Boys and Books and Marriage and Abuse

In the past week we’ve seen The New Republic worry about Boys and Books, how boys just aren’t doing well in school, and how colleges are conducting an informal affirmative action program to favor unqualified boys because otherwise their male student percentage would go below 40 percent.

Then we have City Journal’s Kay S. Hymowitz observing how the only women who are sticking to marriage and children like glue are women who are college graduates, women devoted to “The Mission” of giving their children the best possible start in life.

Then we have Phyllis Schlafly observing that one effect of feminists insisting that Title IX be treated as a demand for exact equality of results in college sports is that boys don’t go to colleges that don’t have a good male athletic program.

Of course we should not forget the Nixzmary Brown story, the little girl beaten to death by her step-father, even though the government’s child protective services knew all about the abuse Nixzmary had suffered.

And we should certainly celebrate the amazing story of British barrister Constance Briscoe, cruelly abused by her mother as a girl, but taken in by a teacher in her school when a teenager, graduating out of high school top of her class and ending up a municipal judge.

What is all this telling us?

It is telling us that liberals are wrong. They told us that the big problem was that girls weren’t being properly served in school. They were wrong. Girls were doing fine. But boys were falling behind.

Liberals told us that the old traditional marriage was a thing of the past, that people were searching out new relationships, and this was healthy. But they are wrong. Now we know that homes without fathers are homes that will likely generate girls that have sex too early and boys that are violent and criminal. And more than that. Homes that do not contain their married mother and father are dangerous to children and other people.

Liberals told us that it was a terrible thing that girls were denied a chance to participate in sports. Now we are gutting youth sports to impose an artificial standard of participation.

Liberals told us that we needed government to come in and prevent abuse of children. Now we find out that government child protective services are hopeless.

There’s a pretty obvious lesson here, staring us in the face, isn’t there?

Of course. We need more funding for all those underfunded programs.