Are Male Role Models Really the Solution?

This paper considers the ‘war on boys’ through a critical examination of the way boys and young men have been represented in what might be termed the ‘male role model’ discourse in policy and media debates in the UK. Critical engagement with academic literatures that explore the ‘male role model’ response to the ‘problem of boys’, predominantly in education and in welfare settings, reveals that contemporary policy solutions continue to be premised on outdated theoretical foundations that reflect simplistic understandings of gender and gender relations. In this paper we advocate policy solutions that acknowledge the complexity and diversity of boys’ and young men’s experiences and that do not simplistically reduce their problems to a ‘crisis in masculinity’