Boys growing up in a world without men

Increasingly, boys are growing up with almost no male influence in their lives, says this article by Steward Drakers in The Guardian. Some fathers are absent but others who are technically present are so little involved that they may as well be absent, he suggests. "At the sharp end, the rock face, there is hardly a man in sight. In their early years, up to puberty, authority is exercised on young men exclusively by women - shop assistants, teachers, health visitors, social workers and, of course, sisters and mothers," he writes.

And where are the men, he asks? "They are strutting their suited stuff in the corridors, the clinics, the consulting rooms; they are handing out prescriptions, devising initiatives, formulating policies," he declares.....