When We Break the Rules…

Just as nature operates by certain rules, such as the law of gravity, every society has rules that govern human conduct. Some of these rules date back to creation itself, including many that govern human relationships. But what happens when people try to change the unchangeable rules?

Going for an evening walk is a pleasure I often enjoy, and there are occasional benefits beyond fresh air, sunshine, and exercise. One evening, from the sidewalk, I inadvertently overheard three seconds of a conversation between a man and his son. I passed by a short driveway with a parked pickup and SUV, and between the two vehicles I could see a sad-faced boy of about ten years old, sitting on a box, resting his chin on his palms. His father was standing over him, stating in a calm but serious voice, “You broke the rules. Do you understand there are consequences for that?” I had no idea what the boy had done or what the consequences would be, but I was struck by the firm, yet loving way his father seemed to be dealing with the situation.

Masculinity is under attack today, while femininity is exalted. Hardcore feminists see masculinity in only one dimension—toxic. But while there are certainly jerks, abusers, and deadbeats in the world, their false masculinity is simply not representative of all men, as shown by the example above. In my neighborhood, I’ve seen a father working with his daughters, giving instruction as they practice volleyball. I’ve seen the same father teaching those daughters to ride an electric scooter. I’ve seen other fathers walking in the neighborhood with their sons and daughters. At the beginning of the COVID-19 lockdown, I saw a child scribbling Jeremiah 29:11 on the sidewalk—indicating active religious training and parental engagement. As for the man doling out correction, I’ve also seen him playing catch with the same son.

Many fathers are responsible and engaged with their children, providing encouragement and enforcing rules when necessary. Sadly, it is not like this everywhere, and not all children in my neighborhood are blessed to have loving parents engaged in their lives. And it is not getting better, as relations between men and women continue to crumble. Marriage rates are low in developed nations around the world, and this is not good for children or for society in general.

Some parents are able to raise children by themselves, without the help of a spouse—but this is far from the ideal. God designed the male and female temperaments and talents to give balance, and each has a vital role to play in the raising of children. When fathers are not present as guides and role models for their boys, those boys suffer—and when society devalues proper masculinity, we all suffer.

A War Against Boys

There was a turning point in the United States with the release of “How Schools Shortchange Girls,” a document that dramatically changed how children are educated in the U.S.—and its general effect has also been felt elsewhere. Psychologist Dr. James Dobson explains the change it brought:

The hostility [against boys and in favor of girls] found its manifesto in an inaccurate and terribly biased report written and released in 1992 by the ultraliberal American Association of University Women.… It asserted that female students are invisible, ignored, disrespected, and denied their share of educational resources. The most widely disseminated finding was that teachers permit boys to speak or participate eight times more often than they do girls, but as with the rest of the conclusions, this turned out to be pure nonsense. Their data was based on an old 1981 study that actually said boys are reprimanded eight times more often than girls, and that three-fourths of both girls and boys said they thought teachers compliment girls more often, think they are smarter, and would rather be around female students (Bringing Up Boys, 2001, p. 172).

According to Dobson, “Although the report has been widely discredited now in the professional community for what it was—a blatant attempt to skew education resources away from boys and to characterize girls as victims—the damage had been done” (p. 172).

The report received an enthusiastic response, paving the way for the Gender Equity in Education Act, which led to prodigious amounts of taxpayer dollars being funneled toward girls’ education at the expense of boys. This markedly changed the nation’s approach to education, and the result has been dramatic—and tragic—for both boys and girls. Today, women are outpacing men in university education, deeply affecting relations between the sexes. The idea that men should be breadwinners and protectors has been shattered, changing how men see themselves and interact with the women in their lives.

For decades, women have increasingly outpaced men in college attendance. In fact, the last year men outnumbered women in higher education was 1978. The pandemic served only to widen that chasm, and, as of 2022, women constituted about 60% of college enrollments. Women are also more likely to earn their degrees. Men finish college within four years at a rate 10 percentage points behind the rate for women (“Here’s What Students Should Know About Gender Inequity in Selective College Admissions,” IvyCoach.com).

