Aotearoa / New Zealand

Hmm, I'm not sure about this, ie, the lack of male "heros" in books being responsive for lack of reading engagement. Growing up, I read a lot of female authored books which featured male MCs, such as Enid Blyton's Famous Five, Secret Seven, The Five Find-Outers, and of course, Rowling's Harry Potter series. But there were also plenty of male authored works that I enjoyed too, such as Tolkein's Hobbit, Doyle's Sherlock Holmes series, Dixon's Hardy Boys etc. Not to mention, there were endless comics with male leads to choose from, such as Archie, Richie Rich, Dennis the Menace, and all the superhero comics from DC and Marvel.

Reading was a habbit that was inculcated in me by my parents (mainly my mother, who's still an avid reader till date), and both of them were full-time workers and career driven. We had a lot of books at home, and books were my main friends growing up. Also, I grew up in an era where there weren't many digital distractions. We did have a computer at the time, but it ran DOS and had no internet, so there was little to do there.

I think the lack of reading culture these days is mainly a generational issue - kids these days are spoiled by easy access to smartphones and digital content, which shortens their attention span. Why read a book when you can scroll an endless stream of Tiktok videos? Also, how many households have a plethora of books to choose from these days?

I'm not sure what the solution is though, since even if parents keep a tight lid on brainless digital content, kids would get exposed to it at schools and when hanging out with other kids. I'm not a parent so I can't really comment on this, but I believe some responsibility for encouraging the reading habit still lies with the parents. If I take a look at my sister as an example, who has a couple of young kids, I've seen her buy age-appropriate, physical books for the kids every year, and she actually spends time reading the books with them. It's still too early to tell how the kids will turn out, but I can see her at least trying to inculcate a reading culture in them. How many parents take the time and effort to do that these days?

Hell, how many parents are actually qualified to even raise kids properly these days? With people leading such busy lives, raising kids is a huge deal - which is part of the reason why I don't want to be a parent myself. But I guess many people these days blindly head into relationships without really planning for kids and without asking themselves if they're really truly willing to commit themselves to raising intelligent and responsible kids. It's easy enough to pop out kids, but a mountain of a task to ensure that they turn out alright.