Writing in the very first year of the twentieth century, William Byron Forbush warned America that it faced a crisis he called "the boy problem." Forbush warned that a generation of young males, then still in boyhood, would soon enter the life of the nation without the necessary civilizing influences, discipline, and character. He called for immediate action and directed national attention to the problem.

In his influential book, The Boy Problem, Forbush offered a plan for recovering America's adolescent boys. He called for fathers to play a more direct role in the raising of their sons, for schools to give attention to the particular needs of boys, and for the formation and support of organizations that would take boys off the streets and offer moral and spiritual formation.

The "boy problem" as observed by William Forbush looks almost quaint by today's standards. In the year 2004, America faces a far greater crisis in a generation of boys and young men who have been unfathered, untutored, undisciplined, and ultimately unleashed on society. From the ancient Greeks onward, civilization has existed only where boys are raised and socialized to be men and to assume the responsibilities of manhood. In the Bible, Solomon's moral instruction to his own son is found in the book of Proverbs, offering timeless insight into the reality of manhood and its challenges.

A fascinating view into the world of contemporary boyhood is offered by Terrence O. Moore in the Winter 2003 issue of the Claremont Review of Books. In "Wimps and Barbarians: The Sons of Murphy Brown," Moore offers a trenchant diagnosis of contemporary boyhood and the challenge our new "boy problem" presents to the nation.

Moore begins and ends his essay by remembering "Avery," the fictional son of the fictional Murphy Brown, the news commentator played by Candice Bergen on prime time television. Murphy Brown's son--infamously born out of wedlock--become a major issue of nation-wide controversy when vice president Dan Quayle made the child a focus of national concern when he charged that Murphy Brown and her son represented a breakdown of family values and stability. The cultural elite went after Quayle like dogs chasing a stray cat, and Quayle was derided for his backward views and traditional morality.

Taking his cue from the television program, Terrence Moore realized that Avery would now be a teenager, and, though Avery was a fictional boy, Moore sees Avery's generation on a daily basis. "As a Marine, college professor, and now principal of a K-12 charter school," Moore relates, "I have deliberately tried to figure out whether the nation through its most important institutions of moral instruction--its families and schools--is turning boys into responsible young men." Moore answers the question in the negative, and argues that adolescent boys and young men are now divided between "barbarians" who represent crude, antisocial, and uncivilized character; and "wimps," who are described as "whiny, incapable of making decisions, and in general of 'acting like men.'"