So much of what we read today points to the same unsettling reality. Young people, especially boys, are struggling to find their way. There have been several articles and books written about this issue for the past few years, most recently Scott Galloway’s new book, Notes on Being a Man. Each reminds us that college enrollment among men has dropped steadily for decades. Recent data alarmingly shows that more young men now live at home than with a partner. Marriage rates and birthrates keep falling, and the U.S. Surgeon General has gone so far as to call loneliness a public health crisis. The CDC reports that adolescent depression has surged since 2010, and surveys show that today’s teens spend 70% less time with friends in person than teens did just twenty years ago. Technology is part of the picture, offering endless distraction, shallow “connection,” and now even AI-generated companionship. But it is also clear that something deeper has fractured. The social structures that once helped guide young people into adulthood have weakened, and the loss is showing up everywhere.

And then, fortunately, there’s the contrast I see every single day. In my own family, among my children and their friends, and in this community, the picture looks different. My children are married, raising families, building careers, living connected and purposeful lives. Their friends, the ones who grew up in similar environments, are doing the same. They may struggle like anyone else, but they are not adrift. They know how to make and sustain friendships, how to move through the world with responsibility, how to build family and community. They know who they are. This is not to say our children are immune to struggle, or that every child thrives in the exact same way, but it provides a powerful protective buffer against the aimlessness that has become so common in our society.

I do not believe this is accidental. I believe it has everything to do with the environment they grew up in, the expectations around them, the rituals and relationships that shaped them from childhood. And here, the work of the psychologist Russell Barkley is especially important. He has written for years that while parents matter deeply, the greater force, the one that ultimately shapes a child’s trajectory, is the environment they grow up in and the peers they surround themselves with. According to Barkley, peer group and community norms account for more of a child’s long-term behavior and identity than anything happening inside the four walls of the home. In other words the community you choose for your children is not a detail. It is essentially destiny-shaping.

Communities and Jewish day school communities like ours, offer something wider culture has slowly lost. Our communities offer support and interest from real people, shared values, meaningful obligations, and a story larger than the self. The research backs this up. Pew finds that religiously connected young adults, Jews included, have stronger family formation, lower loneliness, and more stable social networks. Brandeis’ Cohen Center and the Avi Chai Foundation show that Jewish day school graduates are far more likely to be involved in Jewish life, communal leadership, philanthropy, and civic engagement as adults. They grow up with the very protective factors that our society is struggling to recreate.

But for me, the most important insights aren’t in the data. They are in the fabric of the real life I engage in every day. Children raised in Jewish community learn early that life is lived with other people. Many grow up with Shabbat tables filled with friends and extended “family” who may not be related, but are certainly connected by something deeper. They learn to show up for one another, whether for a birth or a shiva or anything in between. They see adults living shared commitments. They watch us argue about ideas and values at the dinner table and still care for one another. They learn that their actions carry moral weight, because Jewish tradition takes ethics seriously. They learn that the world is bigger than their own comfort or convenience.

Judaism has always understood something that modern society seems to have forgotten. Character is not formed alone. Responsibility, empathy, courage, humility, none of these grow in a vacuum. They grow when children are surrounded by adults who model them. They grow through ritual and repetition, through giving and receiving, through being part of a story that began long before they were born and will continue long after they are gone. They grow when a child is called up for the first time to lead Tefillah, or read Torah, or visits the elderly with their class, or joins a hesed project that reminds them that their gifts and time matter.

In a Jewish day school, children experience these things every day, often without realizing how formative they are. They sit with classmates they have known for years. They celebrate holidays together and mourn tragedies together. They form friendships that can withstand disagreement because they share a deeper bond. They are often friends for life. They argue about Israel or current events, and they learn to do it with respect and in the spirit of friendship. They experience what the rabbis meant when they said that all of Israel is responsible for one another. They see that responsibility modeled and expected.

When children grow up in this kind of environment, with belonging, accountability, memory, and meaning, they develop an inner strength that carries them through adulthood. They are less likely to drift into the isolation that so many young people suffer from today because they were taught the importance of community. They understand that purpose is found through obligation to others not through escape inward. They know that community is not optional. It is an essential part of life.

As a society, we are watching the consequences of what happens when those structures disappear. But in our Jewish community and especially at Schechter Bergen and other Jewish day schools, we have the tools to raise children who not only avoid the loneliness and drift that define so much of contemporary life, but who build lives of meaning, family, responsibility, and connection.  They do so imperfectly, like all of us, but with a far greater chance of flourishing.

In a world that pushes young people toward isolation, we can still raise children who choose community. In a culture that celebrates individualism and self indulgence to the point of emptiness, we can still teach children that belonging is a blessing. And in a moment when so many feel unanchored, we can root our children in a story, a people, and a purpose that has sustained us for thousands of years.

That, more than anything, is how we raise moral, ethical, grounded young adults. And it is how we strengthen not only our own community, but the fabric of society itself.