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How To Be A Man is on Channel 4 this Tuesday at 10pm (Image: Channel 4/Tom Barnes)

Here we go again. News that Britain’s men and boys are in crisis will come as no surprise to those of us who have been concerned about the issue for as long as we can remember. I’ve been writing about the masculine malaise for years and yet the problems facing men just never seem to go away. The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) has revealed that “a significant gender gap in both cognitive and socio-emotional development” emerges by the age of three.

By the time children start primary school, two-thirds of girls have a “good level of development”, with an ability to write simple sentences or count beyond 20 while just under two-thirds of boys manage to hit the same milestone.

The disparity is even more marked for children eligible for free school meals. According to the …