The prevailing public discourse about Australian adolescent males is largely pessimistic, couched in the language of the “crisis in masculinity.” Using data from a nationally representative telephone survey, the Spirit of Generation Y survey (SGY), this paper investigates whether adolescent boys' subjective opinions of their lives accord with this public representation. Contrary to the public discourse about male youth, these data suggest that the large majority of young men claim to be satisfied with their lives, claim to have meaning and purpose, and enjoy a sense of belonging, and on these items, differ little from adolescent females. The data presented here strongly suggests that the crisis narrative is an unreliable descriptor that does not accord with the subjective understandings the majority of adolescent boys appear to have about themselves.
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