Being a Man Is a Special Needs Condition

A review of Richard Reeves’s “Of Boys and Men.”

From Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone episode “The Obsolete Man”, 1961.

American Dreaming Contributor Timothy Wood has a new piece out in Queer Majority about how controversies over costumes distract us from the issues that really matter: “Let People Have Fun This Halloween.”

[Author’s note: Most of the sources in this review are taken directly from the book. These will appear as footnotes. Other sourcing will appear as embedded hyperlinks. Please also note that it is impossible to discuss issues of this scale without resorting to generalities. Nothing said here about men, boys, women, or girls should be understood to apply to every single individual. Obviously.]

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They’re usually far from the forefront of the national conversation, but the problems faced by boys and men surround us every day, hiding in plain sight. We witness them in our homes and classrooms, on our campuses, and on the internet. We see them in the shifting social norms around single-parenthood, fatherhood, dating, and relationships. And they show up everywhere in statistics; from mortality rates, to mental health, to education, economics, and antisocial behavior. The boys are not alright. In his new book, Of Boys and Men (2022), Brookings Institution fellow Richard Reeves builds a comprehensive, data-driven, and undeniable case that something has gone very awry for men. So shockingly overwhelming is the preponderance of evidence he brings forth, in fact, that his book seems to unintentionally suggest something well beyond its stated thesis. Gender equality, shifting norms, and a changing economic landscape have not merely left many men behind — they have revealed something that millennia of male-dominated societies long obscured: that manhood appears to be a special needs condition.

The Data Doesn’t Look Good, Fellas

Reeves unleashes an onslaught of data that paints a stark picture, from education, to work, to home life. In high school, female students outperform their male peers by a full letter grade on average.¹ Girls occupy two-thirds of the top 10 percent in high school GPA, with boys occupying two-thirds of the bottom 10 percent. Female students are also far more likely to take Advanced Placement courses.² Nearly every college campus in America is majority female, including the Ivy League,³ and female students are over 10 percentage points more likely to graduate within four years.⁴ Women earn 100 bachelor’s degrees for every 74 awarded to men.⁵ Women also earn three out of five associate’s and master’s degrees,⁶ and the majority of law degrees.⁷ It’s gotten so lopsided that many colleges are already implementing covert affirmative action policies to lower the standards and boost the acceptance rate for men.⁸

Wages for men are lower today than they were 40 years ago, while women’s have risen in every area.⁹ Men’s labor force participation has dropped seven points over the past 50 years,¹⁰ and one in three male working-age high school grads — five million men — are now out of the labor force altogether (not currently unemployed but seeking work; totally out of the labor force).¹¹ Men occupy the vast majority of industries that have been and will continue to be hit hardest by globalization and automation,¹² and the most automation-proof lines of work are female-dominated fields that involve high degrees of emotional intelligence.¹³ 20 percent of fathers are not living with their children, double the rate 50 years ago.¹⁴ Among men who dropped out of high school, it’s 40 percent.¹⁵ The number of wives who out-earn their husbands has doubled in the past 40 years to three in ten.¹⁶ To make matters worse, nearly 75 percent of suicides and fatal overdoses are men.¹⁷

This is just a sampling of the receipts Reeves brings to show how men are falling behind, but what’s most jaw-dropping is the evidence for why they may be inherently predisposed to. Girls’ brains develop faster than boys’. The prefrontal cortex, responsible for impulse control, planning, and decision-making develops two years later in boys.¹⁸ The cerebellum, associated with language skills among other things, reaches full size four years later in boys than in girls.¹⁹ Adolescent boys are two to three years less synaptically developed than girls.²⁰ Nearly a quarter of boys are diagnosed with a developmental disability.²¹ Accordingly, elementary school girls have a six percentage point lead in reading proficiency over boys that expands to 11 points by the end of middle school.²² Boys are 50 percent more likely to fail at math, reading, and science.²³

Boys also suffer more from childhood adversity. Reeves borrows the flowery metaphor from the psychological literature of “dandelions and orchids” to describe the difference in resiliency between girls and boys.²⁴ One thrives in damn near any conditions, the other is sensitive, finicky, fickle, and always at risk of withering from the slightest mishap. Boys raised in poverty are less likely to escape it than girls.²⁵ Boys raised in poor or high-crime neighborhoods have worse long-term outcomes than girls.²⁶ And boys suffer more from single-parent childhoods, especially in fatherless homes, with lower grades and college enrollments, and more behavioral problems.²⁷

