Men now earn 39 percent of college degrees while the median annual earnings of a man with a high-school diploma have dropped 26 percent in the past 40 years.

The consequences are dire. Fifteen- to 19-year-old boys commit suicide at four times the rate of girls. Ninety-three percent of those in prison are men, and, according to the authors, “more black boys between ten and twenty are killed by homicide than by the next nine leading causes of death combined.”

As civil-rights activist and community-development leader Robert Woodson says, “If you devalue your life, you’ll either take your own, or you’ll take someone else’s.” Our young men, he adds, are “dying in acts of self-hatred.”

The absence of fathers — this includes the fact that they do not get equal time with their children — is the primary driver of the boy crisis. Both mothers and fathers are indispensable and contribute uniquely to raising children.

With 40 percent of children born out of wedlock and custody laws favoring mothers, more children are missing Dad’s, rather than Mom’s, influence. Just some of the effects of dad deprivation include higher rates of suicide, drug use, violence, hypertension, poverty, lack of empathy, and ADHD.