Why Won't Boys Read?

Building Boys Bulletin 7-13-26

A recent Parents article asks, "Why Are Boys Behind in Reading? The "answer," according to the article, is largely parents:

Consider early parenting activities…A 2013 research study of parenting activities in the U.S., the U.K., and Canada found that parents subconsciously spent “significantly more time” reading, learning letters, and using numbers with girls from infancy.

What Boy Parents Know (& Experts Still Need to Learn)

Forcibly restraining a child in your lap so you can read a book, when the child would rather explore the room, isn’t likely to lead to a lifelong love of reading.

Putting paintbrushes in the hands of boys who aren’t interested in painting won’t lead to greater academic achievement; instead, it’s likely to create a distaste of painting.

And playing letter games with a child who’d rather play with cars isn’t going to help the child learn his letters any faster; instead, it’ll create feelings of frustration.

I wrote those words back in 2016, when another unhelpful, misguided article declared that “Boys Should Be Treated ‘More Like Girls’ to Stop Them Falling Behind in School.”

Ten years on, some researchers, journalists, and policymakers are still quoting the same 2013 study to make the same point, ignoring a few essential points:

1. Correlation doesn’t equal causation. The authors of the 2013 report, in fact, said “We cannot tell from the available data whether early gender gaps are the result of biological or social processes.” They also noted (in bolded letters!) that “the measurable differences in parental interaction with boys and girls at the age of three can account for only 10% of the gender gap in language at the start of primary school.”

2. The same parent can sit down and read to their children the same amount of time each day/week/year, and each child will respond differently. One of my four sons gravitated toward stories and reading from the start, and by age three or four, if you handed him a bunch of books, he’d sit there and look at them and try to copy the letters onto a page. The boy born right after him could not sit still for a story. He’d slide onto the floor and play with action figures, cars, or dinosaurs. It looked like he wasn’t paying attention at all, but when I’d stop reading, he was always the first to tell me to keep doing. And he knew exactly what was going on in the story. But would be look at books independently at age 3 and 4? Nope. That boy preferred to build with them.

3. Schools and reading standards are often misaligned with male development. Although the expert quoted in the Parents article is skeptical of the fact that biology may have anything to do with the discrepancy in reading proficiency between boys and girls, it’s been well-documented that:

   1. Boys mature more slowly than girls do. The parts of the brain that handle language mature later in boys than in girls. Boys’ fine motor skills tend to develop later than their gross motor skills. No wonder, then, that so many 5- and 6-year-old boys struggle with reading. We expect them to achieve something their brains and bodies aren’t yet ready to do.

   2. Boys are statistically more likely to experience punishment than success in school. Boys make up the bulk of school disciplinary referrals, suspensions, and expulsions, from preschool on. Boys fall behind in reading and writing almost immediately (see above). They (& their teachers) begin to view them as failures.

   3. Boys’ interests and reading preferences often aren’t welcome in many schools. Some school still look down on comic books and graphic novels. Few, if any schools, “count” reading online (or in video games) as reading. Most school prioritize stories and novels over non-fiction, even though, statistically speaking, many boys and men prefer non-fiction to fiction.

4. Boys aren’t influenced by parents alone, but the entire culture. Right now, reading is viewed by many as a “feminine” activity. More women than men read books. Reading more books to my sons at home may help, but it’s unlikely to completely counter the overwhelming cultural messaging that implies “reading is for girls.” Or “reading is dumb.”

Do Boys Need to Read?

According to The Atlantic, we are already living in a post-literate age. Its August 2026 cover story is “The End of Reading is Here,” with author Rose Horowitch writing “the age of reading might be a short anomaly in human history.”

Photo by Tanya Gorelova via Pexels

That’s obviously bad news for me, a reader and writer who’s just spilled hundreds of words many people will never read. But I think Horowitch is on to something - & I think our boys know it too.

Increasingly, information is shared and conveyed via audio and video. Very few people read for fun or fulfillment. Very few jobs require in-depth reading. You can ask your phone or computer to read an article or report aloud to you. You can ask AI to summarize the main points of a report, rather than slogging through the whole thing.

Trying to convince our boys that reading is a necessary, valuable skill when they live and function in a society in which they almost never need to read is….an uphill battle, to say the least.

If we want our boys (and girls) to read, WE need to collectively value reading. WE need to read. And we need to support the unique development of children (and their families) instead of blaming parents for things beyond their control.

Here’s to building boys!

Jen

IN THE NEWS

Heavy Video Gaming is Not Linked to Cognitive Harms in Teens, but Gaming Addiction Is

Highlights:

• “A teenager who plays with focus a complex strategy game for many hours does something very different from one who feels unable to stop playing despite negative consequences.”

• “The types of games the adolescents played mattered significantly. Strategy and role-playing games were associated with better reasoning and verbal skills.”

• “Games that emphasize building and exploration, such as Minecraft, were associated with higher verbal and visual-spatial performance…Competitive action games like Fortnite and Brawl Stars were associated with lower reasoning and visual-spatial scores, alongside higher rates of gaming addiction.”

• “Because the research is cross-sectional, meaning it only captures a single moment in time, it cannot prove cause and effect. It is entirely possible that adolescents who already possess high reasoning skills are naturally drawn to complex strategy games, rather than the games themselves causing an increase in intelligence. Similarly, preexisting cognitive vulnerabilities might predispose certain individuals to develop gaming addictions.”

The “Code Red Crisis” Facing Young Men & How to Help Them

Highlights:

• “87 per cent of 15- to 19-year-old males in Australia are consuming explicit content on at least a weekly basis, if not more.”

• “When I do that, I’m becoming the man the algorithm wants me to be, not the man that I really want to be.”

New York Boys Club Has a Time-Tested Recipe to Protect Members’ Mental Health

Highlights:

• “It’s rather ordinary. But that’s the story… BCNY is a shelter from the storm for many of its members. There’s nothing especially innovative about what it does; with the necessary updates, it has been doing essentially the same thing since the 19th century, generation in and generation out.”

• “Some of the solutions are really simple…The real magic of Boys’ Club is the sense of belonging and the friendships.”

• “The main ingredients of BCNY appear to have stayed mostly the same: space, care, structure, and a sense of belonging.”

• “The halls are a riot of high-fives, bro hugs, back pats. Most of the staff dotting the building in red T-shirts are young men, and many are alumni of BCNY clubhouses:”