This fragility isn’t merely a childhood phenomenon — it’s lifelong. The fact that men live shorter lives or commit nearly 80 percent of violent crimes is only the tip of the iceberg. Women are able to derive more meaning and fulfillment from a broader range of sources than men.²⁸ Men, on the other hand, place all of their existential eggs in the same couple baskets, romantic relationships foremost among them. The popular conception of women as clingy, emotionally-needy basket cases and men as solitary, gruff, and stoic is mostly bullshit. As Reeves writes:

“Economically independent women can now flourish whether they are wives or not. Wifeless men, by contrast, are often a mess. Compared to married men, their health is worse, their employment rates are lower, and their social networks are weaker.²⁹ Drug-related deaths among never-married men more than doubled in a decade from 2010.³⁰ Divorce, now twice as likely to be initiated by wives as husbands, is psychologically harder on men than women.”³¹

Men are also 11 percentage points likelier than women to rank being married, or the aspiration to become married, as “very important to me.”³² The second-wave feminists appear to have been right when they said that women don’t need men. Many women may prefer, enjoy, and love men, but they don’t need them. Not anymore. The reverse cannot be said. By the data, without a man, most women get on fine. Without a woman, most men become boys, and unhappy boys, at that.

I could go on, but I think you get the picture. Amid this deluge of data, it’s hard not to walk away with the impression that, in every sense outside of physical strength, women are the stronger sex than men. Stronger mentally, stronger emotionally, and stronger in spirit, not to mention more self-sufficient, more disciplined, and exceedingly more adaptable. Those old t-shirts and bumper stickers from the 90’s that read “Men were the rough draft”, referencing the Genesis story of God creating Adam first, and then making Eve from his rib, turn out to be incorrect on every level. Every human embryo starts out as female, and only through later hormonal modification can it develop into a male. Men aren’t nature’s rough draft, they’re the disappointing sequel. They have more explosions, special effects, and battle scenes, but they don’t quite work as well as the original.

At any given point in history, no matter how poorly they were treated or repressed, women always seem to find a way to get by. And when the institutional barriers clipping their wings are removed, they soar — and they soar right past men. The moment every aspect of society ceases to be orchestrated in men’s favor, on the other hand, men wither, wilt, act out, spiral, and die. Framed in such terms, well, it’s pathetic, and more than a little contemptible. That was my initial reaction. But it is what it is, and when cooler heads prevailed, so also came genuine concern and compassion. I don’t see how anyone could call themselves a decent person who could look at this state of affairs in cold indifference. And yet, many do.

The Problem With Feminism

Part of the subtitle of Boys and Men is “why it matters”, which says it all right there. That anyone should need convincing to care about half the human population should both stun and appall us. It comes as no surprise that the public policy and nonprofit worlds spend very little time, energy, and money addressing any of the male-centric problems Reeves explores. The society that feminism has shepherded is one of greater freedom, gender equality, fairness, and opportunity. Women’s rights go hand in hand with most of the metrics that make for the kinds of open, liberal, prosperous countries people desire to live in. Smuggled in with the cause of gender equality, however, has been a raft of negative sentiments about men.

The prevailing “progressive” view that has taken root over decades is that men are swinish animals and masculinity is a moral defect. Men are toxic, we are told. Women’s sensibilities and tastes are acceptable — men’s are “problematic.” Female sexuality is sensual and beautiful — male sexuality is disgusting, perverted, and predatory. In a perverse manifestation of the clichéd feminine instinct to “fix” their men writ large, every biological instinct and intuition men have is recast as an evil that must be corrected.

The problem is, as pestilential as we are told masculinity is, this new-and-not-so-improved modern man is one that women find less appealing. The percentage of women who are married has been steadily declining as the percentage of never-married women has been rising. While women continue to shatter glass ceilings, leaving more and more men in the dust, the social expectation that a man will earn more than his wife remains widespread among both women and men. The inability of many men to out-earn female (would-be) partners is estimated to contribute to the 29 percent decline in marriage rates over the past three decades.³³ The 40 percent drop in marriage among US adults aged 25 to 29 from 1960 to 2013 is estimated to be explained by the fall in male earnings relative to the previous generation.³⁴

Men as breadwinners is becoming an outmoded and untenable social model, but while the economic conditions change, these traditionalist expectations remain. Women are less likely to be with a man who earns less than them, and such men feel less confident in pursuing relationships to begin with. Women are now free from the economic second-class status of yesteryear’s patriarchy, but they still expect you to pick up the check, thank you very much.

