A Chilean experiment, an Australian classroom, and a sociologist walk into a bar… and they help us to understand why boys put their books down…

I was on the Unhinged Dad’s Podcast Sunday night and I mentioned two studies - one from Chile and one from Australia - that I thought showed just how much of a mess we’ve got ourselves into over boy’s literacy. The first of these highlighted how, that if you show a teenager a character who loves reading, they’ll rate him less masculine and less socially popular. And it wasn’t just just the other kids in the study who thought that: the teachers had negative views about the ‘boy reader’ too.

And the wider implications have more to them than a simple “reading looks girly,” because it suppresses how much boys value reading.

And we have a second study from Australia which says much the same thing where teenage boys stopped reading because “the other boys in the class think it’s gay,” says one; “people that read too much must have to get a life I reckon,” says another. Reading isn’t hard for these boys. It’s socially expensive.

R. W. Connell calls the boy’s reaction hegemonic masculinity. This term is what we see as the going rate for what counts as manly and, sadly, reading has now been filed on the wrong side of it.

But the truly clever part is the enforcement. Connell’s point is that this kind of dominance runs on culture, institutions and persuasion, not force. Nobody needs to ban boys from reading, they’ll just learn that it’ll cost them popularity, and they’ll opt out. This looks (conveniently) to schools like a free choice and they’re able to say: ‘he just doesn’t fancy books. Move on.’

However, boys haven’t stopped wanting stories. They’ve just moved that wanting somewhere that the stress is lower. They’re now reading on their phones, headphones and following web serials where they can read a chapter at a time without anyone judging them. But, of course, true to form, we squirrel this away as not-real-reading too.

It strikes me that “boys don’t read” is a tax we let masculinity charge, and we’re training the schools to help collect it.

Sources

Ana María Espinoza Catalán, ‘Gender Identity and Stereotypes as Key Factors in Reading Motivation: Three Studies in Secondary School in Chile’ (doctoral thesis, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, 2021).

Laura Scholes, ‘Working-Class Boys’ Relationships with Reading’, Gender and Education, 31.3 (2019), 344–61. https://doi.org/10.1080/09540253.2018.1533921

R. W. Connell and James W. Messerschmidt, ‘Hegemonic Masculinity: Rethinking the Concept’, Gender & Society, 19.6 (2005), 829–59. https://doi.org/10.1177/0891243205278639