Childhood well-being is dependent upon the development of positive interpersonal and intrapersonal relationships and the maturation of stage-appropriate capacities throughout an individual’s youth and adolescence (Raghavan & Alexandrova, 2015). Further, the development and maturation of features of childhood well-being is conditioned by the social ecology in which a child is raised, itself significantly influenced by family structure and parental perceptions of self-efficacy as a provider, teacher, or nurturer (Raghavan & Alexandrova, 2015). Research indicates that married-couple households, having enhanced means for human capital investment in children, cultivate social ecologies most conducive to integral childhood development, while other structures, such as single-mother households, are correlated with greater frequency of inferior outcomes among indicators as well-being and reduced human capital investment capacity (Wilcox et al., 2024; Dufur et al., 2022; Nieuwenhuis & Maldonado, 2018; Kerney & Levine, 2017). Further, when an individual experiences anxieties regarding their efficacy as a parent, notwithstanding their actual capacities, relationships between parents and children may be marked by tension and inferior outcomes may result (Nomaguchi & Milkie, 2020; Chau & Giallo, 2015).
Young Men Are Looking for Heroes; We’re Giving Them Villains
Over the past 12 years, teaching at universities across the country, I have watched something shift in the young men sitting in front of me. They are not apathetic. They are not lazy. They are lost, and they know it. They come into my classroom searching for the same things young men have always searched...