Editor’s Note: This letter was submitted to the editor of Minding the Campus in response to his article, “College Students in a Romance Recession, Boys Blame ‘Hoeflation.’”
Jared, the problems you identify in this rather depressing article are symptoms rather than causes.
The cause of the current malaise among our youth begins at the beginning. As I have written to you before, never in human history has a generation led the kind of pampered, protected, and miseducated youth that the university-age young people of today, in many cases, experienced since conception. Whether it was car seats, bike helmets, zero unsupervised play until high school, playgrounds covered with a half a foot of ground up tires, no peanut butter or even no nuts anywhere children congregate, organic everything, a house outfitted generously with antibacterial washes and hand soaps and counter treatments—the list seems endless—these unfortunate young people were not allowed to experience and address adversity or failure or develop a well-tested immune system or learn for themselves through experience to judge what constitutes a modest level of danger.
Even on school playgrounds, the kind of roughhousing that once helped boys burn off their boundless energy is now forbidden. Boys are no longer allowed to behave naturally. The system demands everything “organic” yet rejects basic human impulses, especially those of boys. The result has been disastrous, though perhaps that’s the point. Women dominate the teaching profession, and most teachers and education schools lean left. Maybe the goal is to stamp out “toxic masculinity” early. Morally corrupt? Absolutely. Unintended consequences? Plenty.
Since your article has me in a ranting mood, consider child car seats as another example of our overregulated, overlawyered society. Designed, it seems, by sadists who dislike children, these devices have turned car rides—once a source of freedom and adventure—into cramped exercises in misery. We used to look forward to seeing the country from the backseat. Now, the message is: sit still, stay safe, and don’t enjoy the ride.
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Today, babies are strapped into plastic straightjackets, facing the backseat for hours on end; solitary confinement with less stimulation. When they’re finally old enough to face forward, they’re still restrained, staring blankly at the seat in front of them. Is it any wonder that children now spend their lives looking at screens instead of the world outside?
Once, simply gazing out a car window was a lesson in motion and change, far richer than any digital image. But modern childhood teaches fear, not curiosity. From birth, kids learn the world is out to kill them: home is full of hidden dangers, schools have security guards and “gun-free zone” signs, and even play is smothered under safety regulations.
Then came COVID-19: masks, unnecessary vaccinations, and isolation disguised as online learning. The damage is irreversible. If we think the next generation will somehow be more resilient, we’re deluding ourselves.
Car seats, rubber playgrounds, and helmets have surely saved lives, but at a cost we refuse to measure. Overprotection has stunted a generation, especially boys. Many will join the “men without work” described by Nicholas Eberstadt, medicated from infancy for vague conditions like ADHD and later numbed by painkillers in a healthcare system that profits from keeping them weak.
As for young women, many will likely join the growing ranks of successful thirty-somethings with no spouse or children as they near the limits of fertility. Some will fill the void with pets, but deep down, they know a cat is no substitute for a child. Facing old age alone is not the future most people desire, and surely not what overprotective parents intended. Yet, this is where our culture leads. Humans are still animals with instincts to nurture and belong, and traditional families have long been our best means of channeling those instincts. No modern substitute comes close.
Meanwhile, schools have stepped in to replace parents, teaching lessons in “kindness” that sound harmless but reflect a deeper problem. Public education has long since abandoned its duty to teach reading, math, civics, and logic; now it focuses on soft moral instruction it’s unqualified to give. The result is a generation trained to value feelings over facts. “Kindness” becomes a stand-in for virtue, and “niceness” replaces rigor.
This emotional conditioning continues through college, where soft, sentimental thinking makes students susceptible to equally soft ideologies like socialism, systems that promise compassion but deliver failure, repression, and ruin.
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The sad truth is that the university students that you describe are locked in a nexus between childhood and adulthood. There was a time when adulthood came early, long before the so-called magic age of 21 that has since become—and still remains—the legal threshold for many things. We still allow a 17-year-old to enlist; we train him and these days her, put a high-powered weapon in his/her hands, and expect him/her to kill the enemy if so ordered. Most university-age kids choose not to follow this path, and, realistically, if their sheltered lives scare and depress them, we should be relieved they don’t enlist, although the military might be their salvation in the long run.
Now, I do not want to tar all young people at or approaching university or technical school age with the same brush. Some, perhaps even many, have had a traditional upbringing and parents able to help with the basics in real education and deprogram the nonsense that has been foisted on them.
We are the third most populous country on the planet, so we can still produce significant numbers of well-educated, well-prepared young people who will lead successful and fulfilling lives as our economy and the global economy advance. Plus, fewer young people are opting for college after high school, which is a good thing, as the college product continues to deteriorate and punish excellence while rewarding mediocrity.
I remain hopeful that the damage the system is doing will not be terminal for the country, though that may well be the intention of the perpetrators. For the well-prepared, the world of their future might be their oyster—exciting, mentally stimulating, and rewarding. For those who aren’t well-prepared? There will always be Mamdanis.
Image: “Cadeirinha” by Senado Federal on Wikimedia Commons