There are no shortage of self-serving double standards to be found in modern feminist thought. Reeves writes about the selective application of individualism in feminist and left-wing circles, where the problems faced by women are laid at the feet of systemic issues while the problems of men are attributed to their own mistakes and failures. Every material or achievement gap that women fall on the wrong side of must be collapsed, but when the reverse is the case, the disparity is quickly skipped over. Women’s problems deserve serious attention and public action, while men’s problems, when they are acknowledged at all, are met with a scornfully flung wad of bootstraps. To many on today’s feminist left, gender equality is a zero-sum battle of the sexes. No matter how far they come, and how much men stagnate, women must always be represented as oppressed, and men as the oppressors; and men’s issues must be given short (or no) shrift, lest they take away from those of women.

Feminists will be quick to point to the persistence of the male-female wage gap as evidence that we still live under patriarchy, but, as Reeves points out, the pay gap is actually a parenting gap. The gender pay gap among childless young adults has disappeared,³⁵ and it now only manifests itself upon the birth of a child with whichever parent takes time away from work to care for their offspring.³⁶ In today’s economy, if you do the same job and work the same hours, you earn the same salary. The feminists have won, but as with all left-wing movements, they dare not admit their success, because doing so would force them to relinquish the power of grievance — a power whose stock rises by the year.

As for toxic masculinity, notice just how often the communities or subcultures that devolve into the most cutthroat, woke circular firing squads seem to be majority female. At the end of the day, people are individuals, and suffering is suffering. That includes the suffering of men. The ethical blind spots, callous indifferences, self-serving double standards, collectivized guilt, and essentialist rankings of moral worth inherent to left-identitarianism are more toxic than anything in masculinity could ever be. Our choice, as Richard Reeves notes, is not women’s issues or men’s issues. We can do both, and indeed, we must. If sensible voices won’t take seriously the problems facing boys and men, we leave the far-right as the only place where such men can feel seen.

What Can We Do About It?

One of the most disconcerting aspects of the problems highlighted in Of Boys and Men is how intractable they seem to be. As Reeves documents, many programs and policy interventions to expand the access and affordability of educational opportunities show promising results for young women but not for men. Indeed, even pro-male affirmative action in college admissions has not reversed the decline. In 1980, male high schoolers were more likely than female students to say they expected to get a four-year degree. By 2000, that gap had flipped.³⁷ Reeves writes: “Forget all the old stereotypes about men with wanderlust, out on the road. Women are the explorers now... It is not that men have fewer opportunities. It is that they are not taking them.” At its core, what ails boys and men is a psychological malaise of sorts. Men have lost their mojo. You can’t give it back to them with a handout.

We see this trend even on the political right, where the exaggerated testosterone-drenched machismo is a feeble and impotent act of overcompensation so colossal it can be seen from space. Over the past hundred years, men have seen themselves diminish. Their primary advantage is physical strength, but machines now do most of our heavy lifting. And with the much-needed advent of gender equality, men have discovered just how much more driven, focused, well-adjusted, and competent women are. The material and social realities of the twenty-first century have created an environment in which the natural assets of womanhood are more useful than those of manhood. Lacking the resilience and adaptability of the other sex, men are now in crisis (note that there has never been a “crisis of femininity” among women).

Reeves grapples with these problems, tip-toeing around the admittedly provocative conclusion I have drawn here — that there is, in fact, something “wrong” with men, just not in a moral sense like leftists espouse — but he struggles to fully wrap his arms around the issue. He does as good a job as anyone operating under the constraints of scholarly and institutional respectability possibly could. His careful attention to detail and relentless effort to see both sides of every issue is admirable. He includes every caveat, hedge, mitigating factor, and silver lining imaginable. He hits every hyper-nuanced note a thoughtful audience would want to hear, but without coming off as wishy-washy. Richard Reeves threads more needles than a seamstress, but the quilt we are left with is a patchwork thing with holes in it.