Furthermore, many professions are increasingly dominated by women. For example, “15 of the top 20 law schools (as ranked by U.S. News & World Report) in 2025 had more female attendees than male attendees” (“Law School Rankings by Female Enrollment (2025),” Enjuris.com). The same is true in medicine: “What’s more, according to previously released data from the AAMC, in 2023-24 women accounted for 54.6% of medical school students” (“Women in Medicine Make Gains, but Obstacles Remain,” AAMC.org, July 9, 2024). When it comes to future veterinarians, women make up 80 percent of veterinary school students (“Annual Data Report, 2019-2020,” AAVMC.org). More women than men are graduating from dental school, and women now outnumber men in nine of 14 advanced dental programs (“U.S. Dental School Grads by Gender,” ADA.org).

Many applaud this turnaround in American culture, thinking, It’s about time those old, unfair rules were done away with—they were bad for women! But are these new trends truly good for women? And what do they mean for the men in women’s lives—their fathers, brothers, and sons? Marjorie Hass, president of the Council of Independent Colleges, looks past the “war of the sexes” and puts it succinctly: “It’s typically not good for society when young men feel they don’t have a future” (“‘There Was Definitely a Thumb on the Scale to Get Boys’,” NYTimes.com, September 26, 2023).

To sum up the picture more broadly, “Brookings Institution Scholar Richard Reeves notes that men accounted for 57 percent of college and university students in 1970—shortly before Congress passed Title IX to prohibit sex-based discrimination in federally funded education. Today’s gender gap is much larger in the other direction, begging the question: What, if anything, should be done about it?” (Enjuris.com).

The New Gender Gap

In an attempt to bring about parity between the sexes, many universities have begun openly favoring academically marginal boys over highly qualified girls—in other words, “affirmative action for men” (NYTimes.com). The previously mentioned percentage of college enrollments would be even more unbalanced if it were not for universities lowering their standards for men to try to achieve as close to an equal number of male and female enrollees as they can. “So colleges have a ‘men problem.’ As such, to manifest a more equal gender balance on campus, some colleges favor male applicants. Simply being male can amount to a ‘thumb on the scale for men,’ a 2023 New York Times Magazine exposé revealed” (IvyCoach.com). This cannot be good for men, nor is it good for women in the long term.

A female-dominated education system that begins to influence children early in their lives has outwardly benefitted women over the last several decades, but not all women are being rewarded according to their efforts, as universities recognize the need to have some form of male/female parity in enrollment. In addition to a host of other problems, the fear is that if the disparity is too great, men will begin to see university education as a feminine pursuit, and the bottom will drop out of male enrollment. As Brookings Institution’s Richard Reeves points out, “that notion would be hard to reverse” (NYTimes.com), in turn lowering female enrollment and drying up tuition revenue—and, worse yet, endowments.

And the U.S. is far from alone in this issue. In Canada, while men outnumber women in the fields of architecture, engineering, mathematics, and computer and information sciences, women outnumber men in nearly every other discipline. Overall, women in Canadian universities make up about 57 percent of enrollees (“Number of Students Enrolled in Postsecondary Institutions in Canada from 2000 to 2024, by Gender (in 1,000s),” Statista.com, August 5, 2026). A similar trend is seen in England, where between 2010 and 2024 women have accounted for 55–58 percent of university enrollments (“Student Characteristics Data: Student Populations—Key Findings,” Office for Students, October 9, 2025). The disparity in Australia is even worse: In 2024, 62 percent of students beginning university life were female (“Key Findings from the 2024 Higher Education Student Statistics,” Education.gov.au).

Hidden Costs for Men, Women—and Children

Not only do current college admission policies disadvantage highly qualified girls—they contribute to social and cultural disparities that strain relations between the sexes. Many college women see college men as their inferiors, not their peers. Yet with more women than men on campus, it is the men who control the dating scene. Men are interested in women, as always, but many are now taking “hooking up” for granted. Writing in his 2015 book Date-onomics, “business reporter Jon Birger builds the case that hookup culture has become the norm on almost all college campuses, largely because the gender ratio is so skewed. In a world in which straight men are scarce, he maintains, they control the terms of social life” (NYTimes.com).

