Family+Relationships: What about the boys ?

It's generally agreed that there are few trickier tasks than getting teenage boys to share their feelings or, for that matter, answer questions with more than one-word grunts. Maybe that's because we don't ask the right questions.

That possibility may occur to those viewing "Journeyman," a locally produced documentary that premieres Thursday. The one-hour film follows Mike Ericson and Joe Max, two troubled, fatherless teens who move from desperation to transformation with the help of caring male mentors.

In one sad scene, Ericson and Max join a circle of boys invited to share, without reproach, any thoughts they'd like to regarding their absent fathers.

"Why? Why'd you leave? What'd we do?" one boy immediately shouts.

"How would you guys like it if your father just left?" asks another. " ... Married someone else and took care of his [new] kids better than he ever would've of you?"

And this: "I still love you, Dad. I don't hate you. How pathetic is that?"

Yes, there's a lot going on inside those heads. But is anybody listening?

The news of late has been very good for young women. Census figures released in August show American females graduating from college in record numbers, closing the wage gap in many large cities and crafting futures filled with promise. But behind those headlines is a troubling subtext: Their male counterparts are falling farther behind, academically, economically and socially. And while absent fathers represent only one popular explanation, some charge that even fathers in the home, too busy or too distracted by their own struggles, are feeding the problem.

Media expert David Walsh estimates that most boys spend no more than 30 minutes a week in one-on-one conversation with their fathers, compared with up to 44 hours a week playing video games, watching TV and instant-messaging their friends.

"We need to train fathers to be real fathers," agreed Michael Obsatz, 66, a retired Macalester College professor who voluntarily mentors 35 boys and men locally and across the country. "Men need to be taught to be involved, through spending time, listening and being available to their sons -- and daughters." The legal system, too, must get in the game, he said, by looking at custody issues, "and the assumptions [made] that women are better parents than men."

Not a new concern

Worrying about boys is nothing new. Obsatz has led men's and boys' support groups for more than three decades, and notes that "we've always had gangs, guys killing guys, violence against females."

The difference is that the repercussions of ignoring boys' unique needs are now showing up in measurable ways.

Michael Gurian, co-author of "The Minds of Boys: Saving Our Sons From Falling Behind in School and Life," said boys get up to 70 percent of D's and F's in the classroom and create 90 percent of classroom discipline problems; in addition, 80 percent of high school dropouts are boys. Many boys become depressed or sexually promiscuous, resort to drugs or alcohol to numb their pain, "or act out, sometimes violently. Everybody knows a boy who is struggling," Gurian says.

At greatest risk are young men of color. While 86 percent of black men ages 25 and older had graduated from Minnesota high schools, according to 2005 data, only 24 percent were college graduates. The numbers were 26 percent and 16 percent for American Indian males, and 54 percent and 13 percent for Hispanic or Latino males.

The price of that plunge is steep, said Paul Anton, chief economist for Wilder Research, a division of the Wilder Foundation in St. Paul. "If a kid does not finish high school," he said, "he is essentially tearing up a check for a quarter-million dollars," which is the present value of the added expected lifetime earnings for graduates. "It's tough in 2007 to make ends meet on a 10th-grade education."

It's not just school and work where boys face long odds. The dating game is changing, too. Social commentator David Brooks recently wrote about a "shift in the balance of power" between young men and women, which has "fundamentally scrambled the courtship rituals." Women, he said "can get many of the things they want [income, status, identity] without marriage."

Not that women are especially happy about their struggle to find what Brooks calls "a suitably accomplished mate." Kevin Obsatz, the 28-year-old director of "Journeyman" and Michael Obsatz's son, recently spoke with two good female friends, who are "pretty and smart and making good livings. They are so frustrated by men their age," he said, "because they can't seem to find any guys interested in actually having an adult relationship."

'Not a contest'

The solution is not, of course, to pull girls back (which is good, because they're so not going there). Instead, a concerted effort to continue to challenge and support girls, while also meeting boys where they live, seems most promising.

"It's not a contest," Obsatz said. "Both males and females have been deprived differently -- women from having external power and men from having internal power. When you don't have both, you have problems. Empathy is a good trait for everyone."

And its absence can have horrific consequences. In one of Journeyman's pivotal scenes, 17-year-old Max, whose father left when he was a toddler, finds the courage at a mentoring retreat to confess how his anger, and a baseball bat, destroyed the life of another boy. Don't place all the blame on Max, though, said "Journeyman" producer Charlie Borden, who financed the two-year project on credit cards and his job as a Metro Transit bus driver.

"Joe didn't get this way by himself," said Borden, who also volunteers with the Boys to Men mentoring network (www.boystomen.org). "Society teaches [boys] what to value, and that's 'Be tough and independent, don't rely on anyone else for help, dominate others, don't cry." What boys need, he said, is something altogether different: permission to be vulnerable, and modeling by adult males of how to be emotionally connected, respectful of their bodies and beings.

Fortunately, the takeaway from "Journeyman" isn't despondency, but hope. Ericson, who learned at age 12 that his father "blew his brains out with a shotgun," struggled with suicidal thoughts himself. Now 20, he's living at home and working toward a degree in architectural drafting at Hennepin Technical College. He assesses his progress candidly: "I'm getting there."

Max, 19, is a new father, determined to do right by his child, and wise enough to seek assistance from many supportive male influences now encircling him.

"The message of the movie is that boys are amazingly resilient," Obsatz said. "There are a lot of organizations and people taking interest in young men and helping them make good choices. The issue is that there are more boys who need it than men who show up. Part of manhood is taking responsibility for the next generation."

Gail Rosenblum • 612-673-7350