The final chapters produce a series of ideas that may be able to help. Reeves suggests that boys should start school a year later than girls to help shrink the cognitive development gap. He recommends getting more male teachers into the education system at every level to better relate to and encourage boys. He makes the case for more generous paid parental leave policies for fathers, and the need for more flexible work arrangements that allow dads to spend more time with their kids. He argues for a culture change in which men are viewed as more than “walking ATMs”; where their value is measured by more than their income. He proposes adopting the same raft of initiatives, programs, scholarships, and grants that have been so successful at increasing the number of women in male-dominated STEM fields (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) to get more men into female-dominated HEAL fields (health, education, administration, and literacy).

One obstacle to getting more men into HEAL (which may prove to be the “jobs of the future” more so than STEM) is that in this domain, men face discrimination, bias, and stigma. This must change, and change fast. We have automated and outsourced millions of jobs that men are most suited to. In response, we have told these men to pivot to STEM and learn to code, glossing over the fact that there are limited jobs in these fields, that we are actively pushing to increase female representation in all of them, and that many of these men have no aptitude for such work. To make matters worse, we regard men as effeminate sissies (e.g. nursing) or perverts (e.g. early childhood education) for seeking employment in HEAL fields. And if these men just give up altogether, we regard them as incel manbaby losers. Something has to give here. We are presenting a growing number of men with a complex decision tree where every conceivable choice terminates in a middle finger and a “the future is female” shirt. This will not turn out well, I promise you.

We don’t often change our minds, but Of Boys and Men is one of those rare books so well-researched and argued that it can change the way you think about these issues. Written in clear prose any layperson can grasp, but laden in nuanced data more educated audiences can appreciate, Reeves’ proposals are a start, but they aren’t a true solution. That solution begins with a culture change, and cultures change one conversation at a time. Of Boys and Men is nothing if not a conversation starter. I’ll leave you with one final excerpt from the epilogue, which is worth quoting at length:

“Doing more for boys and men does not require an abandonment of the ideal of gender equality. In fact, it is a natural extension of it. The problem with feminism, as a liberation movement, is not that it has ‘gone too far.’ It is that it has not gone far enough. Women’s lives have been recast. Men’s lives have not. We need, as I said in the introduction, a positive vision of masculinity for a postfeminist world. We also need to be grown up enough as a culture to recognize that big changes, even positive ones, have repercussions. Dealing with these is not only possible, but necessary; that is simply the nature of progress. In this case, it means reforming an education system that no longer works well for boys, and helping men adjust to the genuine dislocation caused by the loss of traditional male roles. We must tackle gender-specific challenges and inequalities in both directions.

“Right now, there is a distinct lack of responsible leadership on this front. Politics has become like trench warfare, both sides fearing even the slightest loss of any ground. While moms and dads worry about their kids, our leaders are trapped in their partisan positions. Progressives see any move to provide more help to boys and men as a distraction from the fight for girls and women. Conservatives see any move to provide more help to girls and women as motivated by a desire to put men down. My hope is that away from the heat and noise of tribal politics, we can come to a shared recognition that many of our boys and men are in real trouble, not of their own making, and need help.”

Read this book.

See also: “Luck All the Way Down: The Problem With Meritocracy”

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1. Nicole M. Fortin, Philip Oreopoulus, and Shelley Phipps, “Leaving Boys Behind: Gender Disparities in High Academic Achievement,” Working Paper 19331 (Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research, August 2013).

2. National Center for Education Statistics, “Number and Percentage of Public High School Graduates Taking Dual Credit, Advanced Placement (AP), and International Baccalaureate (IB) Courses in High School and Average Credits Earned, by Selected Student and School Characteristics: 2000, 2005, and 2009,” 2009 High School Transcript Study (HSTS), U.S. Department of Education.

3. Brown University, “Students by Gender,” 2020–2021; Columbia University, “Enrollment by School and Gender,” Fall 2020; Cornell University, “Composition Dashboard Fall 2019”; Dartmouth College, “Class Profile & Testing,” Class of 2025 Enrollment; Jessica M. Wang and Brian P. Yu, “Makeup of the Class,” Harvard Crimson, 2021; University of Pennsylvania, “Penn Diversity Facts and Figures,” Fall 2020; Princeton University, “Diversity: Gender,” 2020 Degree-Seeking Students; Yale University, “By the Numbers,” Fall 2020.