On many campuses, old rules of dating have long since gone away. “Emma Roberts, who graduated from Tulane in the spring… discussed the problem in her gender studies class. ‘I think everyone’s consensus we came to was that it’s pretty disgusting trying to date,’ she says. ‘Because the reality is you’re not likely going to find someone that wants to date you’” (NYTimes.com).

What does a hookup culture do for male/female relations—and, by extension, marriage and childrearing? Given a choice, do single men or single women really want to marry someone who has slept with a dozen or more people? Do we not all want to feel that we are special to our spouse?

We can sense in Emma Roberts’ comments that there is tension between the expectations of men and women. There has been conflict between the sexes going back centuries, probably to the beginning of the human race, but today there is something very different from those former times when dating to spend time with and get to know someone—and eventually marry—was the norm.

And these trends and statistics bring consequences for society. Marriage rates are already at historic lows, and birth rates are dropping nearly everywhere. Single-parent homes are on the rise, and this has consequences for children. When men are absent, or fail to uphold their responsibilities, families suffer.

Why One Woman Took the Lead—Reluctantly

The book of Judges describes a time when ancient Israel was beset by chaos, violence, and lawlessness. We read, “In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in his own eyes” (Judges 21:25). Yet, in the context of those turbulent days, we read a beautiful passage of what it takes to bring about harmony: “When leaders lead in Israel, when the people willingly offer themselves, bless the Lord” (Judges 5:2).

This was written about a time when the men of Israel weren’t leading, and the nation of Israel had fallen into sin and was oppressed by another people. Amid this chaos, a woman named Deborah was judging, or ruling, her fellow Israelites, and she called for a man named Barak to deploy troops and fight off their enslaving enemy. But what was Barak’s response? It was timid at best. “Barak said to her, ‘If you will go with me, then I will go; but if you will not go with me, I will not go’” (Judges 4:8).

Barak said, in essence, I’ll go if you hold my hand. That was hardly the response one might expect from a man. So, God gave Israel the victory, but the glory went to Deborah and to a woman named Jael, who killed the enemy’s leader.

It is clear that Israel’s men were not stepping up to lead as they should have—and it is also evident that women are in many ways able to fill the gap when men fail to lead. But God did not intend for failing men to force women to play that role.

A Warning About Rulers | Isaiah 3:12

Regardless of the causes—and there are many—what we see unfolding before our eyes today is the fulfillment of a prophecy made more than 2,700 years ago. “As for My people, children are their oppressors, and women rule over them” (Isaiah 3:12). Many today believe that men are the problem and that if women have the chance, they can bring order and peace to our troubled world. But this is an illusion. We read in the last part of that verse, “O My people! Those who lead you cause you to err, and destroy the way of your paths.”

Leaders, male and female, are failing. No, neither men nor women by themselves can hold a society together, much less solve humanity’s fundamental problems. Order and peace will come only after men and women submit to and conform to God’s order.

There are still many strong and caring men in our world today, but the war against boys is leaving us with fewer all the time. It may be appealing to some to think of women ruling, especially when men are failing—but it should be evident to anyone with eyes to see that men and women are different. No matter the nonsense spewed by confused ideologues who are in total rebellion against our Creator, the reality is that a man will never experience the joy of a child being formed within him. And few women can carry a full-grown adult out of a burning building, much less a 200-pound man off a battlefield.

Growing up, I recognized that my mother was a capable woman. She was a corporate secretary prior to marriage, and she was the one who got me involved in sports and took me to swimming and dance classes. She taught me how to play the piano, drive a nail, and iron my clothes. But when my father was deployed overseas for a year, she struggled to keep me in line. It was my father whom I feared when I was disobedient. He held the line when it came to the rules of the house, and—though he never explicitly said it—I knew there would be consequences for breaking the rules. And today, throughout society, we are seeing and experiencing the consequences of what happens when men and women try so hard to break the rules established at creation.

Men and women need each other—and they need God’s framework for male/female relations. Paul told the women of Ephesus to “submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord” (Ephesians 5:22), and he also placed a demand on men, using Jesus Christ’s own love as the standard: “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her” (v. 25). Those are tall orders for women and for men—but they are rules that God has set for the benefit of His people. Let’s do our best to follow them!