Pendulums swing, never stopping at the sweet spot but always going beyond, only to return and pass the sweet spot yet again. Men and boys have been on a pendulum these past years.

In recent decades, as women generally — I’m painting with a broad brush here — have moved into formerly male-dominated domains, the outlook for boys heading to manhood has dimmed.

Theodore Johnson of The Washington Post set it up for us on May 9: Some see masculinity as “under attack and in need of reassertion” while others see it as “the root of numerous harms.” The right wing accuses the left of “waging a war on men.” The left cites “toxic masculinity” for “exaggerated displays of such antisocial masculine attributes as hardness and violence.”

So, whichever way a young man looks, the view of masculinity is muddled.

Johnson goes on to say scholars connect “the alarming increase in suicides, drug abuse and organized violence among men to our lack of … investment in men and boys.”

Richard Reeves, who wrote “Of Boys and Men,” went deeper. One result of the struggles men are having is something called a “death of despair,” he told NPR. Suicide, drug overdose and alcohol deaths. “Men are at three times higher risk of a death of despair from one of those three causes than women. And the rate has increased by more than 50% in the last two decades.”

A study by Fiona Shand and her colleagues found that the words men used most to describe themselves just before they killed or tried to kill themselves were “useless” and “worthless.”

Here’s what boys and men may have lost. The headmaster of a school in England years ago said his job was “to turn boys into men who would be acceptable at a dance and invaluable in a shipwreck.” Reeves said: “Men … take more risks physically than women,” and “we should be celebrating that.” Men “have to learn how to conduct yourself in society, how you interact with women in a way that’s respectful, recognizing difference, but … insisting on equality.”

That would be the sweet spot where the pendulum stops swinging.

But it keeps swinging, and both men and women suffer. “Because so many men are struggling in one way or the other, women are actually ending up having to do a lot more than they would otherwise.” Reeves said women have to pick up the slack “left by the struggles of men.”

Boys growing up today still have some advantages. Women working the same jobs as men are paid, on average, 83.7% of what men are paid. At every level of education. But Reeves notes that worldwide, 40% of women earn more than men and 40% of American breadwinners are women.

As a lad, I never doubted that I was growing up into a man’s world. No one ever asked about my goals for love, marriage or family. Only, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” I had an answer, though it was more my mother’s wish than mine, to be a physician. Didn’t happen.

We see in education some of the results of what Johnson and Reeves wrote about. In school, the numbers favor girls and women over boys and men at almost every step. Here’s a look.

In Maine, about 84% of boys graduate high school, about 89% of girls, the Brookings Institution reports. That puts us two percentage points above the national average for each sex.

Of our high school grads, 56% go for more education, 62% of the women, 48% of the men. And women in Maine are more likely than men to stay in higher ed and graduate.

Even more locally, the strong majority, more than 60%, of the top 10 graduates pictured in the Sun Journal last week were girls. Virtually all are going on to further schooling.

Nationally, five in eight (62.5%) enrolled in graduate school are women, and women earn 56% of the graduate degrees. One more example, women are 53.8% of all medical students.

If these trends continue, we should expect to see women moving up to and perhaps exceeding men in earnings within a few years.

Sorry for all the numbers. Let’s move on from them.

Sometimes the way to find a solution is to first understand what is not the solution. Here, U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Missouri, provides the stepping-off point, in his recent book, “Manhood.”

Hawley writes that men’s “sacred mission” is to “cultivate the world … and bring forth its potential,” to “respond to coaching and discipline and challenge,” to “need to serve something other than himself” and to be “humble.”

Hawley writes that men must choose bravery instead of cowardice, boldness instead of caution, and they must put themselves in harm’s way if called to the line of duty. You may remember Hawley from Jan. 6, 2021, raising a clenched fist to urge on insurrectionists. Later, you saw Hawley running for his life, fleeing harm’s way when called to the line of duty.

In that moment, how was he bringing forth the world’s potential, cultivating the world order, responding to discipline and challenge, serving something other than himself or being humble?

I don’t believe Hawley has found the Holy Grail of manhood.

Bob Neal notes that so far, “The Daddy Diaries” by Andy Cohen, a gay single dad, is a New York Times bestseller. Hawley’s “Manhood” is not. Neal can’t wait to not read Hawley’s book. Neal can be reached at [email protected].