smiling protectively.

One by one, the Saints advanced, bringing gifts to the young King of Kings.

St Francis came barefooted, carrying a little white dove which he placed at Mary's feet. The angels sighed with pleasure.

Then came St Therese of Lisieux with a bunch of roses. Oo-ooh! went the angels again.

Big Teresa of Avila walked across, carrying all her original manuscripts. The angels were very impressed. Aa-aah! they cried as St Teresa offered her writings.

And so it went on.

Finally, in came St Ignatius of Loyola. As he limped towards the Holy Family, the angels noticed his hands were empty. No gift!. This sent ripples of shock through the angels. They nudged each other. Typical Jesuit! they muttered.

Worse was to come. Ignatius ignored Mary and Jesus. He walked straight past them and stopped on the other side of Joseph. Then he leaned over and said in Joseph's ear, "Have you thought about his education?"

It's a good story, but the reversal lies in the fact it was Jesus who taught Ignatius of Loyola.

A nobleman and soldier, Ignatius was crippled by a cannon ball. With broken bones and ambitions, all he could do was lie in bed, read, think and dream. It was the life of Jesus in the gospels that spiritually mended and reshaped his life.

I can connect with this. I'm made aware of the ways God has sent cannon balls to disable my plans for myself. Some of you will know exactly what I mean.

It can be a literal blow - accident, illness, sudden loss or failure. Whatever, we are made helpless. Some part of ourselves has gone and even prayer seems empty. The phrase "feeling gutted" becomes reality.

Then the resurrection happens. Like Lazarus we stagger out of the tomb, dropping our bandages.

There is new life in us, something bigger than what has been taken away, and given time we may well think that the ‘cannon ball' was the best thing to happen to us.

As for Ignatius? Well, 30 years ago, Br Marty Williams SM showed me around Rome, and the most cherished memory was seeing the room and bed where St Ignatius died.

Both were bare, starkly beautiful in their poverty. I gazed at the little iron bed, knowing that the man who had lain on it, was very different from the man bed-ridden with a shattered leg.

The wounded soldier had been small; the man who had died in Rome was spiritually immense.

I still think about that. I imagine the younger Ignatius unable to walk, in pain and helpless, and Jesus whispering in his ear, "Have you thought about your education?"

• Joy Cowley is a wife, mother, grandmother, great-grandmother and retreat facilitator.