4. National Center for Education Statistics, “Graduation Rate from First Institution Attended for First-Time, Full-Time Bachelor’s Degree-Seeking Students at 4-Year Postsecondary Institutions, by Race/Ethnicity, Time to Completion, Sex, Control of Institution, and Percentage of Applications Accepted: Selected Cohort Entry Years, 1996 through 2012,” Digest of Education Statistics, Table 326.10.

5. National Center for Education Statistics, U.S. Department of Education, “Degrees Conferred by Postsecondary Institutions, by Level of Degree and Sex of Student: Selected Years, 1869–70 through 2029–30,” (July 2020).

6. National Center for Education Statistics, “Degrees Conferred by Degree-Granting Institutions, by Level of Degree and Sex of Student,” Table 318.20, July 2020.

7. National Center for Education Statistics, “Number of Postsecondary Institutions Conferring Doctor’s Degrees in Dentistry, Medicine, and Law, and Number of Such Degrees Conferred, by Sex of Student: Selected Years, 1949–50 through 2018–19.” See also Higher Education General Information Survey (HEGIS), “ ‘Degrees and Other Formal Awards Conferred’ Surveys from 1965–66 through 1985–86 and IPEDS Fall 2019 Completions Component,” July 2020.

8. Dave Bergman, “Gender in College Admissions—Do Men or Women Have an Edge?,” College Transitions, May 21, 2021.

9. Sarah A. Donovan and David H. Bradley, Real Wage Trends, 1979 to 2019 (Congressional Research Service, 2020).

10. These figures are for prime-age males, from Q1 1970 to Q4 2019, seasonally adjusted. Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Series ID: LNS11300061Q.

11. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Labor Force Participation Rate—High School Graduates, No College, 25 Yrs. & over, Men.” Series ID: LNU01327676Q.

12. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook. See also: Mark Muro and others, Automation and Artificial Intelligence, (Brookings Institution, January 2019, p. 44.

13. Sarah O’Connor, “The Robot-Proof Skills That Give Women an Edge in the Age of AI,” Financial Times, February 12, 2019.

14. Another 4.5% were living with a father only, up from 1%. See Paul Hemez and Channell Washington, “Percentage and Number of Children Living with Two Parents Has Dropped since 1968,” U.S. Census Bureau, April 12, 2021.

15. Gretchen Livingston and Kim Parker, “A Tale of Two Fathers: More Are Active, but More Are Absent,” Pew Research Center, June 15, 2021.”

16. U.S. Census Bureau, “Table F-22. Married-Couple Families with Wives’ Earnings Greater Than Husbands’ Earnings: 1981 to 2020,” in Current Population Survey, 1982 to 2021 Annual Social and Economic Supplements.

17. Joint Economic Committee, Long-Term Trends in Deaths of Despair, Social Capital Project Report 4-19 (September 2019). See data appendices.

18. Louann Brizendine, The Female Brain (New York: Harmony Books, 2017), p. 65. See also Elizabeth Vargas and Alan B. Goldberg, “The Truth behind Women’s Brains,” ABC News, October 5, 2006.

19. Gokcen Akyurek, “Executive Functions and Neurology in Children and Adolescents,” in Occupational Therapy: Therapeutic and Creative Use of Activity, ed. Meral Huri (London: IntechOpen, 2018), p. 38.

20. Liz Griffin, “The Developing Teenage Brain,” The School Superintendents Association, interview with Frances Jensen, chair of the department of neurology at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine, September 2017. See also Frances Jenson, The Teenage Brain (New York: HarperCollins, 2015): “Organization requires brain connectivity and integration, not just raw intelligence and synaptic power. Myelination plays a huge part in this, and as we have said earlier, it requires the better part of the first three decades of life to be fully completed. The time of greatest gender disparity in this process occurs during adolescence,” pp. 232–33.

21. Benjamin Zablotsky and others, “Prevalence and Trends of Developmental Disabilities among Children in the United States: 2009–2017,” Pediatrics (October 2019).

22. National Center for Education Statistics, “Percentage of Students at or above Selected National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) Reading Achievement Levels, by Grade and Selected Student Characteristics: Selected Years, 2005 through 2019,” Digest of Education Statistics, Table 221.20.

