Heterosexual, white men have the fewest friends of anyone in America, according to a 2006 analysis of two decades of data published in the American Sociological Review.
In 2017, the Boston Globe famously declared, "The biggest threat facing middle-age men isn't smoking or obesity. It's loneliness." Those findings were based on research from Brigham Young University.
Slate once called friendship "American men's hidden crisis."
There's lots of talk about keeping boys from feeling isolated and at odds with the world around them. But once they reach adulthood, men are largely on their own to figure out when and how to squeeze friendship into their lives, now that the teams and clubs and free time of their youth have largely dissipated.
Add in the fact that modern dads spend triple the time raising kids as dads in previous generations, according to Pew Research Center data, and the "hidden crisis" doesn't seem so hidden.
Women also spend more time with their children than moms of previous generations, according to Pew Research Center data. Yet women seem to be finding more time than men for friendships.
One theory is that when women become parents, their friendships are woven into their parenting.
Women tend to become friends with the parents of their kids' friends and encourage their kids to become friends with their friends' kids.
Male friendships, on the other hand, have historically been built around time away from the kids. Poker night. Beers after work. Softball leagues. Weaving parenting into their friendships wasn't typically modeled to them by their dads.
So men who want the richness and intimacy of a close, time-intensive relationship with their kids may find that it comes at the expense of the richness and intimacy of close friendships.
How fathers can protect 'guy time'
How can that change?
"I suspect there is a balance that men can strike here," said psychologist John Duffy, "one that allows for plenty of time to connect with and parent their children, while also saving some time, here and there, to connect with adult male friends."
The first step is acknowledging that male friendships are important.
"Fostering male friendships tends to bring out the best in us men," he said. "We are more connected, available, playful and emotionally present in our relationships. Second, we are modeling positive, mutually beneficial adult relationships for our children. No downside there."
Duffy suggests men schedule friend time the same way they would commitments for work or parenting.
"I think protecting this guy time on a family calendar, as sacred as any other family-related time, could only prove helpful here," he said. "Men I know make this time superfluous and negotiable, instead of setting it in stone. As a result, months can pass between connecting with pals."
It would also help if their partners recognized the value in these friendships and encouraged their cultivation.
"I find that we men, myself included, need the support of our friends just as the women in our lives need the support of theirs," Duffy said. "But we are often too stingy with our time and energy to offer it to each other. There is a stoicism we bring to these relationships that is wholly unnecessary. The more emotionally available we are to each other, the richer our lives."
