While having a drink with a friend in a neighborhood bar a few years ago, a distraught-looking woman approached us and started chatting.

We engaged in typical barroom banter until she introduced herself as the mother of a guy I had met in the same bar almost two years before. The guy in question, Mitch, introduced himself to me then because he recognized me from a photograph that accompanied my column in a local newspaper. Our conversation lasted only a few minutes but I remembered the encounter because Mitch seemed to be a troubled guy. 

While talking about her son, Mitch’s mother told me her son described his meeting me then with the words, “I talked with the guy from the newspaper.” 

She also described Mitch’s suicide note to her. At this she became very emotional and shed tears. 

By the end of the night I had promised Mitch’s mom that I would check out a Suicide Prevention event she was organizing in another part of the neighborhood. After that I thought about the suicides that had affected my life in some way. 

A school chum of my brother’s who shot himself while a student at a Washington D.C. college in the 1970s. This dean’s list student as a young teen used to decorate his bicycle with Barry Goldwater for President bumper stickers,

A “full of life” woman friend of mine who died of a prescription drug and alcohol overdose in the bathtub of her Fishtown home. 

An uncle of mine who hung himself in a motel after years of drifting from job to job along with fighting bouts of depression and alcoholism. I was fourteen when my mother announced his death. He was a tall, good-looking man who resembled the actor Tyrone Power. 

But Mitch’s problem, as I learned sometime later, was an addiction to heroin that he could not shake. 

Sometime later I happened upon an article in Psychology Today by Dr. Miles Groth, who posited that suicide among young males is four times more common than among young females. Not only that, but suicide is occurring at younger ages, in the early teens. With males, the problem seems to be the relationship between fathers and sons, such as young males not having had a father in boyhood.

The article cited other issues as well, such as body image and relationships with women. “Young males are very impulsive, more than females, and they act without thinking.” 

Dr. Groth elaborated on why men and boys have come to hate themselves.

“This is a result of the image portrayed of them and of the roles they are compelled to play, but also given what they hear about themselves and, especially as young boys, come to believe about themselves. As a result of self-hate, the suicide rate of boys and men has increased at an alarming rate over the last twenty years. It is four to six times higher in teenage males than in female peers. The life expectancy of males is about seven years less than for females, compared to a two-year difference a century ago.) College courses that are pro-male are now necessary to offset the misandric curriculum.” 

Misandry means contempt for men but you don’t hear that word very much these days because it has been trumped by the word misogyny, which rates number one in the hierarchy of usage, thanks mainly to the antics of third wave feminism. 

September may be National Suicide Month, but every month needs to be a suicide month of sorts. 

The transitory nature of many of life’s problems leading some to take their own lives — a broken love affair, a job loss, drug addiction (“There’s no hope for me”), the loss of financial security or even a startling medical diagnosis — can over time turn into manageable situations. 

Exploring the issue further, I came across a Huff Post article on the same subject.

Studies show men are less likely than women to say that they would tell anyone they were considering suicide. Here we have the reworking of that old stereotype: men hold things inside and are less likely to reveal their feelings. Isolation makes young men feel inadequate and angry. This can sometimes lead to thoughts of self-directed violence. 

An essential side note to the topic is the current role of men and boys in American society. Since the rise of certain strands of militant feminism (with or without shaved heads), this role has been devalued, even though a certain devaluation of men and boys has always been present in our culture. 

The institution of Father’s Day in 1966 as opposed to the institution of Mother’s Day in 1905 is one small example of the value placed on fathers. 

Why did it take so long to recognize fathers?

On some college campuses it’s not popular to talk about men’s issues because men are seen as the enemy. They are seen as the primary advocates of sexism, as perpetrators of rape, so called male privilege and the patriarchy. Google university lectures about boys and men in contemporary society and you’ll come up with a University of Ottawa lecture that drew hecklers. The hecklers believed “men’s issues” were not something to take seriously because men have it made in the shade. When you’re part of the patriarchy, a red carpet is rolled out for you wherever you go.

There is something bizarre happening to boys and men in contemporary American society. No matter where you turn, another alarming statistic points to the continued devaluation of men.

In 2022, the number of male high school graduates enrolled in college was 57 percent compared to 66 percent of their female counterparts. 

Niobe Way writes in her book, Deep Secrets: Boy’s Friendship and the Crisis of Connection that the problem with young American men can often be traced to:

“…The loss of the male role models… the father figure. The majority of children of divorce are raised by their moms. There are a portion of children who have very limited contact with their dad. The loss of a male role model is very significant for young men who are developing their gender identities.” 

Much of the problem then goes back to single-mother households.

But say this in front of a television audience you would likely cause an uprising, as Ann Coulter discovered several years ago while talking about her book “Demonic” on Father Albert’s show ‘Hot Under the Collar.’ 

Furious women in the audience pillaged Coulter as she manifestly stated, and proved with Coulter-fortified statistics that “Women who get pregnant out of wedlock should give up their kids for adoption.” 

Facts hurt peoples’ feelings but that didn’t stop Coulter who added, “If you were in the womb right now and if you could choose whether to be black, white, rich, poor, the one thing you should hope for as a child in the womb is: ‘My parents are married.’” 

Thom Nickels is a Philadelphia-based journalist/columnist and the 2005 recipient of the AIA Lewis Mumford Award for Architectural Journalism. He writes for City Journal, New York, and Frontpage Magazine. Thom Nickels is the author of fifteen books, including “Literary Philadelphia” and ”From Mother Divine to the Corner Swami: Religious Cults in Philadelphia.” His latest is “Death in Philadelphia: The Murder of Kimberly Ernest.” He is currently at work on “The Last Romanian Princess and Her World Legacy,” about the life of Princess Ileana of Romania.