Ikea Shoe Racks and the Meaning that Comes from Making Things

One of my biggest flaws is that I’m terrible at fixing and building things. Given my inadequacies in this area, I was excited to grow as a person and put together the shoe rack that Jackie and I purchased for our new apartment. To be sure, Ikea furniture isn’t rocket science but, for me at least (and this is embarrassing to write), it was a project. There was such a sense of satisfaction in finishing it and in being able to fit Jackie’s many shoes into the white upright with sliding doors.

Around the same time that I worked on the shoe rack, I read Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male Is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do About It. The act of reading this book by Richard Reeves, a scholar at the left-of-center Brookings Institute and a father to three boys, coupled with the creation of the shoe rack, got me thinking about the broader problems facing the modern male and the importance of the physical creation.

To be sure, things aren’t perfect for women. Men still dramatically outnumber women in CEO positions, and only 29% of members of Congress are women. Plus, women receive a disproportionately small share of VC funding. Most glaringly, we still haven’t had a woman president in 250 years. But even with these numbers, it’s shocking to see how women are doing better than men in the modern education system and in the modern economy.

Richard Reeves points out that girls are 14 percentage points more likely than boys to be "school ready" at age five, and there is an 11-point gap in reading proficiency by the end of eighth grade. Girls account for two-thirds of high-school students in the top 10% of their classes ranked by GPA, while the proportions are reversed at the bottom rung. Men are less likely to finish high school. One possible reason for the gap stems from how the modern school system rewards compliance, attentiveness, and organizational skills—traits that, on average, girls tend to develop earlier than boys. Also, boys, who are more likely to exhibit impulsive or high-energy behavior, are disproportionately subject to disciplinary actions.

The numbers from college are equally striking. In 1972, Congress passed Title IX — statute to promote gender equality in higher education. At the time, there was a 13 percentage-point gap in the proportion of bachelor's degrees going to men. By 2019, the gender gap was 15 points….but in the opposite direction. These days, women are earning more master’s degrees, MDs, and JDs than men are.

Meanwhile, the labor market has become a more hostile place for many men, especially for those with less education. “While women’s wages have risen across the board over the last four decades,” Reeves notes, “wages for men on most rungs of the earnings ladder have stagnated.” Roughly one-third of men are either unemployed or out of the workforce. More U.S. men ages 18 to 34 are now living with their parents than with romantic partners. In short, men, especially those without a college degree, have had trouble adjusting to a world that prizes emotional intelligence more so than it does brute strength and a strong back.

I came of age in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Back then, I was so optimistic about free trade with foreign nations and the changing economy. Sure, we would lose manufacturing jobs to Mexico and China, but this wouldn’t be a big deal because we would retrain Americans to work “better jobs” that would be easier on the back. I remember learning in Ken Rucker’s history class about the transition away from an agricultural economy. In the early 1800s, over 80 percent of the American population worked on the farms; at the end of the 19th century, about a third of Americans did; today the number is about four percent. Although a fraction of Americans work in the agricultural industry compared to 200 years ago, we produce vastly more food at a much lower cost. Purchasing power has increased dramatically and that’s all that mattered. So just as the transition from an agriculture economy to an industrial economy raised living standards, the transition to an information and service economy would raise living standards too.

It was in 2013, during a campaign for Maryland State Delegate in which I talked to hundreds and hundreds of voters, that I came to understand the tragic error we made with some of the free trade deals and the push to get China into the WTO. It was during this campaign that I came to understood how important it is to push young men especially away from manufacturing jobs. More importantly, I came to appreciate the bigger mistake we made in pushing men toward college and away from being electricians, plumbers, carpenters, welders, etc. But looking back, I viewed the entire issue through an economic lens instead of a human one. In other words, I argued that these jobs were good because they couldn’t be outsource to China and couldn’t be replaced by robots. But working on the shoe rack reminded me that these jobs aren’t just great for job security, but are good for the soul— especially for men.

In his book, Reeves cites MRI scans and lots of research to suggest that sex differences are real. Reeves writes that the real debate is not about whether biology matters, but how much it does and when it does. It’s not that all men are more interested in building things and that all women are more interested in people. Reeves writes that, on average, men are more interested in things than people (e.g. “the guy tinkers in the garage, his wife chats with a friend”). So data shows that vocational training is a great educational intervention that is pro-male.

Reeves writes that we need to encourage men to enter HEAL jobs (health, education, administration, and literacy), just as we’ve worked to get women into STEM jobs (science, technology, engineering, and math). He’s right. But I think it’s even more important to create a culture that elevates manual labor, manufacturing, construction, and the trades onto a pedestal.