23. Men Adrift: Badly Educated Men in Rich Countries Have Not Adapted Well to Trade, Technology or Feminism,” The Economist, May 28, 2015.

24. W. Thomas Boyce, The Orchid and the Dandelion: Why Sensitive Children Face Challenges and How All Can Thrive (New York: Vintage, 2020).

25. Raj Chetty and others, “Race and Economic Opportunity in the United States: An Intergenerational Perspective,” Quarterly Journal of Economics (May 2020), online appendix table V. In every race category, boys are less likely than girls to escape intergenerational poverty, measured in terms of household income.

26. Raj Chetty and Nathaniel Hendren, “The Impacts of Neighborhoods on Intergenerational Mobility II: County-Level Estimates,” Quarterly Journal of Economics (February 2018), p. 1167.

27. Colter Mitchell and others, “Family Structure Instability, Genetic Sensitivity, and Child Well-Being,” American Journal of Sociology (January 2015). See also: William J. Doherty, Brian J. Willoughby and Jason L. Wilde, “Is the Gender Gap in College Enrollment Influenced by Nonmarital Birth Rates and Father Absence?,” Family Relations (April 2016).

28. Where Americans Find Meaning in Life: Detailed Tables,” Pew Research Center, November 20, 2018. For the gender breakdowns, see the detailed tables in the Appendix.

29. For health, see “Marriage and Men’s Health,” Harvard Health Publishing, June 5, 2019. For employment numbers, see “Labor Force Participation Rate—Never Married, Men,” BLS Data Viewer, Series ID: LNU01300149Q. For social networks, see Daniel A. Cox, “Emerging Trends and Enduring Patterns in American Family Life,” The Survey Center on American Life, American Enterprise Institute, February 9, 2022. See also Christopher J. Einolf and Deborah Philbrick, “Generous or Greedy Marriage? A Longitudinal Study of Volunteering and Charitable Giving,” Journal of Marriage and Family (June 2014).

30. These figures are for prime-age men (25–54). Patrick T. Brown, “Opioids and the Unattached Male,” City Journal, January 14, 2022.

31. Michael J. Rosenfeld, “Who Wants the Breakup? Gender and Breakup in Heterosexual Couples,” in Social Networks and the Life Course: Integrating the Development of Human Lives and Social Relational Networks, ed. Duane F. Alwin, Diane Felmlee, and Derek Kreager (New York: Springer, 2018), pp. 221–243. See also Daniel S. Felix, W. David Robinson, and Kimberly J. Jarzynka, “The Influence of Divorce on Men’s Health,” Journal of Men’s Health (November 2013).

32. Mary Jo Murphy and Megan Thee-Brenan, “Poll Finds Most Voters Embrace Milestone for Women, If Not Hillary Clinton,” New York Times, September 16, 2016.

33. Marianne Bertrand, Emir Kamenica, and Jessica Pan, “Gender Identity and Relative Income within Households,” Quarterly Journal of Economics (May 2015), p. 572.

34. Steven Ruggles, “Patriarchy, Power, and Pay: The Transformation of American Families, 1800–2015,” Demography (December 2015), table 2, p. 1814.

35. John Iceland and Ilana Redstone, “The Declining Earnings Gap between Young Women and Men in the United States, 1979–2018,” Social Science Research (November 1, 2020). See also Press Association, “Women in Their 20s Earn More Than Men of the Same Age, Study Finds,” The Guardian, August 28, 2015; and Sarah Kliff, “A Stunning Chart Shows the True Cause of the Gender Wage Gap,” Vox, February 19, 2018.

36. Heather Long, “80 Nations Set Quotas for Female Leaders. Should the U.S. Be Next?,” Washington Post, November 3, 2021. Se also: Ylva Moberg, “Does the Gender Composition in Couples Matter for the Division of Labor After Childbirth?,” Working Paper 2016:8 (Institute for Evaluation of Labour Market and Education Policy, 2016). See also Martin Eckhoff Andresen and Emily Nix, “What Causes the Child Penalty? Evidence from Adopting and Same-Sex Couples,” Journal of Labor Economics (accepted for publication).

37. Catherine E. Freeman, “Trends in Educational Equity of Girls & Women: 2004,” National Center for Education Statistics, Institute of Education Sciences, November 2004, p. 66. For later figures see National Center for Education Statistics, High School Longitudinal Study of 2009 (HSLS).