The challenges facing UK boys: how charities can help

The 2022 ‘State of UK Boys’ report discusses mental health and wellbeing, education and achievement, and violence and aggression. Charity professionals from related causes were among the experts interviewed.

 

The report emphasises that there is not one single ‘state’ of boys, but multiple: many factors can influence a boy’s experiences in the world.

 

Here we explore the findings of the report, highlighting the ways that charities are getting involved.

 

 

Wellbeing

 

 

Masculine norms are a risk to mental health

 

Following masculine norms, the report states, has been found as a risk factor for the mental health of men and boys. These can include the definition of masculinity as related to toughness, stoicism, heterosexism, self-sufficient attitudes, and lack of emotional sensitivity.

 

Let Toys be Toys is noted as a grassroots campaign that asks the toy and publishing industries to stop promoting toys and books in a gender-specific way, which limits children’s interests, and reinforces binaries and stereotypes. The organisation believes that gendered marketing makes “both boys and girls miss out”.

 

Relevant useful resources for charities recommended by the report include those produced by the Global Equality Collective and AGENDA.

 

 

Mental health risk varies

 

Research also shows that attention should be given to the differing experiences of different groups of boys and young men.

 

For example, the report explains the different layers of mental health risk that young black men face due to experiencing racism and discrimination, as well as sometimes facing more barriers to accessing certain support services.

 

Mind takes a preventative approach to tackling mental health challenges faced by young black men, addressing the stigma, cultural barriers, and systemic discrimination experienced by this group as they get older.

 

This involves education around mental health problems, including how and where to seek help when it’s needed; flexible and informal approaches to building mental health resilience; and working with mental health hospitals and the police to reduce the stigma and discrimination that can exist in these institutions.

 

 

Mental health and sports

 

While participation in sports is associated with better mental health and peer relations, sports can also be associated with exclusion, humiliation, bullying, and homophobia for boys who do not meet athletic ideals.

 

One harmful masculine norm discussed is about how commercialisation impacts the body image of boys, with the notion of the ‘six pack’ symbolising the masculine ideal.

 

The report highlights Movember as a charity that is engaging with the mental health of men and boys, using sports as a site for action.

 

 

 

Education

 

 

Schools can challenge stereotypes

 

Although schools have traditionally been structured in ways that reinforce gender identity and expression as binary, significant evidence exists that schools are moving towards less gendered practices in some ways.

 

Independent education consultant Mark Jennett says: “It’s important that, unless there’s a really good reason for it, we don’t divide children by ‘sex’…It’s so easy to slip into that Mars-and-Venus thing that implies that boys and girls are very different and have little in common.”

 

He also illuminates how institutions and organisations can engage with young people to bring issues of gender to light: “Young people are very interested in gender identity, and you’ve got an open door there to think about not just trans identities but to talk about how [as a boy] your sex or your gender need not define you.”

 

The report recognises the gender equalities charity Lifting Limits for demonstrating how intervening in primary schools can raise awareness and confidence in challenging stereotypes, addressing gender inequalities, and increasing acceptance of diverse gender roles. This positive impact has been seen across multiple groups, including children, leaders, staff, and parents/carers.

 

 

Exclusion and achievement

 

The report also involves insights about school exclusion rates, where certain vulnerabilities increase the risk of school exclusion. This includes SEND (special needs and disability) including social, emotional, and mental health needs; poverty; low attainment; being from certain minority ethnic groups; being bullied; poor relationships to teachers; life trauma; and challenges in home life.

 

No More Exclusions is a Black-led and community-based abolitionist grassroots coalition movement highlighted for its work to shift understandings of key issues in school for boys and minoritised groups. It is not a charity, but its work can be used as a resource for charitable organisations.

 

The report also discusses how black boys’ behaviours are often racialised and subject to racism in school.

 

The report emphasises that narratives of white, working-class boys as neglected and failing is “both manufactured and actively misleading” and draws out the unspoken layers of disadvantage that are at play for boys who aren’t white, for example Black Caribbean, Black African, and Bangladeshi students.

 

 

Violence

 

 

Violence is normalised and often unchallenged

 

The research shows that violence is normalised to children as a sign of male adulthood.

 

Because children have learnt to understand violence as individual physical acts involving men in an outdoor setting, they were reported to struggle perceiving or naming other violent acts and situations in their own lives as violence. This includes violence between peers and siblings, emotional violence, and sexual violence.

 

When it comes to gender-based violence in schools, the report states, “the way schools respond to incidents of harassment and abuse plays a key role in communicating messages about boyhoods and sustaining or challenging gender-based violence”.

 

Katherine Gilmour from the Global Fund for Children elaborates: “It’s often young women who tell us they feel silenced when teachers ignore sexist banter.”

 

The report also explains that when schools are not proactively involved in teaching children about sexualities, children understand homophobia as more acceptable, “with institutional silence interpreted by many as equivalent to school-sanctioned homophobia”.

 

In online spaces, aggressive behaviour is also often accepted as normal and left unaddressed. This is reported to be another factor in the normalisation of violence among boys.

 

Research with UK university students also shows that those holding female and transgender identities are most likely to be the targets of this type of harassment that takes place online.

 

 

Approaches to tackling youth violence

 

The report finds that youth work has recently become more recognised as important in tackling the challenges that boys face today. Gilmour highlights that the radicalisation of boys into extreme white supremacy, far-right, and alt-right movements stems from misogyny, and she expresses that “seeing youth work starting to be recognised as a way into that is a real positive”.

 

Youth work is particularly effective, the report suggests, because of its long-term nature, which can act as an alternative environment to schools as a place of education and support.

 

The Youth Endowment Fund has a free online toolkit recommended by experts interviewed in the report. The toolkit provides an overview of existing research preventing serious youth violence. Explaining different violence-prevention approaches, it examines how effective they’re each likely to be, how confident you can be in the evidence of their impact, indicates costs, and links to related resources and programmes.